It was nothing more than adrenaline-fight or flight.” Cigarmaker Rocky Patel and retailer David Berkebile, the owner of Georgetown Tobacco, were there with him. “I’m on the hook for more than $1 million.” It was fear, plain and simple, that put Borysiewicz on a plane to Washington to plead his case.
“The bank calls, wants to pull the loan,” says Borysiewicz. The bankers funding Borysiewicz’s new construction loan got an immediate case of cold feet. Borysiewicz, whose business model was built on large inventory, would have been ruined. The first draft of the bill called for a tax of up to $10 per cigar, and a provision, known as a floor tax, that would have made retailers pay the tax on every cigar in their inventory. It gets its funding through increased tobacco taxes. SCHIP is the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a piece of legislation intended to help provide health care for uninsured children. “The construction company started digging the footers, and here comes SCHIP.” I was building the downtown store-the most expensive store I ever did,” he says. That first trip to Washington came because he was at risk of losing the business. Today he’s one of the most prominent cigar retailers in the United States, with superstores that stock some 2 million cigars representing virtually every premium cigar brand on the market. He built his business from scratch, maxing out a pair of credit cards and taking bank loans on a car and a boat to finance it. “I almost lost everything,” says Borysiewicz, a dark-haired, 42-year-old with a square build and the thick forearms of a working man. Jeff Borysiewicz, the founder and president of Corona Cigar Co., didn’t go to his nation’s capital until he was 37 years old, when he found himself in a dogfight to save his cigar company.
CORONA CIGAR COMPANY BOY SCOUT FULL
Most Americans make their first visit to the marbled steps of Washington, D.C., as a child, perhaps as part of a school trip to visit the presidential monuments or on a family vacation to smell the cherry blossoms in full bloom.
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