We had to think of a name that is accepted in Europe and the U.S.,” says Abhik Roy about the name of his company owned by him and his brother Anindya Roy that was launched in a factory in Calcutta [now Kolkata]. The brothers settled on the name over coffee in Boston by choosing ‘Andre’, a common first name across Europe, and pairing it with ‘Garcia’ after the ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ Diego Garcia, which is how Andre Garcia came to be.
Roy’s business includes cigars and not just cigar cases. The company also produces its own blends. Roy, though, is not a cigar smoker. His entry into the trade began by reading about the cigar market out of curiosity around 1998–’99, “when we used to have those dial-up connections,” he says.
The traditional leather cases used by long-established European houses 52 were too soft to protect their contents. “If you stand on the case, it will crush the cigars,” Roy explains. This is why the cases made by them are lined with Cedrela odorata or Spanish cedar sourced, Roy says, from Brazil, spliced in Arkansas, and assembled in India.
“This is the gold standard for storing a cigar,” he says, pointing to the wood’s natural resistance to the insects that damage stored tobacco. The signature touch is a protective cap of buffalo horn set into the top of each case.
“Nobody ever thought of putting a buffalo horn on a cigar case,” he claims, adding that he has an Indian patent for the cigar-case design, as well as the manufacturing technique. He describes the production process as a marriage of imported material and traditional craft. “I combine today’s technology with [artisanship],” he says, explaining, “A person turning the leather or moving the leather on the case has to be old school. It can’t be done in a machine.” The leather, he says, is Bavarian bull hide; the carbon fibre used in some models is imported, as is the Italian leather. “None of the product I use is made in India. We only assemble it in India,” he says. Collections include the Pack and Go, prized for its portability, and the Saint James that has a telescopic features that allows for adjusting the lenght of the case as per requirement.
The online sale of cigars is not legal in India, Roy shares, which is why Andre Garcia currently sells through hotel partnerships rather than direct retail—a channel, Roy describes, as ‘fragile’ given how frequently hotel personnel are transferred between properties. “Every vice president and general manager gets reposted, and you [have to] start all over again,” he says. It is, in effect, the same problem he set out to solve with the case itself: building something durable in a market that keeps shifting under it.
Roy is unsentimental about the mix of effort and circumstance behind the business’s survival. “It will be dishonest to say it was hard, but it was also not very easy,” he says, adding, “Some blessing has to be there.” He recounts gifting a box of cigars to politicians, a friendship with renowned filmmakers, and even crafting custom orders for CFOs. Over 20 years in, Roy still doesn’t smoke. He just makes sure that for those who do, their cigars arrive in great shape.
The images used here are different from those featured in our latest print issue.