Let's start from the beginning...
New England Roots
A long time ago, in a garage deep in the woods of Maine, a father and son were trying to figure out the best way to enjoy the final third of their cigars. Michael Wilson Jr, and Sr, have enjoyed many cigars, either fireside, or during walks in the woods of Maine, but on this day in 2012 an idea was born.
Being a creative pair, one a serial entrepreneur, and the other a seasoned machinist and designer, they started looking around the garage for solutions. They started with pliers, then moved to drill bits, but this all seemed a little desperate. What if they could design a classier way to finish the cigar?
The Prototype Phase
The first design was an archaic monstrosity, made out of a thin aluminum tube, a hard plastic mouthpiece that slid out of your mouth, and some drill bits inside to hold the cigar in place, but it proved the concept.
From there, it was design after design, prototype after prototype for many years, often with 6-12 month gaps between discussion and production. With Jr living in Massachusetts and Sr living in Maine, this made for some challenges in both design time and problem solving.
Stress-Testing the Design
As a cigar lover you can probably guess that this was indeed the best part of the process. They got to try all different sizes, shapes, gauges, and qualities of cigars, to ensure that the product would work flawlessly for you.
This was by no means a short stress test. Once the third to last prototype was completed they decided to bring in some help. The stress testing led to an addition to the team. Timothy wear was brought in and added his design ideas, along with our Maine based manufacturing company.
With this new team and a healthy group of outside testers that final prototype was completed during the summer/fall of everyone's 'favorite' year, 2020.
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