RoMa Craft Tobac may be small, but don’t call it boutique. To the company’s co-founder, Skip Martin, the term “boutique” refers to a product made for, and sold by, a specific retailer—and that’s not what Martin and those at his company are setting out to do. Instead, they refer to themselves as a “craft” producer that maintains its scale at a level where every aspect of production, distribution and engagement with its customers can be direct and dictated by the quality of the product or engagement—not by the demands that drive larger companies.
“We built ourselves to be a small producer with a focus on the sourcing of high-quality raw materials, hands-on production and direct relationships with our consumers,” Martin explains. “More importantly, the term [“craft”] describes the culture we curate within our organization that emphasizes and enables all of these things … and that is what sets us apart.”