Liana Fuente may be the eldest in the fourth generation of a family-owned global business, but she didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in her mouth. After her parents divorced, she was raised by her mother’s parents and ended up having to drop out of college to become their caretaker. Along the way, she supported herself by working multiple jobs, from waiting tables and bartending to teaching dance classes and managing a boutique. “There’s nothing that I haven’t gotten involved in,” Fuente says. “I hustled.”
Today, she’s still hustling, although in a more high-profile role, as the vice president of brand development for her family’s Tampa, Florida–based Arturo Fuente, one of the world’s best-known producers of fine cigars, which has factories and farms throughout the Dominican Republic. “In the cigar industry, you always see men at the forefront—the father and son, the patriarch, the typical Hispanic hombre pride,” she says. “Ironically, from the very beginning, women have been central to the cigar industry. My grandmother and my great-grandmother were right there next to my great-grandfather. My grandmother Anna rolled cigars down at the factory. Now you see a lot more women getting involved, and it’s exciting, because women have so much passion to give.” Here, she tells us about learning the business, the growing popularity of her product, and her charitable efforts.
On learning from the ground up:
“On my 24th birthday, my father and grandfather offered me a position in the family business. My grandfather said, ‘If you can’t smell my aftershave, you are too far away. I want you to learn everything that I do. Also, don’t forget, God gave you one mouth and two ears, so do double the listening and half the speaking.’ I pretty much learned everything, from picking tobacco on the farm to rolling cigars. I had to work in the accounting department, the shipping department—I remember wearing a dress with steel-toe boots and palletizing these huge boxes. My grandfather had me cleaning bathrooms. As a Fuente, I had to know it all, from the bottom up. We didn’t have a website, a social media presence, a marketing department, so after I learned all these things, I sort of crafted my own department.”
On the culture of a family business:
“In a corporate environment, you know what your role is—it’s very direct, and you kind of stay in your lane. Being part of a family business means that if anything has to be done, I do it. Even though we’re becoming more and more corporate every day because we’ve grown so much, you don’t want to let anybody down. It’s not just a cigar company; it’s the family name and legacy.”
On the current cigar boom:
“Cigars really allow you to stop and enjoy the moment. I’m on the road a lot, and I see all these couples who enjoy an hour together without their phone, with a premium spirit, in a world that is so time-packed and go-go-go. People are enjoying more luxury products. I see a lot more cigar lounges popping up, because people want to be able to go out and engage with other people. We are at a peak right now, and we are oversold, which is a great problem to have.”
On the importance of giving back:
“Charity is very important to me, because I know what it’s like not to have anything. We grow tobacco in Bonao, and when we started cultivating the land it was one of the worst cities in all of the Dominican Republic, as far as crime goes. People had no electricity, no running water. Kids would come up to the car and ask for jobs. These were, like, 4- and 5-year-olds, and the parents would beg us to hire their children to pick tobacco. We make premium tobacco filler for the [J.C.] Newman family, and both families realized they had to do something, so they decided to open an elementary school there. In a few years, they realized they needed a middle school, and then they had to make a high school. Today, there are about a thousand kids in school: They speak three languages and have the highest ratings in the country. With the Cigar Family Charitable Foundation, we have literally changed the entire community.”
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