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Cuba looks to women to boost sagging cigar sales Published on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 Email To Friend    Print Version (Reuters) -- With anti-smoking laws and the global recession causing sales to fall, Cuba wants to develop a largely untapped market for its famous cigars -- women. Habanos SA executives said on Monday sales fell 8 percent to $360 million in 2009, so they have created the Julieta, a smaller, milder version of the Romeo y Julieta cigar, aimed specifically at female smokers. Cuban Cigars' marketing director Ana Lopez, smokes a cigar during a press conference for the opening of the XII Cigar Festival in Havana. AFP PHOTO Women now make up only 5 to 10 percent of customers for Habanos, the worldwide distributor of Cuban cigars, marketing director Ana Lopez told a news conference kicking off the annual Habanos cigar festival. The Julieta is an attempt to overcome perceptions among women that Cuban cigars are made up of "only strong tobacco for men," she said. The search for new markets is needed because even though Cuban cigars are considered the world's finest, sales are slipping with the rise of anti-smoking laws around the world, said Habanos vice president Manuel Garcia. The 8 percent sales drop in 2009 was preceded by a 3 percent fall, to $390 million, in 2008. Even with the creation of the Julieta, Garcia said Habanos has only modest hopes for 2010 sales, due largely to a weak economy in Spain, the biggest market for Cuban cigars. "We think it would be a very good result if we can at least maintain the (sales) we reached in 2009," he said. Habanos is a joint venture between Cuba and British tobacco giant Imperial Tobacco Group Plc. Habanos -- which produces other well-known brands such as Cohiba, Monte Cristo, Trinidad and Partagas -- has about 71 percent of the sales in its markets, Garcia said. The US market, the largest in the world with 230 to 250 million cigars smoked annually, is off limits to Habanos due to the US trade embargo imposed against Cuba since 1962.   Reads : 23 Back... Comments: No comments on this topic yet. Be the first one to submit a comment. Back... Send us your comments!   Send us your comments on this article for publication in our Readers' Forum or as a Letter to the Editor. All fields are required and in the interest of openness and transparency we will no longer accept anonymous submissions. We therefore request that all submissions include a name for publication, regardless of content. We will in special circumstances protect a writer's identity only after we have established good cause for anonymity, otherwise we will not be able to publish the submission. For your contribution to reach us, you must (a) provide a valid e-mail address and (b) click on the validation link that will be sent to the e-mail address you provide.  If the address is not valid or you don't click on the validation link, it will be a waste of your time typing your submission because we will never see it! Your Name: Your Email: (Validation required) Comments: Enter Validation Code *