 What
do you do when you’re ready to retire as a Nassau
County detective and you’ve still got a lot of
energy and smarts? If you’re Tom Wallace, you
look around for a way to help your friends, and what
starts as a lark ends up as a compelling and lucrative
business.
Wallace is now founder and owner of The Little
Cigar Factory which has several satellite stores
and a factory in Massapequa. He is helped by his daughter,
Nicole, who said of her dad, “He is a phenomenal
business man and I’ve learned so much from him.”
Photo: Left to right; County Executive
Thomas R. Suozzi with Tom Wallace
The idea got its start when Wallace’s friend Anthony
Capetola sponsored a cigar dinner at Carlton on the
Park in East Meadow in 1997. They charged $100 a dinner
and 500 people came. Two months later they sponsored
another at $125 a head and 700 people came.
“The cigar boom was in full swing,” said
Wallace, “but the cigars cost so much and by then
I had realized there was no reason for the high price.
“The cigar craze boomed out in 1999 and all
those little manufacturers went out of business,”
Wallace continued, “but then I knew that manufacturing
hand-rolled inexpensive cigars was possible and could
be done profitably. With even the so-called hand-rolled
cigars from the Dominican Republic being made by machine,
with only the top added by hand, there were expert hand
rollers around who had no jobs.” |
At Little Cigar Factory we specialize in the highest
quality of cigars and we hand roll them in our own humidors.