The Two Billion Cigar Baron

 

(Cigar Aficionado) Forty years ago, Theo W. Folz had a vision. Only 20 at the time, he was in Marked Tree, Arkansas, pitching a 17-year-old girl on Wearever cookware. "I'll never forget it," he says. "It was a farmer's house, he was in bib overalls, her mother was nursing her newborn. They had tar paper walls. And I was sitting there convincing her to buy a $500 set of pots and pans. And I drove back to Memphis that night, and I said to myself, 'What am I doing here? Those people need $500 to eat.' So that was my last day selling pots and pans."
Instead of selling pots and pans, Folz headed back home to work with his father, a longtime cigar man. Continued