Frank Anthony Llaneza (March 9, 1920 – March 18, 2010) was a tobacco blender and former executive of Villazon & Co. who is regarded as a pioneer in the resurgence of the premium cigar industry at the end of the 20th Century. Llaneza is best known for the creation and manufacture of a number of popular cigar brands in the years after the 1962 Cuban Embargo, including Hoyo de Monterrey, Punch, Bolivar, and Siglo.
Biography
Early years
Frank Llaneza was born on March 9, 1920, in Tampa, Florida. His father, José Llaneza, was a cigar maker who produced a brand in Ybor City known as Pancho Arango. An 11-month-long strike of tobacco workers bankrupted many of Tampa's cigar makers, however, including Frank's father. In the aftermath, the elder Llaneza went to work for the company of Schwab-Davis, one of the city's biggest cigar manufacturers as makers of the popular brand Rey del Rey.
During his time as a manager at Schwab-Davis, Llaneza's father launched another company with his three former business partners called José Arango. When Schwab-Davis was later sold to a company called Gradiaz-Annis, a forerunner of General Cigar Co., the elder Llaneza left the company's employ to devote himself full-time to his own new enterprise.
During his school years, Llaneza worked part-time in his father's factory, beginning work at age 15. He graduated from Tampa's Jesuit High School in 1936.
Early career
Following graduation from high school, Frank Llaneza went to work in the cigar industry full-time beginning at his father's factory as an apprentice selector of tobacco leaf, helping to sort it for size, color, and quality.
With World War II on the horizon, Llaneza joined the United States Coast Guard in 1940. He served in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Atlantic through the end of the war in 1945.
Following conclusion of the war, Llaneza returned to work in his father's factory as a tobacco selector before moving to become a foreman supervising the torcedores (cigar rollers). Llaneza used the savings he had accumulated to buy a stake in the company, which eventually was held by his father, his brother Joe, and himself. Joe Llaneza ran the Villazon front office and Frank the factory, with the elder Llaneza in charge of picking and packing in the shipping department.
In 1947, Llaneza went to Cuba to learn the leaf trade as an assistant to José Arango's leaf buyer there, José Suarez. Suarez suddenly died during Llaneza's stay, however, leaving the young Frank responsible for buying all the tobacco needed by the factory. It was as a leaf buyer that Frank Llaneza became acquainted with many who would later become giant figures in the cigar industry, including Angel Oliva of Oliva Tobacco Co. and Joe Cullman, father of Joe Cullman III of Philip Morris and Edgar Cullman, the future head of General Cigar Co.
Despite the fact that the American economy underwent a boom in the post-war years, as consumers were suddenly able to buy unlimited quantities of products formerly subjected to wartime rationing, the American cigar industry was hard hit by the sudden release of hundreds of millions of stockpiled cigars onto the market by the United States government. This policy of dumping finished cigars by the government continued into 1948. With cigars easily available at less than their cost of production, once again many small cigar firms based in Tampa were bankrupted, with José Arango among the victims.
Establishment of Villazon & Co.
The José Arango company was reorganized under bankruptcy under a new name, Villazon and Company. Together Frank and his older brother, Joe, began making inexpensive machine-made cigars, carving out a market niche in which they were able to compete with larger firms. Villazon soon acquired a set of trademarks from the Preferred Havana Company, including the brands Flor del Mundo, Bances, and Lord Beaconfield, among others.
Villazon specialized for a time in the manufacture of inexpensive private label cigars for nightclubs in New York City and elsewhere, barely managing to make ends meet on the low profit margins this particular segment of the business allowed. Approximately 45 or 50 people were employed in the company's Tampa factory.
Together with Angel Oliva, Sr., Frank Llaneza was one of the pioneers in the farming of cigar tobacco in Central America. He later recalled: