Marcus Kellerman
Founder, Design My Cigar

How it started

I grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey, in a family where every celebration ended with the older men on the back porch passing around cigars. My grandfather ran a small print shop in Paterson and he was meticulous about the way paper felt, the way a label lined up, the way ink sat on a surface. Watching him work taught me that craftsmanship is mostly about caring enough to do the last 5 percent when nobody is looking.

After Rutgers I spent almost a decade in luxury packaging and custom gift design for corporate clients in Manhattan. Hermes, Tiffany, private banks, law firms. It was a good education in what premium actually means and what it does not. The dirty secret is that most high-end corporate gifts are sourced in bulk from the same three overseas warehouses. The recipient knows. The sender knows. Everyone pretends.

Why cigars

In 2017 a friend asked me to help design the wedding favors for his reception. He wanted custom cigars with his and his wife's names on the band. I called around to every custom cigar shop I could find. Minimum orders of 500. Six month lead times. Design fees of $400. Nobody would work with a couple planning a 120 person wedding who needed 60 cigars in 8 weeks.

I ended up sourcing cigars from a distributor in Dominican Republic, designing the band myself on a trip to visit my brother in Miami, and having a local print shop run 60 bands on adhesive paper. We hand-applied every single one on my kitchen counter the weekend before the wedding. Guests asked me for weeks afterward who made them. I realized the market for small-batch custom cigars with real flexibility basically did not exist in North Jersey.

I incorporated Tria Exodus LLC the following year. The name comes from an old blues record my grandfather played on Sundays. Tria Exodus opened the Wallington facility in 2018 with two employees and a rolling tabletop of Boveda humidity packs. We have grown the team to eight people, moved twice, and now produce custom banded orders from 20 cigars to 2,000 plus with lead times under three weeks for most sizes.

What hand-banded actually means

Most custom cigar shops use a rotary banding machine. The machine pulls a roll of pre-printed bands, positions the cigar, and rolls the band around. It is fast and cheap. It also produces visible glue seams, misaligned bands, and a 4 to 7 percent reject rate because cigars are not perfectly round. We looked at one early on and decided it was not worth the tradeoff on premium orders.

Our team applies every band by hand using acid-free archival adhesive on paper stock we print in-house. It takes longer. It costs more. Our rejection rate is under 1 percent and every band is perfectly centered on the wrapper seam. When you hold one of our cigars next to a machine-banded cigar under a light, the difference is obvious. That difference matters most at the moment the couple or CEO hands the cigar to the guest.

The Theodora Gordo story

Our one house blend is called the Theodora Gordo. I named it after Theodora, a character in a novel my wife made me read three times before I understood it. The cigar is a 60 ring gauge Maduro built around a Nicaraguan long filler we source from a single farm in Esteli. We developed the blend over 18 months with a roller who spent 20 years at Padron before going independent. The wrapper is a sun-grown Mexican San Andres that gives the cigar its dark cocoa and espresso notes.

The Theodora Gordo is the cigar I smoke on Friday nights. It is the cigar I pick when a client calls and says they want something that tastes like a celebration and does not apologize for it. Every other cigar in our collection comes from a major manufacturer. This one is ours.

What I still do personally

I review every band proof before it goes to the client. Every single one. I do not sign off until I can imagine the bride or the CEO holding it and feeling the way they hoped they would. I also handle all orders above 500 cigars and every new corporate relationship personally. If you email us asking about a 1,000 cigar order for a law firm holiday gift program, the first reply comes from me.

I also still hand-apply the first band on every new design. It is a ritual I started in year one and have not broken. The first band is the hardest because it is the one that tells me whether the design actually works at scale. If my hands struggle, the team will struggle, and we need to iterate before we commit to a production run.

What Design My Cigar is not

We are not a retailer. We do not sell individual cigars at retail prices to walk-in customers. We are not a subscription box. We are not a warehouse. We do not dropship from overseas. We do not charge design fees, rush fees, or surprise packaging charges. And we do not take orders we cannot deliver on time. If your wedding is in two weeks and you need 200 cigars, I will tell you honestly what is possible and what is not.

Everything we do is built around the moment a cigar changes hands between two people. That moment is small. It is also the whole point.

Get in touch

If you have questions about a specific order, the best way to reach me is through the contact form with your event date, guest count, and a rough budget. I read every inbound message and respond within one business day. For orders over 500 cigars, you can email me directly at info@designmycigar.com and I will set up a call.