The year 2024 has been the single most tumultuous period for the pipe-tobacco industry since the beginning of my career in the late 1990s, even more so than in 2016 when the publication of FDA's Deeming Regulations upended the regulatory environment for pipe tobacco in the U.S.

Mac Baren was sold to Scandinavian Tobacco Group in June of this year. With that, the second largest global manufacturer of pipe tobacco became part of the largest global pipe tobacco manufacturer. While there has been steady industry consolidation over the decades, the scale of this event, relative to their share of the global industry, makes it quite different.

Following the passing of Henrik Halberg, a devoted steward of Mac Baren and an old tobacco hand, the last tie between the Halberg family and Mac Baren was severed. Henrik, a man I greatly admired as I got to know him during the 2010s, spent his career not as CEO of Mac Baren nor in the typical fashion of a scion of a wealthy family, but as the tobacco buyer for the company, traveling the world sourcing great leaf.

Henrik passed away in January of 2021 at 70, still active in the business — I'd seen him just a few months prior for a set of meetings between Laudisi and Mac Baren — and with him, the Halberg family's connection to the tobacco company. Mac Baren had become, like so many great family firms over the years, part of a portfolio of professionally managed investments that it had made possible.

By 2024, the family had decided to divest itself of all of its tobacco holdings. In June, STG acquired Mac Baren.

From local news in Svendborg, home to Mac Baren, it is now clear that the plan is to close Mac Baren's factory there, as well as its U.S. subsidiary, Sutliff Tobacco Co. Indeed, Laudisi Distribution Group, sister company to Smokingpipes, is now the U.S. importer and distributor for a handful of pipe and pipe tobacco brands that Sutliff, until recently, imported.

This is not the venue and it is not my role to discuss or speculate upon STG's plans. If it wishes, it will communicate those. But I will say that for much of my 25-year career in pipes and pipe tobacco, I greatly admired Mac Baren and formed enduring friendships with management and staff there across perhaps 15 visits to Svendborg over the years, and enjoyed time together at trade shows and at our offices in South Carolina.

Mac Baren was, to my mind, the "right" sort of company: dedicated to the quality of its products, serious about what it did, and filled with happy employees. There was a sense of egalitarian togetherness about the place I greatly admired, the sort of place where the CEO and shipping clerk ate the same lunch in the same cafeteria at one of a dozen identical big round tables. It was the sort of place where the owner eschewed a corporate leadership role so that he could pursue his calling, traveling in pursuit of the finest tobaccos.

I recall a chance discussion with some leaf broker folks in the very early 2000s — long before I knew that world through Cornell & Diehl — about how Mac Baren bought only the best. And the folks at Mac Baren tolerated me, even when I was just some kid with an enthusiasm for pipes and pipe tobacco and this website in the U.S., when I first asked to visit in 2005 or 2006. I knew then what my later experiences would confirm: that these were people I admired who led an institution I admired, an institution that respected its customers and loved its products.

Mac Baren's passing saddens me. There are not very many true pipe tobacco manufacturers left in the world.

Laudisi, the parent company of Smokingpipes, also had a tumultuous year. We acquired Caldwell Cigar Co. and merged it into the company in March. We moved operations that had been spread across a few miles in three buildings in Longs, S.C., to our new Ralph Ellis Campus in Loris, S.C., with 85,000 sq. ft. of warehouse and offices and 17 acres of land to develop as we need in the future (we're keeping Low Country Pipe & Cigar, our brick & mortar retailer, in Little River, S.C., of course). We've invested heavily in new machinery and space for C&D so that it can expand capacity, a decision that now feels prescient given that it will be the last true pipe-tobacco manufacturer in the United States (and one of a dwindling number globally).

Sometime in November, Laudisi hired its 200th employee. About 140 are in the U.S., mostly in South Carolina, with 50-something in Ireland working at Peterson and Smokingpipes.eu, four in China, and a handful scattered elsewhere. A lot of the staff growth this year has been driven by Cornell & Diehl, the warehouse, and the Peterson factory in Dublin, but almost every department, from Estates and Customer Service at Smokingpipes to accounting and software development, has seen growth this year. Notably, for me especially, Tony Saintiague rejoined the company as CFO after spending 13 years at UPS in various executive and managerial capacities.

We're constantly working to make Laudisi a better version of itself, produce better products, improve the quality of the service that we provide, and better serve the hobbyist pipe smoker. We don't always succeed — we fell short of our expectations for ourselves (same-day shipping for all orders received by 3:30 p.m.) in the aftermath of the Black Friday sale this year — but it's part of a constant process of working toward doing what we do better than we used to.

Since this is beginning to read like a Christmas card letter from your great-aunt detailing every activity of her children and grandchildren, I'll get to the point: institutions matter. Culture matters. As pipe smoking has declined since the 1960s, we've seen so many august institutions that support and nurture our shared hobby disappear. Mac Baren felt like one that would endure. Laudisi, the company I founded 25 years ago because I thought it would be fun to try to sell pipes on the internet, will endure as an institution that embraces the hobby and wider pipe-smoking community.

2025 will mark the 25th anniversary since the company's humble beginnings in a tiny warehouse off of Nolensville Pike in Nashville, TN. I certainly didn't envision what it would become. And I certainly can't predict how it will evolve over the next quarter century. But I do know that we'll continue to focus on doing the best work we can do, making the best products we know how and providing the best service we can, serving the community and hobby that has been so good to us.