Julius Caesar, an èmigrè from Hungary, was a self-made man who created a tiny cigar company in 1895 with $50 he borrowed from his family and an order for 500 cigars from the local grocer. The company was a one-man cigar factory, operating out of a barn behind the family home near Cleveland. Today, the J.C. Newman Cigar Co. is now headquartered in Tampa, where it still makes cigars by machine, and oversess its Puros de Estelí Nicaragua S.A., also known as PENSA. The company owns such popular brands as Diamond Crown (from the Dominican Republic), El Baton and Brick House, while also running the U.S. sales force for Arturo Fuente cigars.
