CAO

CAO is a brand named after the initials of its founder, Cano A. Ozgener, first known in the United States for its meerschaum pipes and later grown in the cigar field. The company's starting point was not a factory but an engineer reworking pipes arriving from Türkiye in his spare time; in this respect CAO is counted among the typical examples that tell the story of the meerschaum trade's bridge between Türkiye and North America.

The Founder's Path

Cano Aret Ozgener, who gave the brand its name, was born on 19 January 1937 in Istanbul, to an Armenian family. He continued his education first at a French school, then at Robert College, earning a mechanical engineering degree in 1960. The interest in pipes he developed as a student in Istanbul, particularly his fascination with meerschaum, formed the core of his later business life. He moved to New York for graduate study and, after his education at Columbia University, began working as an engineer at DuPont's facility in North Carolina. The family he built with Esen Sever, whom he met and married during his New York years, stayed at the centre of the company as it developed further. Ozgener died at his home in Nashville on 9 June 2018, after a long illness.

From Broken Pipes to a Brand

The workmanship of the Turkish meerschaum pipes entering the U.S. market at the time did not satisfy tobacconists. Ozgener's solution was technical: he culled the flawed pipes he received, replaced their bits, and reworked the smoke channel and seating surfaces. The reception these reworked pipes found among retailers turned the work from a hobby into a steady supply line. The brand's founding is most often given in records as 1968; since Pipedia also cites 1964, the year should not be taken as definitive. Ozgener kept his engineering job for a long time and only took up his own company full time in 1977.

Records indicate that from 1977 onward, meerschaum pipes bearing the signature of carver İsmet Bekler were sold under the CAO name; the same source states that the company registered this surname as a trademark in 2001. Other carvers made for CAO as well; examples signed Kural are also mentioned among them. The pipes were carved from block meerschaum in Türkiye, while selection, finishing, and distribution took place on the U.S. side. This division of labour also reflects the export-oriented structure of Eskişehir's carving tradition.

The Shift to Cigars and Change of Ownership

The company expanded into humidor boxes in the 1990s, and then into cigars; it was cigar production, beginning in the mid-1990s, that really gave the brand its broad recognition. The Ozgener family transferred CAO International to ST Cigar Group, part of the Denmark-based Scandinavian Tobacco Group; per the company's announcement, the transfer took effect as of 1 January 2007. The founder's son, Tim Ozgener, remained at the head of the company for a while longer; the family later turned to an arts institution they founded in Nashville.

Following the change in ownership, the CAO name lived on largely on the cigar and tobacco side; meerschaum pipes moved out of the centre of the production programme. Today the brand is more associated, in pipe collecting, with signed meerschaum examples from the 1970s through the early 2000s.