Tobacconist University

Tobacconist University is a US-headquartered educational institution offering course programs and certifications to people working in tobacco product retail and to consumers with an interest in the subject. Its curriculum is cigar-heavy, but pipes, pipe tobacco, and smoking accessories are also within its scope. Its structure, now run entirely online, is the result of a long transformation that carried the institution from a shop's own internal training notes to its present form.

Founding and Development

The institution's founder is Jorge Armenteros. According to the account given, the core of the enterprise was the training material Armenteros prepared to train his own staff at the tobacco shop he ran in New Jersey; 1996, the year this material turned into an organized program, is taken as the founding year. According to the same account, the notes circulated for a time as printed handouts passed from hand to hand, and, driven by interest from customers, turned into open classes held in hotel ballrooms.

The cigar boom of the second half of the 1990s rapidly raised consumers' product knowledge, and the person behind the counter began to be expected to be better informed than the customer. In the early 2000s, the internet's spread of both accurate and inaccurate information pushed the institution toward becoming a publicly accessible reference source. Records indicate that the professional certification program went online in 2008 and was adopted as the training curriculum of the American retailer association (the organization known successively as RTDA, IPCPR, and PCA).

Certification Tiers

Certifications are distinguished by the person's position within the industry. The one aimed at those running a counter or a shop is the retailer-level credential known by the abbreviation CRT; here, operations, inventory, and customer relations come to the fore. For sales-floor staff, the abbreviations CST and, at a more advanced level of specialization, CMT are used. CCST is a cigar-heavy credential weighted toward tasting and pairing, and is also open to those working in hospitality trades such as restaurants and clubs. Those who are not in the trade and simply wish to learn out of their own interest are directed to the entry-level program called CCT.

Courses are delivered in self-paced modules and completed with an exam. The institution also maintains a directory listing certified individuals and states that it operates under a written code of ethics.

Place Within the Pipe World

Although the curriculum's weight lies in cigars, some of the names who have gone through the program have been active in the pipe community; among the institution's graduates are people who have held positions in American pipe clubs. In this respect, Tobacconist University is considered a bridge between the volunteer structure of pipe clubs and the professional, trade side of the business. The founder's book The Tobacconist Handbook is likewise a printed summary of the same curriculum; records indicate that its pipe tobacco section received input from the community.

The fact that these certifications define what a given person should know is seen as a commercial-sector answer to the long-debated community question of the criterion for expertise. That said, these credentials occupy a different lane from honors such as Doctor of Pipes and Master of Pipes, granted within collector circles: one is a professional credential earned by exam, the other a distinction the community bestows for effort.