I started working on Sigaro in 2015, about 4 years after I started smoking cigars on a regular basis. Like many others just starting out in the world of cigars, I was a bit overwhelmed with all the choices, but was eager to try as many as I could. I stuck to buying samplers and kept notes in a book with the band haphazardly glued next to it. Coming from a generation that is mostly all stuck in front of our smartphones, I searched the app stores for a good alternative for logging notes but came up empty-handed. In my free time, I began learning how to code a mobile app to replace what I saw as a painfully tedious way of tracking what cigars I’d smoke again and which would be better used as kindling for the fire. About a year and a half later, I released Sigaro to Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store in hopes that other cigar lovers would also find it useful.

After Apple waged its war on cigars in 2017, I decided to put the project on hold and was at a crossroads where I wasn’t sure if I could continue to build what I had worked on in all my spare time for 2 years prior. I have always been humbled at the amazing feedback Sigaro’s users have given and was so convinced that this app was something truly useful to cigar smokers, that I reached out to Kirtlan in 2018 after seeing his Instagram account for Cigars Near Me. After we talked in a video call for over 2 hours, but what seemed like only 10 minutes, we knew immediately that we had the exact same vision of what we wanted to be able to offer both cigar shops and smokers alike.

In 2019, we teamed up and formed Boxpressd. I took every piece of feedback and comment from existing users and used it to completely redesign Sigaro’s features as a web app so it would not only be available on iOS again, but also desktops and tablets. I’m happy to finally say that you can access Boxpressd from any device!

After 5 years of seeing a lot of the same users’ names pop up in the feed, I’m still incredibly humbled and honored to have you all find use from something that I’ve put so many hours in to and I can’t wait to hear what ideas you all come up with for the future of Boxpressd. You truly have been what has shaped this app into what it is today. A sincere thank you to all who supported Sigaro and continue to support us as Boxpressd moving forward. You can be sure that when I light a cigar and raise a glass, it’s with gratitude to each of you! 🥃

Sincerely,

Trevor, Co-Founder at Boxpressd