“I figured I could do that, too, and so I jumped on an airplane,” he says. He discovered that the distributor was collecting money from different retailers, placing an order and selling them for a big markup. To restock their rolling paper inventory, Levin had to send money to a distributor in New York and a few months later they would receive a new shipment of paper made in Spain. “We became the Sears of paraphernalia,” Levin says of his early days in the business. “I called the previous owner and bought the box,” says Levin. Within three days, he realized most of his customers came looking for them. “I’d never seen cigarette papers before and didn’t want them,” Levin recalls. They bought the store, known for its psychedelic sign, and all of its inventory-except for a shoe box filled with rolling papers. “It was a boutique, I thought, and it sold bell-bottom jeans and English music like Jethro Tull,” Levin says. In the early 1970s, a childhood friend named Sheldon Miller told Levin about a groovy specialty store called Adams Apple in Chicago’s Rogers Park that was up for sale. His favorite antic to close a deal with someone who thought a price was too high, he says, was to call over his boss, who would fire him in front of that customer-the whole thing was an act-and it usually worked.īut this son of a used car salesman had bigger ambitions. He didn’t go to college, but he always worked and found he was great at selling cars. In the late 1960s, after a stint in the Marines Corps Reserves, Levin attended a General Motors’ training program to become a car dealer himself. When Levin was 14, his dad’s dealership got into trouble, and the family had to move. He grew up in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago in the 1950s, with a father who was “the most honest” used car salesman. Levin, who usually wears golf shirts (although he doesn’t play) and dress sneakers, grew up a long way from where he is now-drinking a nice glass of white wine at a James Beard-award-winning restaurant in downtown Scottsdale, just a few minutes from his $4.5 million home. Republic’s chief revenue officer-the appropriately named Rebecca Roll-sums up why the rolling paper industry is such a good business: “We sell something people light on fire,” she says. Levin won’t discuss financials, but Forbes estimates that Republic generates $230 million in cash flow off an estimated $650 million in revenue-a 35% EBITDA margin. Global sales are estimated to be between $2 billion and $3 billion annually. Total sales across North America at the wholesale level is estimated to be about $550 million a year. and Canada, and Arizona-based HBI International, which produces rolling paper brand Raw, each have about one third market share as well. Kentucky-based Turning Point Brands, which licenses the right to sell Zig-Zag from Republic in the U.S. Republic controls about one third of the North American rolling paper market with E-Z Wider, OCB, JOB and Top. The world’s biggest specialty paper manufacturer, Schweitzer-Mauduit International in Saint-Girons, France, which is owned by publicly traded Alpharetta, Georgia-based Mativ, makes rolling papers for companies such as Raw and Vibes, and also produces cigarette paper for Altria, Philip Morris International, Imperial Brands Plc., Japan Tobacco Inc. One of the reasons the industry is hard to track is that most of the mills are privately held across many countries-from Papeteries du Leman, Levin’s mill in Publier, France, that feeds Republic’s booklet factory in Perpignan, to Miquel y Costas & Miquel in Barcelona, Glatz in Germany and Delfort in Austria. But the global rolling paper industry is opaque and hazy even the analysts who cover tobacco and cannabis companies don’t have a clear picture of its size and scope. Paper has long been a good business with high margins. “We’re the largest manufacturer of rolling papers in the world,” says Levin during a 100-degree day at his home in the Biltmore neighborhood of Phoenix, with his visibly nervous rescue poodle mix named Claude at his feet. Paper Assets: An Adams Apple brochure from 1976 in which Levin promised “the most complete, uncomplicated catalog in the business.” Courtesy Adams Apple
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