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Manufacturers with more than a hundred years of service are few and far between. Topper Cigar Company is a four generation family business. Now headquartered in Meriden, Connecticut, Topper Cigar Company has its roots in McSherrystown, Adams County, Pennsylvania.
Topper Cigars
McSherrystown was at one time a cigar-manufacturing center with over 20 cigar maker companies operating in the town of about 1,700 people. Topper Cigar Company was born there in 1896 when B.P.Topper moved from Maryland to McSherrystown after serving a two-year apprenticeship. The company built steadily over the years with contributions of generations of Toppers.
In the years before the depression, son Curtis Topper (photo) opened Topper Cigar to a New England market. In the next 30 years, Cutis built Topper Cigar into one of New England’s leading brands.
Curtis’ son Frank entered Topper’s McSherrystown factory to learn the business in 1953. When his father Curtis passed away in 1962 Frank returned to the Connecticut offices of Topper Cigar but kept a hand-rolling operation going in McSherrystown until 1969.
Frank Topper
The increase in cigar smoking in the early 1970’s helped increase Topper sales to about eight million cigars per year. And even when the anti-smoking campaigns of the 1980’s leveled growth, the Topper Company maintained its market share by consistently producing a high quality all natural cigars.
The Topper cigar is respected in the cigar marketplace for both quality and cost. The market has seen manufacturers drop from about 5,000 in 1935 to 150 in 1975. But according to today’s Topper Cigar Company president, Chris Topper, “the consistency of our product has enabled us to survive and expand.”
Chris Topper
Chris Topper is the youngest of six children, the only one born after his father, Frank, left Pennsylvania for Connecticut, to run the family business. As a child, Chris often went along with his dad on visits to tobacco farms, factories and customers. But when he graduated from Bryant College, a Rhode Island business school, Chris got his initial few years of business experience in a financial business before returning Topper Cigar. Fortunately, he had three years to learn the business under his dad’s direction before Frank Topper died at age, 68, after 45 years in the business.
“I wish I could have worked with my dad longer, but I think I took advantage of the time we had,” said Chris. His mother, Donna, helped Frank keep the books through the years and continued working along with her son, Chris.
Chris Topper had special reason to hand out Topper Cigars when he and his wife Cathy became first-time parents (August 11, 1997) of a son they named Curtis after their grandfather, the earlier cigar manufacturer. And it may be that the son will carry on a fifth generation cigar-manufacturing legacy.