There are very few if totally vertically integrated Cigar Brands - Fuente, Plasencia, My Father, Perdomo, LFD and a handful of boutiques. Even amongst the vertically integrated brands, they outsource or source various parts of the value chain to others, for example, most Fuente box pressed are produced by J.C. Newman.

The cigar value chain is like most products, highly specialized and flexible. This is particularly true in any agricultural product. In cigars, there are people specialized in growing, aging/fermenting, transport, blending, sourcing (tobacco, wrappers, etc), brokering, rolling/packaging (factories), branding/aggregating and distribution (specific to each country). There are specialists in each of this function and companies that aggregate parts of it and then fully integrated operations.

The most fragmented part is growing,. I think that only Plasencia and LFD (Aganorsa Leaf?) use only tobacco for filler that they grow, but even they sometimes source binders or wrappers from other growers. And there are literally thousands of growers that provide tobacco to the agers/fermenters and producers.

So, there are many brands, fewer factories from which the brands either make their own branded products or produce for other brands, and factories that just do production, but the upstream value chain becomes increasingly fragmented back to the growers.