About Us: The Story of Smokingpipes

In the waning days of the 20th century (it was the fall of 1999), Sykes Wilford was a history major at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and he was looking for a part-time job. From an academic family, his first impulse was to check the used book stores. They weren't hiring, so he tried coffee shops, and again had no luck.

The rejections were disappointing, and he regrouped by visiting Elliston Place Pipe & Tobacco and treating himself to an ounce of pipe tobacco and some French cigarettes befitting an irritatingly pretentious 18-year-old. With his hand on the door to leave, he had a sudden thought and asked if they were hiring. Three hours later, he had the job, and his life veered onto an unanticipated trajectory.

He fell in love with pipes and pipe tobacco and started building an appreciation for cigars as well. Premium tobacco became an obsession, and pipes were miraculously fascinating artistic objects.

He had tinkered with computers since the time he could differentiate 1s from 0s. And it was the late 1990s after all: e-commerce was the hot new thing. At the end of the day, though, he thought pipes were really, really fascinating. And since it was the hot new thing, it could serve as the basis for a business plan that let him spend his time playing with pipes.

Early Days of Smokingpipes

Sykes visiting with pipe makers, including Giancarlo Guidi, Antoine Grenard, Lars Ivarsson, and Damiano Rovera.

In 2000, he launched Smokingpipes.com and its parent company, Laudisi Enterprises, from a cheap, ugly, poorly air-conditioned 1,500 square-foot warehouse in Nashville. He spent a lot of time at Music City Marketing, then the importer for Stanwell and a handful of other pipe brands, both for the love of pipes and to enjoy air-conditioned respites from the Nashville summers.

After graduation, at the end of 2002, he moved the company to South Carolina, which required a single trip in a rented U-Haul truck. The new facility was not an upgrade. It was 1,400 square feet, mostly warehouse space with a little bit of crowded office area and a single window-mounted air conditioner that maintained the tiny staff at a medium-rare temperature, which was better than well-done, but still slow-cooked to a hot pink center.

Sykes taught himself enough coding to start the website, wrote all the content and pipe descriptions for that site, and did all the photography. A turning point came in 2002 when he visited Tokyo. He met with Tokutomi, Satou, and other artisans who had no representation outside of Japan. For Sykes, it was revelatory, propelling him down a road of working to understand the aesthetic underpinnings of high-grade, artisanal pipes.

These pipes flourished under the Smokingpipes business model, which provided detailed textual interpretations and descriptions accompanied by precise measurements and, by then — since Sykes had given up doing anything visual for the website — vivid photography. The pipe community took notice, collectors and pipe makers alike, and Smokingpipes developed a reputation for engaging in serious and intellectually rigorous ways with pipes. Other pipe makers, primarily from Denmark, turned to Smokingpipes by 2005, and its place in the pipe world was, by then, assured.

In 2004, Laudisi Enterprises purchased an old general store in Little River for offices, storage space, and a brick-and-mortar shop on the ground floor called Low Country Pipe & Cigar. Smokingpipes would remain in that space, later colonizing other nearby small storefronts, for the next ten years, and that building continues to house Low Country Pipe & Cigar today.

While in the early days, Smokingpipes felt very much like a small business, by 2009 or 2010, with a staff of 25 or 30, it was increasingly clear that the company needed to become more institutional. Not knowing quite how to go about this, Sykes figured he should just hire a bunch of enthusiastic, mostly young pipe smokers, mentor them on pipes, and hope they could figure out the rest. From that merry band of pipe smokers, mostly hired in the late 2000s and early 2010s, a coterie of passionate, idealistic leaders emerged, who now serve as the executive and managerial backbone of the company.

Laudisi beyond Smokingpipes

New opportunities arose as Smokingpipes continued to grow and become more influential, and each was an organic addition that just made sense. A larger workspace became necessary as the staff and company scope grew, and then another even larger space, until now it occupies its own campus in Loris, SC.. Smokingpipes also opened an office in China in 2015 and spun out Smokingpipes Europe as a standalone website in 2018, based in Dublin.

In 2012, Savinelli, the largest premium pipe manufacturer in Italy, asked Laudisi Enterprises to become its exclusive distributor in the United States, and Laudisi Distribution Group (LDG) was created to serve as a platform for distribution to tobacco retailers. In 2014, following the passing of Craig Tarler, the owner of Cornell & Diehl (and dear friend to many at Smokingpipes), Laudisi acquired the small North Carolina pipe tobacco manufacturer. In 2018, the Palmer family approached Laudisi to purchase Kapp & Peterson, the legendary Irish manufacturer of pipes.

By 2019, Smokingpipes, both on the site and through Low Country Pipe & Cigar, had had a toe in the cigar industry for 15 years, but that year saw the beginning of its serious emphasis on cigars also. Since then, that has grown supported by a passionate cigar staff, with inventory in a dedicated, humidified 5,000 sq. ft. building on campus in Loris, SC.

The year 2024 brought Caldwell Cigar Company into the fold, and Laudisi became a premium cigar company as well. Worldwide staff grew to over 200 dedicated individuals, with most in South Carolina and Dublin. Sykes never had a grand plan to build a big company. He found himself simply solving immediate problems as they arose and choosing paths that made good sense despite the intimidating challenges they brought.

Today, Smokingpipes is the largest online retailer of premium pipes and pipe tobacco in the world, and a major retailer of premium cigars. Laudisi continues to grow and develop new ways to serve enthusiastic premium tobacco smokers everywhere.

The early 21st-century pipe smoker is an unusual creature, rarely seen in the wild, but what we lack in numbers we make up for in enthusiasm for our shared hobby. And Smokingpipes doesn't just serve that hobby; it's a creation of that hobby, and an integral part of that community. Pipe and cigar smokers abound at Smokingpipes, many having moved hundreds or thousands of miles to work at the company. Smokingpipes was founded on one man's love for pipes and premium tobacco, and even today is propelled by that same passion.