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From the dealer to the manufacturer: How Sebastian Gollas created his own cigar brand with Mara Cigars
who Strong cigars Knows, knows: Sebastian Gollas is no man who sits behind a desk and processes order lists. The Berlin cigar dealer travels, tries, conducts conversations in factories and plantations, drinks coffee with producers in Nicaragua, goes through prototypes, throws them away again.
These trips eventually led him to a point where the next logical step was no longer buying a foreign brand, but creating his own. The result is Mara Cigars, and the story behind it is a pretty good entrepreneurial story.
From the Dominican Republic to Berlin:
How it all started
To understand why Gollas wanted to build his own cigar brand in the first place, it’s worth taking a quick look back. His first encounter with the world of handmade longfillers was not particularly glamorous: shortly after graduating from high school, he traveled to the Dominican Republic, and the first cigar sent him flat into the hotel bed in the afternoon. Nevertheless, a fascination developed that could not be shaken off. In 2005, he visited a factory in Costa Rica for the first time, and the same year he founded his online shop in Lübeck, while studying cultural economics in Passau. In 2013, the first retail store followed in Berlin, on the Pariser Straße in Wilmersdorf. Since 2015, he has been running the company together with Martin Geisler, who takes care of the website, photos, and videos. According to Gollas himself, the own brands are a joint work of the two, who have been tinkering with cigars from countries such as Nicaragua, Colombia, and Peru since 2019.
This sounds like an orderly development, but in reality it is the result of countless trips, blind tastings and conversations with producers that Gollas has built up over many years. At some point, putting together foreign brands is no longer enough if you know yourself how tobacco from Estelí tastes when it is processed with this and not that wrapper. That creates the desire to design yourself.
The name is the program: What is behind Mara Cigars?
The name of the brand is no coincidence. The notorious street gangs are called “Maras,” and they have been operating in countries like El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua for decades, causing significant insecurity there. Those who smoke cigars in Germany get little from this side of Central America. Gollas and Geisler wanted to change that exactly: to create a brand that not only smells like tobacco, but also like real stories from the region where the leaves come from. Each cigar in the line bears the name of a character from this milieu. El Sicario, the hitman. El Corrupto, the corrupt politician. Mara Marabunta, the leader, named after the aggressive killer ant of the same name. This sounds provocative, but it is basically consistent: the aficionado should experience something when smoking and not just enjoy something. Branding with attitude is rare in the cigar world.
Estelí, Nicaragua: Where a blend is created
The actual beginning lies in Estelí. The city in northern Nicaragua is considered the epicenter of Central American cigar craftsmanship. Most of the region’s major factories are based here, and the volcanic soil produces tobacco leaves with a unique character: dark, oily, strong in the smoke profile, with high combustion quality. Gollas knows the city well; he has been there several times, visited manufacturers, taken samples, and compared them. On one of these trips, the three blends that would later become Mara Cigars were created. According to his own statement, StarkeZigarren used three of the best blends from Estelí for the development of the line.
The process itself can be described soberly, but it is anything but easy to manage. You sit with experienced rollers and blenders, smoke sample after sample, discuss and discard. What also stands out: a blend is not created on the computer, but through patient experimentation. Which cover sheet harmonizes with which insert? How does the type of cover affect the burning behavior? These are questions that can only be answered through experience and intuition, not through calculation.
What a blend actually is and why it decides so much about a cigar
Anyone who has never experienced a blending session lacks an image to illustrate why this step is so crucial. Each cigar consists of several types of tobacco: Ligero comes from the top of the tobacco plant, has received the most sunlight and burns slowly, but gives off a lot of aroma and strength. Volado comes from the lower leaves, burns well, but does not bring much flavor. Seco is in between and combines both extremes. The blender decides how much of each type goes into the filler. Then the wrapper and cap are added, which not only determine the appearance of a cigar, but also significantly influence its flavor. Too much Ligero and the cigar becomes so strong that it overwhelms beginners. Too much Volado and it loses character and depth. Finding the right ratio is a craft and sensory problem at the same time.
For the Mara Marabunta, the flagship of the line, a pure Nicaragua blend was chosen: the filler, wrapper and top leaf all come from Estelí. The ring size 54 gives the cigar a robust body, the sun-ripened top leaf a dark, slightly oily surface. What happens when smoking it is typical of this origin: a strong start with toast flavors, then a development towards chocolate and coffee, cinnamon and liquorice in the further course, a constant complexity until the last third. The smoking time is 60 to 90 minutes. El Sicario relies on an US broadleaf top leaf and a box-pressed pointed shape, starts with a lot of toast and then opens up to a full-bodied coffee-chocolate profile. Deadly for beginners, the product descriptions say, and that’s not just marketing jargon. El Corrupto, on the other hand, plays the milder card: creamy smoke, seductive start, accessible even for less experienced connoisseurs.
Calculation, price and positioning:
The unromantic chapter
The entrepreneurial part of this story is more sober, but no less interesting. Anyone who builds their own cigar brand needs more than a good sense of taste. Gollas calculates from cultivation through production and shipping to the final price. The Mara Marabunta costs 8.90 euros individually, while the 20-pack costs 198 euros. This is not an entry-level segment, but neither is it one that only appeals to well-earning collectors. The positioning is clearly consciously chosen: a cigar for aficionados who appreciate strong blends and seek complexity, but are not willing to pay extra for a well-known name. Gollas operates under its own label, and the brand is marketed as an original creation of Geisler & Gollas GbR, Berlin. The importer is not an anonymous importer, but the company you know from the Berlin shop. This is a clear statement of identity.
Branding and packaging play a bigger role than they appear at first glance. The Mara Marabunta banner shows an aggressive ant, and other lines also visually carry their figures. This is not a generic cigar design with a classic pattern, but a unique visual language that translates the brand’s narrative idea into the optics. Whether every buyer consciously perceives this is another question. The goal is to make the brand recognizable and distinguish it from mass-produced goods.
What it feels like to create your own brand
Gollas himself describes the process from the first thought to the finished cigar with a comparison that sounds strange at first glance, but is quite accurate: It’s like raising a child, from the idea to the finished product. You start with an idea, make a hundred small decisions, wait, revise, are sometimes disappointed and sometimes surprised by the result. And at the end you hold something in your hand that has its own character and that you can’t change without destroying it.
That sounds emotional for a product that ultimately consists of tobacco, banderole and wooden box. But those who understand how much time, travel and craftsmanship are involved between the first idea in Nicaragua and the finished cigar in the Berlin shop will be able to understand what is meant.
What comes after Mara Cigars
Mara Cigars is available online at StarkeZigarren and in the store on Pariser Straße in Berlin. It is not the last private label from this house to remain. Gollas is already working on a new project with Aureum Cigars, this time from the Puriscal tobacco region in Costa Rica, together with the local producer Felipe from Tabacos de Costa Rica. And for the new store in Leipzig, he is planning his own special edition, exclusively for this location. The dealer has thus finally established himself as a producer who not only sells what others develop, but also goes into the blending room himself and decides with his hands, nose and palate what is on his range. Whether this was a natural development or a conscious strategic step is difficult to say from the outside. Probably it was both.