CAO
Founded in Nashville in 1968 by Cano A. Ozgener as a pipe and humidor business, it became a cigar brand in the 1990s and is now part of General Cigar.
Cano Aret Ozgener, an engineer who had grown up smoking pipes in Istanbul, started the business in Nashville in 1968, initially selling meerschaum pipes and humidors. The initials of his name gave the company its label. Cigars came much later; the operation shifted to American-based production in the mid-1990s and the Gold line brought the brand to national attention as the boom peaked.
CAO built its reputation on blending across origins rather than on a single national style, with Brazilia, Italia, America and Mx2 each named for the leaf that defined it. Later releases under corporate ownership, including Flathead, Amazon Basin, Bones and Pilon, continued that pattern. The company was also unusually design-led, with packaging that stood apart from the traditional Cuban visual vocabulary.
The brand passed to Scandinavian Tobacco Group's cigar business in the late 2000s and was folded into General Cigar Co., where it remains. Cano Ozgener died in 2018; his son Tim, who had run CAO, later returned to the industry with a separate company. Accounts differ on the precise year the sale closed, so this record is marked reported. The Nashville origins are still referenced in the brand's marketing.