It’s really a long and passionate story: the classic scheme of Davide against Golia. this time Davide is a little and innovative company based now inTorino, called Yesmoke, owned by the Fratelli Messina (one of them was even a maratonet).

Before becoming a cigarette producer with its own brand, Yesmoke was the world’s largest online tobacco store, with more than 6 million cartons of 200 cigarettes sold every year: Marlboro, Camel, Winston, Benson & Hedges and all the most popular brands.

The “Tobacco Napster“, as the press called it, shipped its first pack of cigarettes in January 2000. Almost 5 years later, on November 16th, 2004, it was forced to surrender when 200 U.S. agents stormed the J.F. Kennedy Airport in New York, blocked a DHL cargo coming from Switzerland, and seized a large shipment of cigarettes destined for distribution in the United States, where Yesmoke had more than half of its customers.

The new brand was skilfully “neutralised” in the following months all over the world, including Switzerland, where the authorities decided that the entire Yesmoke warehouse stock had to be destroyed, right down to the last cigarette. The reason, in this case, was the a Swiss Canton’s disapproval of the writing “Smoke Better”, printed on of the Yesmoke cigarette packets.

But the customers needn’t worry, in november 2007 “Yesmokes” cigarettes will be back on the market; they are going to be produced in Italy in a new plant in Turin. Moreover, the annual production capacity will be doubled: 50 million cartons, equal to 10 billion cigarettes… the war is not over!