Matt Arcella conquers Sin City one luxe boutique at a time.

Ah, Las Vegas: truly the everyman Xanadu. Whether you're tagging along for that weekend bachelor party that leaves you, on Monday, passed out in McCarran Airport wondering where the stuffed monkey in your arms came from; an upright conventioneer in town merely for the annual gathering (and maybe a few spins at the roulette wheel, just to keep in practice); or a whale with a cool million burning a hole in your well-tailored pocket, there's something here for everyone.

Every single one of those scenarios can be savored with a cigar in whatever hand isn't holding a pair of dice -- thanks to Matt Arcella.

If Bugsy Siegel looked at a relatively barren patch of desert and saw America's Playground, Arcella looked at America's Playground in the late '90s and saw the Next Great Cigar Market, eventually franchising six Davidoff stores and one S.T. Dupont boutique up and down The Strip. As he puts it: "If you can afford to lose half a million dollars, then you can afford to buy a new humidor and stock it with the finest cigars."

This titan of the Vegas premium cigar scene started out in the Colorado hotel industry. Around a decade ago, though, he spotted two key things that made him think cigars represented his future. The first, obviously, was the cigar boom, then in full swing. The second was the changing face of Vegas itself : Those years saw the openings of Bellagio, The Mansion and The Venetian, heralding the Desert Jewel's shift to a high-end, brand-name destination. "Las Vegas is a relatively smoke-friendly market: businessmen, bachelor parties, March Madness and the boxing," he says. "We saw potential for a brand-name tobacconist to enter the landscape."

This potential translated into the first Davidoff of Geneva store in Las Vegas, which premiered in June of 1999 at the Grand Canal Shoppes, followed six months later by a second Davidoff store at The Venetian. In May 2001, he opened the MGM Grand Davidoff location, and a fourth Davidoff shortly thereafter at Mandalay Bay. "We did a larger store in their mall, and smaller store in their casino. The casino store was a 250-square-foot boutique, but large enough where it could really display all of the brands we carried."

If his visionary bet on Vegas ended up winning big, that's because the city around him was undergoing a substantial shift as well: From the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2003, some 35 million annual visitors rushed toward its glittery lights, bringing more than $127 billion with them. Those visitor numbers have translated into some 55,000 people walking by (and hopefully, for a sizable percentage of them, into) each of his store locations every day. Gamblers and conventioneers entering his establishments have been gravitating, sales-wise, towards not only Davidoff and Zino Platinum, but also A. Fuente, Padrón, Montecristo and Rocky Patel cigars.

Most entrepreneurial types would have rested pretty on that sort of success, but Arcella has taken things one step further: Not only did he open up yet another Davidoff location at The Palazzo, but he's used his knowledge of Vegas's market for high-end luxury goods to open an S.T. Dupont boutique, the only one in the United States (take that, New York). Having connected with the brand's then-executive vice president, Leslie Mann, over beers on a golf course, Arcella developed the boutique strategy, designed to showcase the diverse luxury facets that make up S.T. Dupont.

And presto, the visionary thing happened again -- at least when it's come to customers stopping by. "We've seen an immediate response to them," he says about the S.T. Dupont products on offer. "A lot of the market sales for that have been for the leather goods. You really don't know until you open your doors and see what the customers want."

Even Mann agrees that Vegas is likely the best location in the United States for the boutique: "Beyond the product itself, what is most impressive is the staffing that the Arcella family provides in all of their stores. These people go through hours and hours of product training as well as interpersonal communication training."

Still, Arcella minds the small stuff, making sure his stores are full of customers for the right reasons -- not just because of the foot traffic outside. Running a Vegas outlet "requires the same type of management and execution that any true retail store provides," he says. "We are given the luxury that there's enormous traffic that passes by the stores, but it does require more than that as well."

The recent imposition of smoking restrictions has been, in Arcella's words, "drastic." Even so, it hasn't shaken his business model. "I believe in the next two years there are about another 25,000 hotel rooms opening up in Las Vegas. There's a tremendous opportunity to grow in the city," he says. "We're really looking for the right opportunity -- it's a matter of us continuing to be selective." Not to mention predicting the future. Viva Las Vegas!

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