The Denison
Daily Herald
July 27, 1938
TOBACCO COMPANY HAD SMALL START
Six years in the
retail tobacco and candy business convinced B.B. Simms, Jr. in
1929 that there was an opening for a wholesale store in
Denison. Someone was always coming to him to purchase
stock to last until their orders arrived.
That was the
start of a wholesale tobacco and candy house that today covers at
least seventeen counties in Texas and Oklahoma within a radius of
eighty-five
miles of Denison. He also distributes
fountain supplies, school supplies and paper products.
The Simms Tobacco
and Candy Company today employs eleven salesmen and an office
force of five. Deliveries are made by
truck. Retailers today can buy smaller stocks than
in the old days
when they purchased from Fort Worth and Dallas distributors.
Headquarters for
the company, rated the largest between Oklahoma City and
Dallas, are at 415 West Main where large vaults protect the stocks of
tobacco
so that a cigar can be stored for as long as two years and be in the
same
condition as the day it left the factory.
Burglar alarm systems are used for protection.
The Simms Company
is distributor for the General Cigar Company, makers of White
Owl, William Penn, Van Dyck, and Robert Burns cigars, and handles
others, such
as Y-B and King Edward brands.
One factory
representative is assigned by a company to work only in the Simms
trade territory. A cigar promotion man
covers seventeen Oklahoma and Texas counties all the time and a
cigarette
vending machine man is constantly employed.
