Arkansas Business

Emily Cohn

Just six months after the death of her father, David Cohn, the founder of Tobacco Superstores, Emily Cohn opened the doors of her first solely owned store at the age of 24.

With her mother and sisters, Cohn owns 14 of Tobacco Superstores’ 86 outlets, but she decided to branch out in honor of her dad, opening her own store in Cabot, complete with a walk-in humidor and cigar lounge, the only one of its kind in the privately owned and operated tobacco retail chain. “My family is just 100 percent business. That’s all I’ve ever known, is to be passionate about your career.”

After graduating from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in restaurant and hospitality management, Cohn stepped up as director of marketing at Tobacco Superstores. Originally a subsidiary of Forrest City Grocery Co., the Cohn family retained the tobacco chain when the wholesale grocery business was sold in 2010. On its own, Tobacco Superstores had revenue of $110 million in 2011, making it one of the state’s largest private companies.

Emily Cohn was instrumental in rolling out the company’s first private-label product this year: a pipe tobacco called Ignite, a move she considers her greatest professional achievement thus far. “We never dreamed it would be as successful as it is,” she said. “It’s just flying off the shelves.”

Cohn also works to bring about awareness of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), the disease that claimed her father in 2011.