Mitchell Thomas Trading Co.

Mitchell Thomas Trading Co. is an American import and wholesale distribution company based in Memphis, Tennessee. It is recorded among the large-scale North American suppliers of pipes and tobacco accessories. The company runs both its own eponymous pipe line and, for a time, held the rights to several older brands that had otherwise left the market.

Founding and the Origin of the Name

The company's founder, Jeff Abel, entered the tobacco trade at fifteen at his family's retail shop in Memphis. At the end of 1992 he moved to Chicago to learn warehouse operations at a cigar distributor, and from 1994 he settled in Texas, working as an independent sales representative across a seven-state territory; among the firms he represented during this period was Savinelli. The lines he represented did not, however, cover inexpensive, everyday tobacco accessories; when no firm stepped in to fill that gap, Abel began sourcing such items himself. Within a few years, the range he had assembled reached a volume large enough to sustain a standalone business.

The company was formally established in 1998; its first and only employee was Abel's wife, Laurie. The business was run first from home, then from a small office, and eventually from a large warehouse in Memphis. The company's name was chosen in memory of two people: Jeff Abel's brother Mitchell Abel, who died in 1986, and Laurie Abel's father Thomas Jones, who passed away in 1987.