Tip on the Market

On sale in New York last week went L & M Filters, the first entry of the Big Three into the filter-tip cigarette market. Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co. (Chesterfield), third largest U.S. cigarette maker,* priced its filters at about 9-c- more a pack than regular cigarettes.

L & M's filter will be bucking some heavy competition. Though the filter cigarettes sold last year (close to 5 billion) were only 1.1% of total U.S. consumption, they were 58% more than in 1951, and sales this year are running at least double those of 1952. Brown & Williamson's Viceroy, the only one priced at only a penny or so more than regular cigarettes, recently came out in king size (80 mm. v. 75 mm.), filter and all, proved so popular that B. & W. has not been able to keep up with demand. Viceroy, which sold 2.7 billion cigarettes last year, now claims more than half the total filter-tip market.

Sharing the rest of it are U.S. Tobacco Co.'s Encore, which expects to triple 1952's sales this year, Columbia Tobacco's du Maurier, now running 30% ahead of last year's showing, and Benson & Hedges' ("You're so smart to smoke...") Parliaments, oldest filter on the market, which, for the third consecutive year, expect to boost sales 40%. Darkest horse in the filter race is P. Lorillard's (Old Gold) Kent. Eased into the market in the last half of 1952, Kent, with a hefty ad budget, is going ahead so fast, says one Lorillard executive, that "it's ridiculous to even talk about percentage increases, it's been so great!"

* After American Tobacco (Lucky Strike), R. J. Reynolds (Camel).

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