Villiger Söhne

In 1888, Jean Villiger, a twenty-eight-year-old merchant, founded a cigar factory in his own home at Pfeffikon. He died early, in 1902; it was his wife, Louise Villiger, who kept the house going. In 1907 she launched the Villiger Kiel — the first cigar with a goose-quill mouthpiece.

In 1918, Hans and Max Villiger took over and gave the firm its name: Villiger Söhne. It is still family-owned, in the fourth and fifth generations; Heinrich Villiger, of the third, chaired it until his death at ninety-five.

It makes some one billion cigars and cigarillos a year, employs more than twelve hundred people and reports around one hundred and forty million Swiss francs in sales. This atlas holds its Villiger brand, attached to Nicaragua, where its premium cigars are rolled.

One factory is missing from this list, and the Indonesian press names it: Villiger has a factory in Jember, East Java — PT Villiger Tobacco Indonesia, at Ajung —, in the town of Besuki Na-Oogst tobacco where two houses with their own entries also roll, BIN and Golden Djawa. Jember has rolled for Switzerland for a long time without anyone writing it in English.