Joel Sherman, 1939–2024
Joel Sherman, the longtime owner of the Nat Sherman store in New York City, died yesterday after a long battle with Parkinson’s. He was 85 years old.
Sherman was born on August 2, 1939, and he spent decades in the family tobacco business. His first job was cleaning the original Nat Sherman store on 1400 Broadway when he was 10 years old. Sherman began working full time in 1963 at Nat Sherman, a company founded by his father Nat in 1930. When he was in high school, Joel came up with a business plan to move his father’s store to a much higher-end location, on Fifth Avenue. The store was moved several times over the years, and the final location was on 42nd Street near Grand Central Terminal.
Joel left the business for about 12 years, in 1978, shifting to run a business called Concord Shear. He came back to Nat Sherman after his father’s death in 1990, and was ed in the family business by his children Bill, Larry and Michele.
Nat Sherman was far more than a retailer, and developed its own line of Nat Sherman cigars. (For a time before the Cuban embargo, it was the exclusive supplier of Cuba’s Bolivar brand for the United States.) It also had several lines of cigarettes. In 2017, it drew the interest of cigarette giant Altria Group Inc., which acquired Sherman Holdings Inc. and the entire portfolio of Nat Sherman branded high-end cigarettes and cigars.
On September 16, 2020, Ferio Tego.
“Few people have the opportunity to make such a lasting impact on so many people’s lives,” said Michael Herklots, who worked for Sherman for many years. As one of the owners of Ferio Tego, he is now the custodian of the old Nat Sherman brands, if not in name, then certainly in spirit.
