About us
About Ray's Cigars
We are a small online cigar merchant. We stock Cuban Habanos, New World cigars, limited editions and our own custom-rolled boxes, and we ship them worldwide. This page explains how that actually works, so you know what you are dealing with before you spend anything.
This is not a new business, though it is a new website. We opened as a shop in Dublin in 2022, selling face to face over a counter, and ran it that way until trade slowed. In 2024 I moved to Helsinki and we tried again. That did not work either, and the site went dark when we could no longer keep it running.
We restarted in 2026 with the capital to do it properly. The shop on Pohjoinen Makasiinikatu is being fitted out now and should open within the month. Until it does we hold stock ourselves and sell online, which is why orders are dispatched from Finland and why you get a person rather than a call centre at the other end of the chat window.
What I bring to it is not a business plan. It is a grandfather who rolled cigars at Partagás, fourteen years in the Dublin trade, and a habit of going back to Havana when the buying needs doing. I look at how a cigar is made, where the tobacco came from and how it has been kept, because I was taught to.
There are no customer reviews on this site yet. That is not an oversight and we are not going to invent any. The shop that earned the old ones is closed and those customers are not these customers. When reviews appear here they will come from real orders placed through this site, and the critical ones will stay up.
Pohjoinen Makasiinikatu 6, 00130 Helsinki, Finland Our Helsinki shop is being fitted out and is not yet open to visitors. Orders are placed online and shipped from Finland.
Ray Gómez-Mäkelä Founder
I was born in Havana in 1968. My grandfather was a torcedor at the Partagás factory, so cigars were never exotic to me, they were just what the family did. I moved to Dublin in 2010 and spent fourteen years there, most of it around the whiskey and cigar trade, and that is where Ray's Cigars started. I came to Helsinki in 2024 after marrying a Finnish designer I met in Dublin. Stock is kept under proper humidity here, set up the same way we did it in Cuba, and I still go back to Havana when the buying needs doing.
- Cigars listed
- 362
- Houses carried
- 34
- Languages
- 15
- Returns window
- 15 days
How we buy
We buy from the houses and authorised channels we know, and we list far less than we are offered. Every Habano we sell arrives with its seals and box codes intact. That is what our authenticity guarantee means in practice, and it is the one thing we will always take a box back over.
How we store
A cigar is only as good as the months between the roller's bench and your cutter. Stock is held at controlled humidity from the day it arrives to the day it ships, and it goes out packed with humidity protection rather than dropped into a bare box.
How ordering works
There is no account to create. You add boxes to the cart, give delivery details, confirm you are over 18, and place the order. We email a reference immediately and then send payment details. We settle by bank transfer or cryptocurrency, so nothing is ever charged to a card automatically. The minimum order is €250. Shipping is calculated and shown before you pay.
What you can hold us to
Authenticity guaranteed
Habanos arrive with seals and box codes intact. If a box isn't what we said it was, it comes back at our cost.
15-day returns
Unopened boxes can be returned within 15 days of delivery. The policy is written out in plain language, not buried.
Real people, fast replies
Live chat and email, answered by the same people who pack the boxes. Ask us anything before you order.
No hidden costs
Shipping is calculated and shown before you pay. The minimum order is stated up front, on every page.
Talk to us
Live chat and email are answered by the same people who pack the boxes. If you want a recommendation, a photo of a specific box code, or a shipping estimate before you order, just ask.
- Email info@rayscigars.com
- Trading as Ray's Cigars