CigarLink Integration
TL;DR
This one is free. Not a trial, not a promotional period — free. What it does is catch wholesale price increases the same day they happen: TORO checks CigarLink every 4 hours and alerts you automatically when a manufacturer changes their pricing. Most shops are running on outdated cost data right now and don't know it. Every day your wholesale cost goes up and your retail price doesn't, you're selling at a worse margin than you think — silently, for weeks, until someone mentions it. CigarLink closes that gap at no cost to you. Turn it on.
If you've ever wondered whether your wholesale costs are actually current — or suspected that a manufacturer raised prices and nobody told you — CigarLink is about to become your new best friend.
CigarLink is the cigar industry's centralized product catalog. It tracks wholesale pricing across thousands of brands and products. TORO connects directly to CigarLink, letting you match your inventory to their standardized database and get automatic alerts when wholesale costs change.
The result? You stop guessing about pricing and start knowing.
Pricing
CigarLink is currently free for TORO stores — it's included at no charge, with nothing to subscribe to and no monthly fee. Your connection is provisioned automatically (see below).
Getting Connected
Your TORO system is provisioned with a CigarLink connection automatically — there's nothing you need to sign up for or configure. You can verify your connection status under CigarLink Settings, which shows your Organization ID, Key ID, and a masked version of your API key.
To get to CigarLink, go to the Employee Menu and look for CigarLink. That opens the CigarLink hub, which is your home base for everything described below.
Brand Linking
The first step is connecting your local brands to CigarLink's database of 4,500+ industry-standard brands. TORO does most of the heavy lifting here — it fuzzy-matches your brands and suggests the best CigarLink match for each one.
For most brands, the match is obvious and you can link them with a single click. For the ones where the name doesn't quite match (maybe you abbreviated "Arturo Fuente" as "A. Fuente"), you can browse CigarLink's full brand catalog and pick the right one manually.
Once a brand is linked, you unlock item-level matching for that brand.
Item Linking
After linking brands, you can match individual items. TORO scores each potential match — items with a 90%+ confidence score can be bulk-linked in one click, saving you from going through them one by one.
For lower-confidence matches or items that don't auto-match, you can search CigarLink's catalog and manually pick the right product. The goal is to get as many items linked as possible, because that's what powers the price alerts.
Price Alerts
This is the real payoff. Every 4 hours, TORO checks CigarLink for wholesale cost changes on your linked items. If something changed — a manufacturer raised a price, or maybe lowered one — you'll see an alert count right on the main screen.
Click the alert and you get a clear list of which items changed and by how much. From there, you can decide whether to adjust your retail pricing, absorb the change, or call your rep to ask what's going on.
The beauty of this is that it's automatic. You're not checking spreadsheets or waiting for your rep to mention it in passing. You know about price changes the same day they happen.
Catalog Browser
Want to see what's in CigarLink's database? The Catalog Browser lets you search and filter their entire product catalog by brand and name. You can link results directly to your local items right from the browser — handy when you're adding new products and want to make sure they're connected from day one.
Pricesheet Outreach
Here's where CigarLink gets really ambitious. The Outreach feature sends professional emails to every sales rep in your directory, asking them to reply with their current pricesheet. CigarLink processes the pricesheet, the rep verifies the data, and your store gets automatic cost updates.
Once you approve the outreach, emails go out automatically — and they re-send weekly until each rep responds. Companies that have already replied show as green "Received" rows so you can see progress at a glance. You press a button once and the system handles the follow-up.
Access Outreach from the CigarLink hub under Outreach.
Industry Directory
Behind the scenes, TORO pushes your company, brand, and rep directory to CigarLink every night. Over time, this builds a master industry directory across all TORO stores — which companies carry which brands, which reps cover which territories, and how to reach them.
This isn't something you interact with directly, but it makes features like Pricesheet Outreach smarter over time. The more stores participate, the better the directory gets.
Why It Matters
Most cigar stores are running on outdated cost data at any given time. Manufacturers change prices, reps forget to send updated pricesheets, and suddenly your margins are thinner than you thought. CigarLink closes that gap by giving you a direct connection to wholesale pricing data — and TORO makes it effortless by automating the matching, the monitoring, and the outreach.
CigarLink is included free with TORO — your connection is provisioned automatically. If you're not sure whether you're connected, check the CigarLink section in your Employee Menu — if it's there, you're good to go.