Great News! Pit Stop stores in and around the greater Richmond area are now carrying CiGRX. This is a great opportunity for more customers to be exposed to CiGRX. Local Woodfin Oil Pitstop Stores have now been carrying CiGRX for a few weeks and we are getting great feedback.  Dennis Friese, Sales Manager for Pit Stop stores told us, “We are excited to offer CiGRX to our adult tobacco customers, as we understand the increasing smoking restrictions that they face on a daily basis.”

One of the great unique opportunities with the Pit Stop stores is the Pit Pass program.  Members of the Pit Pass program receive points every time they pump gas and buy merchandise in the store.  Customers then can redeem their points for select free products in the stores each month.  Starting in September, we are planning to have CiGRX be a part of the Pit Pass program.  Dennis said, “CiGRX is off to a nice start, and we continue to see an increase in repeat customers.”

Pit Stop stores have been closely partnered with Star Scientic’s dissolvable smokeless tobacco products, Ariva® and Stonewall®, for ten years, which makes next-generation CiGRX a natural fit.  This is a fantastic partnership that will be mutually beneficial.

Check out the Pit Stop stores and pick up some CiGRX!

http://www.pitpassrewards.com/location.htm

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver J.J. Yeley officially announced today the layout of an upcoming benefit, “The Race For Research” set for Thursday, September 8 at G-Force Karts (4245 Carolina Avenue) based in Richmond, Virginia.

Yeley along with support from CigRx will host a two hour bazaar that will support the VCU Massey Cancer Center also located in Richmond, Virginia. The event will be open to fans and racers alike.

From 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. fans and guests will have the opportunity to race against Yeley on the track battling it out for trophies based on their heat segments. The Phoenix, Arizona native will also have the opportunity to converse with his fans and sign autographs. Dinner for the function will be provided by Buz & Neds Barbecue.

The CigRx presents The Race For Research featuring NASCAR Sprint Cup Series star J.J. Yeley is available in a tier one or tier two ticket package.

Tier one set at $50.00 a ticket or otherwise known as the “Pit Crew Pass” will include two Kart races, dinner, a personal meet and greet with Yeley, access to the autograph session and receive an official lanyard and event pass.

Tier two at $75.00 a ticket or otherwise known as the “V.I.P. Driver Pass” will include on-track heat racing with Yeley himself, trophies for the first and second-place finishers, dinner, a personal meet and greet with Yeley, access to the autograph session and also receive an official lanyard and event pass.

“This is a neat idea for an extremely worthy cause,” said Yeley, who will partake in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event that weekend at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway. “Anytime, I can take time to meet with my fans, have some fun and raise money for those in need is one of the pluses of being a racecar driver. I’m definitely looking forward to having a blast and raising some contributions for the VCU Massey Cancer Center.”

He added, “I want to personally thank CigRx, who are huge supporters of mine for stepping up and helping make this a reality. And a special thank you to G-Force Karts for offering to serve as the host for the CigRx presents The Race For Research.”

G-Force Karts will also provide an adventure zone for children 12 years and younger for a donation of $5.00.

To order limited tickets for some serious fun for a great cause, please visit CigRx.com.

Updated information will also be available through the Official J.J. Yeley Facebook page.

To learn more about the VCU Massey Cancer Center, please visit massey.vcu.edu.

For additional input on G-Force Karts please log on to gforcekarts.com.

Today marks one year since CiGRX was introduced to the market!  And what a year it has been.  Here are just a few of the strides you all have helped us make in the last year:

• We continue to see steady growth in sales through our website and toll-free phone order center
• You can now purchase CiGRX directly at Amazon.com
• We have sponsored NASCAR Sprint Cup race weekends in Richmond, VA, and Loudon, NH
• We continue our exciting events with the Flying Squirrels AA baseball team in Richmond
• The Innsbrook Afterhours concert series in Glen Allen, VA has been a huge opportunity to generate awareness of CiGRX
• Our partnerships with organizations like the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce, Partners in Healthcare, and many others have evolved into wonderful relationships
• We have more than 50,000 fans on Facebook!!  And we continue to give back to our followers by holding fantastic giveaways for iPads, event tickets and cartons of CiGRX
• We have expanded our retail presence to much of the Northeast, with a presence in major chain stores
• CiGRX helped to increase Star Scientific’s net sales 68% between Q1 and Q2 in 2011.
• We have received great feedback from national commercial radio and televised infomercials
• Other marketing opportunities, like indoor advertising at the Richmond International Airport, have been effectively employed

Every one of you who has purchased CiGRX, told a friend about it, or helped support us has been a huge part of the excitement of the past year.  Today, on our birthday, we look back in awe at all these accomplishments and look ahead to another fantastic year.

To kick off our second year, we’re offering an iPad 2 to the person who refers the most new Facebook fans to our page by the end of August.  Just share this link (http://bit.ly/ikdj9G) with everyone you know and tell them to list you in the referral box.  Each response gets you one step closer to winning the iPad!!

Just south of Richmond, the Tobacco Hut offers a wide variety of products for customers. Cigarettes, cigars, smokeless tobacco, pipes, snacks and even cell phones are all part of the convenience offerings for Tobacco Hut customers. CiGRX was a natural fit as a complementary product. Owner George Bragg told us, “CiGRX sells very well. We have it in all three of our stores and like to offer it to our customers for times when they can’t smoke.”

The Tobacco Hut is proud to offer its customers a huge variety of tobacco related products, and unique items. Cigar aficionados will be right at home: The Tobacco Hut is home to the largest walk-in humidor in the tri-city area.

The Tobacco Hut was one of the first retailers to incorporate CiGRX into their product mix in the Richmond area, and we are proud to have them as a partner. Be sure to stop by any of the three locations and check them out the next time you’re in the neighborhood:

11968 Iron Bridge Plaza, Chester, VA
249 East Hundred Road, Chester, VA
595 Southpark Boulevard, Colonial Heights, VA

You all know we have been highly active in our Richmond, VA test market.  The hundreds of convenience stores, tobacco shops, pharmacies and more than one thousand medical professionals distributing samples of CiGRX have rapidly given us a phenomenal amount of brand recognition here in our home market.

We are excited to let you know that we are expanding our presence heavily in the North East.  Partnering with Pine State Trading Company, we have now made CiGRX available in more than 500 stores across New England, including stores in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.  You will now find CiGRX in chains like Champlain Farms, Sam’s, The Big Apple and Stop n’ Save, just to name a few.

Here at home we are continuing to generate excitement in the local community.  We recently concluded a weeklong sampling event at the Innsbrook Exxon (home of the beer cave you read about on our blog a couple weeks ago), and the CiGRX train continues to push forward to community events here in Richmond every week.  We are continuing to sponsor Innsbrook Afterhours concerts throughout the summer and are excited to announce our partnership with the Richmond Flying Squirrels AA Baseball team!  The CiGRX team will be sampling CiGRX and cheering on the team with the fans at many games throughout the season.  Come out and join us for some of these great events!

Jeremiah Reece, Manager of Innsbrook Exxon, is constantly looking for creative ways to deliver a unique experience to his customers. Right down the street from the Star Scientific offices in Glen Allen, VA, Innsbrook Exxon was one of the first retailers to carry CiGRX. “Standing out in the convenience store market can be tough, so we are always looking to partner with other creative companies and products, like CiGRX,” Jeremiah told us. And Jeremiah is certainly getting creative.

Earlier this year, he and his team opened up the beer cave, a giant walk-in fridge full of craft brews from all over the country (including some local gems). Not many would think to head over to the local convenience store to pick up a specialty craft beer, but that is just the image Jeremiah is trying to change. Shoppers can even purchase single bottles if they are looking to try a variety of craft brews. Business has been booming! “Even when other sales are down, the beer cave continues to be a huge draw for us,” Jeremiah told us.

Innsbrook Exxon has been doing all kinds of marketing in addition to the beer cave opening. Partnering with Nascar, holding fan competitions at Richmond Flying Squirrels baseball games, joining up with other local businesses, and pursuing social media strategies are all part of the formula that has made the Innsbrook Exxon a perfect fit to work with a breakthrough innovative product like CiGRX. If you’re in the area, stop by to check out the beer cave and pick up a pack of CiGRX. You can even visit the beer cave on Facebook!!

Innsbrook Exxon
4101 Dominion Boulevard
Glen Allen, VA 23060
804-290-4449

There is no mystery – whatsoever – about the hazards of smoking.  We can all argue about whether “Big Government” is too far into our lives. But recent laws prohibiting smoking in cars when children are present, or near schools and in public playgrounds, are based on sound reasoning—they keep kids from either inhaling cigarette smoke or from watching adults doing something we do not want them to imitate.  So, you smoke—and you have kids, or work with kids, or teach or coach kids … and you don’t want them to start. What’s a smoker to do?

 The urge to light up is real, and it’s tough to ignore. That’s because the nicotine in tobacco rushes into the brain every time you inhale a cigarette and makes you feel good. Trouble is that this effect only lasts for about 45-60 minutes—and then the urge is back.  What’s a smoker to do?

 One option is to give CigRx® a try.  It contains no tobacco, no nicotine. What it does contain is one of the other alkaloids found in tobacco leaf—antabine (an-ATA-been).  The studies we did before bringing CigRx® to market showed that it is not addicting the way nicotine is, but it does relieve the urge to light up—within minutes. And a pack of CigRx® (20 dissolving mint lozenges) costs less than a pack of cigarettes in about 45 of the 50 states.  Want to give it a try? You can click here (www.cigrx.com) to order some; you can buy via amazon.com – or call (1-800-778-2031). Now you can stop, drop and pop a CigRx® lozenge – and be smoke-free around kids!

Jen Holinsky and her twin sister did not think they would make it to Richmond for NASCAR this year. “The school where both of us work had so many cutbacks, we just weren’t going to be able to make it. We were so upset because we love coming to Richmond for the spring race,” Jen told us. So she took a chance and joined the CiGRX Facebook NASCAR contest.

Last week, CiGRX partnered with NASCAR driver J.J. Yeley to give a few lucky fans chances to win tickets to the Friday night Nationwide Series Bubba Burger 250 race, and the Saturday night Sprint Cup Crown Royal 400 race. Participants followed J.J. on Twitter to answer special trivia questions about NASCAR and Richmond, which they posted on the CiGRX Facebook page.

Jen, as it turned out, was the winner of the final pair of tickets to the Sprint Cup race. She laughingly told us, “I showed my laptop to my sister and said you won’t believe this…. We’re going to Richmond – I just won tickets to the race!” Jen and her sister came by the CiGRX booth to meet J.J. and thank him in person.

The CiGRX crew was also hard at work over the weekend. We set up shop at our fantastic location (right next to the Crown Royal booth under the VIBE tent) and had team members passing out samples of CiGRX to race fans on the midway. Over the course of the weekend, literally thousands of packs of CiGRX circulated through NASCAR crowd.

It was truly amazing to share this weekend with J.J. Yeley, the wonderful NASCAR fans, our contest winners, all of our online fans and followers and everyone who turned out to support CiGRX.

If you couldn’t be there, check out some of the great photos from the weekend on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/cigrx.

We’ll see you next Wednesday night (5/11) at the Kansas/38 Special concert – part of the fantastic lineup at the Innsbrook Afterhours concert series that we’ll be sponsoring over the next few months.

CiGRX is going to the races! Join us at the NASCAR Nationwide Series race on Friday, April 29, and the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race on Saturday, April 30 at Richmond International Raceway. Come by and visit the CiGRX booth under the VIBE tent for a meet-and-greet with J.J. Yeley, five consecutive-time Sprint Cup qualifier and a Series favorite with all.

Win Tickets! CiGRX is giving away 2 pairs of tickets for each night’s race. Here’s how you win- Follow J.J. on twitter right now: http://twitter.com/jjyeley1. J.J. will be tweeting out four trivia questions. When you know the answer to his question, post it right on the CiGRX Facebook wall (http://www.facebook.com/cigrx). The first poster to correctly respond to each will win a pair of tickets. Winners can pick up their tickets on race day at the CiGRX booth under the VIBE tent. And Play nice – ONE win per person, so please only answer one question.

You may have noticed that we have recently thrown ourselves into the social media mix.  You have undoubtedly “Friended” us on Facebook and followed us on Twitter (if not, I’ll give you a minute to go ahead and do so now)… Okay great.  So, you must have noticed when you visited the CiGRX page that we are giving away a brand spankin’ new 64GB iPad2!

As the CiGRX brand explodes, we are excited to give something back to you folks who have been supporting us from the beginning.  We’ve already gotten great feedback on the giveaway, as you can see from the comments on our wall.  Don’t miss out on your chance at this great prize.

We are also running another fantastic giveaway on our Facebook page: a chance for a free month’s supply (2 cartons) of CiGRX.  All you have to do is post an original creative CiGRX- related photo to our Facebook wall and you will be entered into the competition.  This one is only running for a few more days, so be sure to post your photos soon.

Thanks to all of you for your ongoing support.