Santiago, near the end of the boom-and-bust cycle in 1997 there were more than 120. While the demand for finished cigars immediately disposed of all production, Manolo Quesada remembers the period as a trying time: "Everybody who came [to the manufacturing in the Dominican Republic] came to take from us. We lost everything — cellophane, boxes, tobacco, bands, everything. No one was geared to supply the vast amounts of product that was being demanded.... We told them, 'Take what you want...' We would just train more rollers, protect our farms better, [and] make box factories." Prices for components skyrocketed, but MATASA carried on without dramatically increasing the price of its product. Ultimately, the Cigar Boom played itself out, with supply outstripping flagging demand and the vast majority of the fly-by-night cigarmakers who began in the early 1990s going out of business. MATASA was among those surviving the cigar bust of the late 1990s. The company suffered an additional hit towards the end of the 1990s when Romeo y Julieta ended its manufacturing relationship with the firm. In 1998, Manolo Quesada's father, Manuel Senior, who had been running the company's leaf brokerage business, died. Faced with difficulty in competing with brokerages in other parts of the Caribbean, Central and South America, the wholesaling of tobacco leaf by MATASA's sibling company, Manipuladora de Tobaccos, was gradually curtailed. The company was particularly hindered by a 35% tax levied by the Dominican government upon exports. The Early 2000s Manolo Quesada assembled a new management team around him which included general manager Julio Fajardo, Manolo's brother Alvaro, who as vice president was in charge of the company's farms and fledgling cigarette operation, and his nephew Alvarito. Unfortunately, in April 2002 a plane crash took the lives of all three, leaving Manolo to run the company. Today Manolo Quesada works with two daughters — Patricia and Raquel, niece Esther and nephew Hostos. More than 300 people work in MATASA's Santiago manufacturing facility. The company produced approximately 15 million cigars in the year 2000. The company's best selling brands are Casa Magna & Quesada Cigars,best known in the medium to full bodied segment and also Fonseca (non-Cuban version), a brand best known for products in the mild-to-medium segment of the taste spectrum. The Company Today, now known as Quesada Cigars Manuel Quesada opened up his Matasa facility in 1974 with a roller, a desk, and a telephone.