BCA Member Profile: Franklin Billiard Company

Jeff and Darla Preiss

It takes a lot to create a successful business, and one thing that has made Franklin Billiard Company stand out and build a dedicated customer base – one that continues to grow – is its commitment to providing each person who walks into the store with the finest service possible and helping every customer determine what home recreation product is best for them.

“Each story and each person’s needs are totally different than the next,” says Jeff Preiss, who along with his wife, Darla, owns the store, located in Pacific, Missouri, about 30 miles from St. Louis. “There are similarities but they’re not identical. Our commitment is that we meet their expectations, and if we don’t, let us know why and we’ll fix it.”

Among Jeff’s many responsibilities is deliveries, which means he interacts with just about every one of Franklin Billiard Company’s customers.

“Whenever I deliver, I explain everything I can about the table, it’s not just about dropping it off and putting it together,” he says. “I usually explain why I do things that I do. They get a card that has my cell number on it, and I’m extremely meticulous about what I put together.”

By Anthony Stoeckert

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS THAT LAST

Darla says the store’s approach is rooted in honesty and serving each customer’s needs. For example, when talking about pool table cloth, she will explain the various kinds that are available, and how different cloths play differently. But she doesn’t push the most expensive offerings because she knows a lot of people are on a budget and will do just fine with other brands.

“There are entry points and price points, and we try to serve all of those price points as much as we can because everyone should be able to get what they want,” Darla says.

It’s a way of doing business that has not only satisfied customers for three decades, but also has them telling their friends and relatives about the store.

“Our business is a lot of referrals,” Darla says. “This year, we had a lot of people who we sold tables to who are downsizing. Let’s say they’re in their 60s or 70s, and they’re downsizing their house – their table is going to their children and their children become customers of ours. That’s just one example, but a lot of our business is based on referrals.”

HIS OWN BOSS

The story of Franklin Billiard Company begins in the 1980s, when Jeff left college and took a job as a mechanic setting up tables for A.E. Schmidt. After a round of layoffs, he went back to school and sold electronics for a department store. He also recovered tables, and bought, restored and sold tables on the side to make some extra money. As more competition came from big electronics stores, business at the department store went down, and he decided to open his own business.

“At first, at least for a year or so, I was just doing some service work until I could set up a building to retail out of,” he says. “At that point and time, I decided I wasn’t going to work for anybody else; I would self-employ myself because I was tired of working for someone else.”

Never a pool player himself, Jeff was drawn to the mechanical aspects of putting tables together.

“Even with electronics, it still involves putting things together,” he explains. “I had been working on tables for about 10 years in one way or another, so I had a background that provided me a knowledge base. I couldn’t sell electronics because of the big box stores and I already had a pretty good background for working on pool tables. I just took the retail side of things that I knew and applied those to the billiard industry, as far as marketing, merchandising, and dealing with customers. It was just a different product, but it was a product that I had knowledge of. As far as being able to assist customers who are interested in pool, that’s the direction that I enjoy.”

SETTING UP SHOP

He started by working out of his house – buying and selling lower-priced tables and restoring used pool tables.

“And I was doing service work, so I was doing moves, re-covers, those types of things,” Jeff says. “The only thing I sold was cloth because I didn’t have a retail location. Once I opened up a store, then things changed. Basically, I transitioned from doing just service work to retailing new tables.”

In 1991, Jeff opened the store’s location at 500 N. Monroe St., and from the start

he has applied certain principles to doing business that have paid off.

“I’m fairly frugal, I don’t use lines of credit for anything, so basically if I can’t pay for something, I’m not going to buy something if it’s inventory, or even if it’s a new van,” he says. “I own the building, and I’ve usually been very conservative on anything that we purchase. That goes against a lot of business models, as far as being able to expand, but it’s worked for me. I’ve never had to lay awake at night trying to figure out how to come up with money for something that I have sitting in the store that I haven’t been able to sell.”

Another savvy move was becoming a dealer for Playmaster, the factory for which was about an hour away from the store. That meant Jeff didn’t have to invest in a lot of inventory, aside from what was on display.

“I would go down once a week and pick up four or five tables,” Jeff says. “This was the early 1990s or so, and things were booming pretty fast, it was hard to keep stuff in stock a lot of times.”

The business grew and the retail end of the operation became a bigger percentage of business than service work. And Jeff was very busy, to put it mildly.

“I couldn’t deliver anything until I closed, plus I was open seven days a week for a while,” he remembers. “I didn’t have any days off, and that was probably for about a year, which tends to burn you out. But eventually, I hired someone to run the store for me. I still do all my own service work, so I usually have someone who runs the store, which allows me to go out and set things up.”

THEY’VE GOT GAMES

Today, Franklin Billiard Company is a destination for all kinds of games in addition to pool, including bubble hockey, shuffleboard, ping-pong, and air hockey. “Shuffleboard tables over the last few years have increased tremendously as far as selling them,” Jeff says. “I used to never sell shuffleboard tables – pool tables are still the biggest percentage of what I sell, but shuffleboard tables have grown exponentially.”

Darts have also become a key category for Franklin Billiard Company, with many league players making it their place to buy dartboards and high-quality tungsten darts in both soft-and steeltip versions.

“As far as people who come in on the most regular basis, it’s probably darts,” Jeff says. “There really isn’t anybody in the St. Louis area that has as much of a darts supply and there are a lot of darts leagues out there. It’s a high markup, and there’s no servicing, so darts do really well.”

And after all these years, Jeff still delivers and installs every table, with the help of a staffer, as opposed to assigning deliveries to employees or subcontracting the work. The store also recovers, re-cushions, and moves tables.

A VARIETY OF OPTIONS

Darla and Jeff pride themselves on offering a range of price points for the products they sell.

“Mid-range tables are kind of what we depend on,” Jeff says. “I haven’t had this happen in a while, but from time to time I would get somebody who would come in and say they wanted to open a pool hall, which can be a $20,000 sale, or someone comes in and is looking for something high end. But I found that most of that stuff doesn’t actually occur. A lot of people talk but they don’t make the purchase. Most of what we make profit on are mid-range Olhausen tables.”

Jeff notes that the store sells up to 20 midrange tables for every person who wants to spend tens of thousands on a table. “It’s not the customer who’s spending a lot of money that I’m relying on, it’s people who want to spend $4,000 to $5,000, that’s what’s keeping me open,” he says.

A BUSY 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a very busy year for Franklin Billiard Company. Working days of up to 14 hours have become a regular occurrence as Jeff and Darla have been answering lots of service calls for people who want to use their tables as they spend lots and lots of time at home.

“No one wants to leave their house, or they’re stuck in their house and they’re looking for things to do,” Jeff says. “I know the swimming pool industry in this area is out two years before you can get a swimming pool installed, that’s how backed up they are. Since this started, we’ve been out for two months on our schedule, I have stuff scheduled for two months out and I haven’t been able to catch up.”

Another issue in the COVID-19 era is a lack of inventory because so many people are buying tables and games.

“Right now, the issue isn’t trying to find a customer, the issue is trying to find something to sell to the customer,” he says.

Jeff has a talent for restoring used tables and has made some antique models look brand new. He says he doesn’t often go searching for used tables to buy, and that it’s usually people contacting him that leads to him buying a table. And of course, he applies Franklin Billiard Company’s policy of honesty as he explains to sellers what his cost will be in terms of labor and materials when he brings new life to an old table.

“If a customer calls up and they want to sell me a table they have, I usually suggest that they sell it on the internet,

either through Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist,” Jeff says. “I’ll give them a suggestion for what I think they can get for it and then I give them a price that I offer if they still want to sell it to me. And I find that a lot of customers don’t want to mess with it, so even if they can get $400 or $500 more selling it themselves, they decide to sell it to me instead.”

He adds that there was a point where he was getting three or four calls daily from people looking to sell tables.

“If I tried to buy every table somebody tried to sell me, I’d run out of space very quickly,” he says.

CELEBRATING A MILESTONE

Darla was in the corporate world until 2018, when the company she worked for was sold. She then joined Franklin Billiard Company full time, leading sales and promoting the store on social media. She also makes sure that each and every customer knows how appreciated they are.

“I’m adamant about sending thankyou notes to people who purchase tables,” Darla says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a used table or a new table, I thank them for their purchase, because they could have gone to somebody else. And these are handwritten notes, they’re personalized to them and their table and their situation.”

The store also supports its community by donating cues, dart boards and other items to charity auctions for local churches and advocacy groups that support abused children.

All of that hard work combined with Darla and Jeff Preiss’ dedication to their customers, has led them to 2021, which marks Franklin Billiard Company’s 30th anniversary, and one of the many ways Jeff and Darla balance

each other out is that Jeff isn’t the kind of person who sets long-term goals and notes those kind of achievements, while Darla is.

“It’s a milestone, a lot of people don’t make it to five,” Darla says. “Thirty years ago, when we decided to do this, we had friends who said, ‘Are you guys crazy?’ We had just had a child and bought a house, and we said, ‘We’re just going to do it.’”

They’ve had their share of challenges, such as the construction of a wall on Interstate 44 that blocked the view of the store off the highway, the housing crisis, and now, COVID-19, but they are still in business. In fact, business is as robust as it’s ever been. “And we’re still surviving, that’s something to be proud of,” Darla says. “Especially now, there are lots of people who don’t have income or jobs, so we’re blessed – even though things are pretty crazy.”