Member Profile: Buffalo Billiards By Anthony Stoeckert

A GENUINE CLASSIC

By Anthony Stoeckert

Lee Simon had been in the pool business for decades when he established the second and current version of Buffalo Billiards in Petaluma, Calif., in 2011 after operating the original Buffalo Billiards destination in Cotati, Calif., which he opened in 1992.

He calls his current location a “hobby” and “semi-retirement gig.” However, it would seem that his current enterprise has become much more than a casual endeavor. Decades of hard work and dedication have gone into this hobby, and it’s safe to say that Buffalo Billiards is the result of years of work and represents Lee Simon’s vision of an ideal pool hall.

“I had my recipe planned and written out as early as 1976,” Simon says. “It just took a really long time to get there. And it takes money and it takes help, and I didn’t have either of those for most of my career.”

His recipe is designed to create a pool room that is interesting, comfortable, welcoming and clean.

“The equipment has to be good, the staff has to be friendly, and it has to be clean, especially the bathrooms.” Simon says. “I really believe in value – I could charge more for everything. I could charge more for beer, I could charge more for food – we do a really big business on food, and that’s important.”

LEARNING FROM HIS FATHER

Harry Simon, Lee’s father and mentor, started in the business by running various pool rooms in the tiny desert town of Wells, Nevada, dating back to 1953, and he later owned pool halls in California. One short-lived pool room of Harry’s was Sequoia Billiards in Redwood City, Calif., which he purchased from Jimmy and Dorothy Wise.

“Dorothy was considered to be the greatest female player ever,” Lee Simon says. “She taught me how to play straight pool. We played every day for a year when I was around 14.”

Harry sold Sequoia Billiards to Sax and Evelyn dal Porto, another all-time great player, and his last billiard business was Harry’s Novato Billiards in Novato, California, which he founded in 1964. “Then I played Evelyn every day,” Lee remembers.

Lee was drafted into the Vietnam-era U.S Army and was discharged in 1973, when he enrolled at San Francisco State University on the G.I. bill.

“I majored in sex, drugs and rock and roll,” he says. “I had no intention of going into the family business, but my father suffered a ruptured appendix and could never come back to work. By late 1976 I had outlined my ideas for the perfect pool room. It only took 40 years or so to implement these ideas, which of course evolved over the years. It took capital and talent to help implement, and neither one is easy to find, but I have both now.”

STARTING OUT ON HIS OWN

Lee’s vision of a pool room began with his work at Novato Billiards, and he tried his hand at competitive pool. He soon became interested in all aspects of the pool table business, including selling and maintaining tables.

“My father paid the billiard mechanic – the company was Whitehead and Zimmerman, they were the preeminent company in Nor Cal for decades – $35 to recover his tables,” he remembers. “I watched him do two and said, ‘I could do this.’” His first re-cover job was on a Gold Crown model. It took Lee 17 hours to finish the job, and it was, in his words, possibly the worst re-covering ever. But it was a start.

“I started working on tables at every opportunity and keeping a journal on each table and how it could be done better and faster,” he says. “No one would teach you, a lot like old-time players – you have to pay your dues to learn. In any case after a few hundred tables I got pretty good. That led to the restoration of antique tables and furniture, which in turn led to the sales of new tables. First Golden West and then Olhausen and Brunswick.”

TEAMING UP WITH A LEGEND

Simon was hosting a Jimmy Rempe exhibition in the 1970s when someone in the audience asked him about threecushion. That someone was Bob Byrne, the legendary player and author whose numerous books include Byrne’s Standard Book of Pool and Billiards.

“It’s the best-selling billiard book of all time,” Simon notes. “Another gem or must-read is ‘McGoorty: The story of a billiard bum.’ Bob was like the greatest, most well-rounded and diversely talented man to ever live. I was privileged to see and participate in every page of ‘Byrne’s Standard Book of Pool and Billiards’ as it was researched at Novato Billiards. It was truly a great experience. Within weeks I had three carom tables and created a nice little oasis of three-cushion billiards.”

Byrne became an investor of the original Buffalo Billiards, where John Colla, a founding member of Huey Lewis and the News was a regular.

“He lived down the street,” Simon notes. “He was a pool and billiard aficionado as well as a great sign maker. We painted a flying eight-ball that had 62-inch wings on one wall and the other had a carom scene that went into infinity. Of course, all this went away when they became arguably the biggest band in the world. Johnny also became an investor in Buffalo Billiards in Cotati.”

THE NEXT CHAPTER

Novato Billiards ended in September 1986 when the owner of the building passed away and Simon’s rent was increased astronomically. He then embarked on establishing the first Buffalo Billiards location, in Cotati, California. An old friend of his had built a shopping center and wanted Simon to open a pool room there.

“It was a bit too far north for my liking but he was persistent,” Simon says. “He finally made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I had a professional interior designer do the interior. I wanted a room that women were comfortable in, yet men wouldn’t feel galvanized in either. The color scheme was soothing green walls and burgundy carpet. Even though it was a modern building it was packed with my ever-burgeoning collection of billiard art – posters, pictures, cue racks, etc. And also everything from tortoise shells to snowshoes – all vintage pieces, all interesting to look at but more importantly it created the feel, the comfort.” The opening of his endeavor also coincided with what Lee calls the golden era of table and equipment sales. “Each year the sales increased, the pool room seemingly ran itself,” he says. “I say seemingly as I wasn’t paying close enough attention! By the late 1990s up until October of 2005, table sales were unbelievable. Olhausen, which was still in San Diego, would send a trailer with 26 or so tables. They would drop the trailer in the parking lot and return in two weeks or so with another and haul the old trailer away. Most of the tables were pre-sold. This went on for some three years. Then just before the official great depression or the meltdown, it “MY SEMIRETIREMENT GIG TURNED INTO MORE THAN THE CASUAL ENDEAVOR … I WAS IN FULL-TIME PLUS.”

just stopped dead. The canary in the coal mine keeled over. This market has still never returned.”

Things have flipped to the point where today, his pool hall does well while sales are a challenge because of competition from online retailers and big chains that offer free delivery.

“To me it’s not sustainable,” Simon says. “I guess if you’re doing the volume, it works, but this race to the bottom to see who can be the cheapest doesn’t appeal to me. To top all this off, selling antique tables is out of vogue also. Hardly anyone is interested and if the old price was $20,000, now you’re lucky if you get $8,500.

“Case in point, in 1980, a Brilliant Novelty circa 1880 was sold in Marin County for $75,000. That very table sold in an auction recently for $5,000 with only one bid. But I persist with mostly used tables as freight has also become untenable.”

LEE SIMON’S VISION FOR A POOL HALL

His recipe is designed to create a pool room that is clean, well-lit, interesting, comfortable, welcoming, friendly, and where patrons can enjoy cold beer served by a friendly staff, along with great music.

“I want to create a mini-vacation-like atmosphere,” Simon says. “I really believe in value.”

His pool tables and equipment are high in quality and represents a mix of eclecitc tables, all of which are expertly maintained.

“However, for top-notch competitors, the equipment needs to be identical, so a drawback to my style is that it doesn’t appeal to those players,” he says. “But the average beer-

drinking, fun-loving, dating couple and groups of young people love it. This is a fun place.”

FOCUSING ON FAMILY

The time came for Simon to focus on raising his two teenage daughters.

“I’m a single parent and that is a hard row to hoe,” he says. “Family does come first. I sold the room for a princely sum and opened a supply-only store. This was during the recession and pool tables were about at the bottom of everyone’s list of things to buy. Houses went from ATM machines to foreclosures overnight. Things really changed quickly.”

As his daughters headed off to college, Simon negotiated to buy back his Cotati pool room, but the owners ultimately decided not to sell. A former employee of his was operating a pool room in downtown Petaluma, where Lee lives. Lee describes Petaluma as a historic and scenic town, and when he told the owner of the pool room there about his troubles in trying to buy back his old location, he made an offer.

“He offhandedly said ‘buy this one,’” Simon recalls. “Which I did. I brought in a partner to take care of the dirty work – insurance, payroll, scheduling, all the things I’m not good at. This turned into something of unintended consequences and I bought him out. So my semi-retirement gig turned into more than the casual endeavor intended. I was in full-time plus.”

BUILDING ON SUCCESS

The current version of Buffalo Billiards is a culmination of decades of hard work and dedication, of lessons learned and even relearned. Simon says his recipe has been implemented and fine-tuned, and he has benefitted from working with the right manager, Michael Bombace.

“This incarnation of Buffalo Billiards is in a historic 1860s building that has 16-foot ceilings and brick walls,” Simon describes. “It is filled with all my collections of billiard artifacts as well as boxing photo collections, cricket paddles, Coca-Cola items, art of all types and neon billiard and pool signs. Along the way, I lost a warehouse that was filled with antique tables mostly but also other antique items. I didn’t want to continue paying to store this stuff let alone move it, so rather than fill several dumpsters, I decided to repurpose them.

He made a cocktail table out of end panels with two legs. Benches were created out of church pews and pool table legs. The pool hall’s gathering tables are made of inlaid pool tables, and cocktail tables were repurposed from antique pool table parts with pool cues serving as legs.

“Also, lots of shuffleboard tops were utilized,” Simon says. “My bar is made out of various parts of antique tables, doors and shuffleboards. The center piece is a side panel of a Monarch or Lion’s Head table that was a spare. The bar tops are all billiard slate and shuffleboard playfields.”

Another bar is made from a repurposed Regina 5'x10' carom table from the San Francisco Elks Club.

“This guy had it in Napa outside exposed to the weather,” Simon says. “He had called me up and offered this and I happened to have a crew in Napa at that time. So they picked it up, and upon seeing this piece of garbage, I couldn’t believe they brought it back, it was trashed. But I just can’t throw this stuff away, so we created a 10-foot bar out of this one table and very little else. We cut the legs in half length-wise to stretch out the parts. The Regina has inlays of an oval with two Mother-of-Pearl circles that resemble an owl’s face. We topped it off with two different shades of slate – the original slate now sits under my hot tub.”

His efforts in creating the ideal pool room never end, as he continues to enhance Buffalo Billiards with interesting items, such as vintage signs from local and Bay Area businesses.

Buffalo Billiards also promotes its message and is now seeing success with private parties.

“This is really a good revenue source,” Simon says. “We offer pool tables, darts, shuffleboard and air hockey. We have two ping-pong tables also in our party package but these things go all day and night long. Ping-pong is very popular.” Persian rugs decorate the floor of Buffalo Billiards. Simon bought his first Persian rug at a nearby flea market and liked the look of it, so he bought more. Many of his tables are Gold Crowns, and there also are a few Diamonds, two Olhausen models, and a Gabriels carom table.

“Every window is framed with pool table rails,” Simon notes of his pool room. “Everything is pool tables, repurposed antique tables.”

Lee Simon’s career has been a long one, and he continues to serve his customers by providing them a great place to play pool, tasty food, and the highest standards of service. He brings a personal touch as well. During an interview for this story, he would often stop to say hello to customers and ask them how they’re doing. Throughout the years, he’s seen young customers grow up and some who even have families of their own now.

It’s a testament to his work, dedication, and the vision for his ideal pool room that he has been crafting since the 1970s.

“I’ve been successful,” he says. “There have been times where I’ve had to practice austerity. I just learn at every step and always try to do better.

“This pool room is off the charts. It’s in the quaintest town, on the busiest street next door to the Brewsters, the most epic beer hall this side of Munich – add it all up and you have the world’s busiest pool room.”

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CONNECTING WITH YOUNGER BUYERS

TIPS TO MAKE CUSTOMERS OUT OF MILLENNIAL, GEN X AND GEN Z CONSUMERS

While many retailers rely on their established, older customers to keep the store in business, savvy retailers understand that new customers are the secret to success. That means that appealing to younger people – millennials, Gen X and even Gen Z now – is crucial for long-lasting business.

For a lot of retailers, the immediate thought is that this can only be done by boosting an online presence but studies have proven that consumers falling into these younger generations actually prefer to purchase items in brick-andmortar stores. And while the pandemic caused many people to stop shopping in person, recent data suggests that a majority of those who are back in the stores buying gifts and items for themselves are millennials, Gen X and older Gen Z consumers.

These generations enjoy the store experience, so it’s important to think about them when designing the store.

After all, your ability as a retailer to attract, sell to, and retain younger people as customers will depend heavily on your relatability. If younger people perceive your marketing content, brand image, and brand values as relatable, they are more likely to buy from you.

More so, these consumers are also more likely to spread the word about your products, and remain your loyal customers for the long term.

Before the pandemic hit, Gen Z passed millennials as the largest group in the U.S., and retail experts believe that this segment of the population will not be an extension of the previous generation but be classified as a set of people with unique experiences, be-

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liefs and behaviors. The theory is this generation will fuel a massive change in how people shop, and billiard retailers should think differently about how they attract them.

Here are 12 ways that billiard retailers can attract millennials and Gen X buyers to the store and make them lifelong customers.

1A great tip is to offer more interactive experiences, such as allowing them to play a game of pool or ping-pong at the store. Or bring in experts and create a mustsee event at the store so people can really feel the excitement. Younger users love being immersed in experiences, and if your marketing can portray how the high-stakes intensity of pool can be fun for everyone, you’ll have your audience sold. This will help to engage customers and provide an entertaining environment.

2Retailers should be utilizing technology to market products and services, as this generation is very tech-savvy. With that in mind, it’s important to create a social media presence and target these audiences through various platforms. By doing so, retailers can connect with potential customers and create a community around the sport of billiards. Also, if you’re not using social media for product marketing campaigns, you are missing out on the opportunity to reach much wider and diverse audiences. Social media is also a great place to build your brand identity. Billiard retailers should take advantage of what social media applications are offering to them when it comes to creating a business profile and introducing products and services. This will be the easiest way for them to reach and connect conveniently to the people they are targeting. Additionally, giving them experience through showing video, photos, and verbal descriptions will help them decide on where and what to buy. 3 Another way to attract millennials and Gen Z-ers is to personalize the experience. Create content and products that cater specifically to what the people in these two generations love. Offer custom boards, make trendy pool table cloths or even make pool cues fun with eye-catching patterns and fun phrases. This helps to enhance the experience of the player’s game. Personalization is key to winning with shoppers in brickand-mortar stores. Studies shows that 42 percent of consumers are willing to pay more for a product in order to have a more personalized shopping experience, particularly evident with millennials, with 63 percent noting they would be willing to pay more for a personalized experience.

4Mobile-friendly websites are necessary. Younger generations do most of their web-browsing on mobile devices like tablets and cellphones, so ensuring your store’s website is optimized for mobile is crucial. This means making sure the checkout process is easily accessible, and also designing a good layout so your brand and aesthetic aren’t lost on the mobile site. If your website isn’t easily accessible or easy to navigate, you’ll have a much harder time with attracting younger audiences.

5A great way to align with younger demographics is to sell highend equipment. Remember that some consumers have the mentality of “bigger is better,” so try to tailor sales price and customer service to these customers. The main job is to deliver a valuable product or service and not try too hard to sell low-quality equipment because it is cheap. Think of giving customers something they value, such as unique products or customized designs. It helps sell more and better equipment in the long run.

6Adapt to new advertising methods by using music videos and products instead of traditional commercials. It makes the business more fun, as customers will be more inclined to watch videos and look at products more often.

7Develop and share behind-thescenes footage of your employees going about their work on a normal day. You can also show videos of the store, and the products you offer. Young people like to see people and equipment in action. The goal is to position your store as an entity that these youngsters can connect with and relate to using authentic content.

8Whether you understand the TikTok craze or not, the younger generations spend countless hours on this platform each day and it’s not too hard to create content that can promote the store or business. The easiest way to grab Gen Z’s attention is through influencers on sites like this. Gen Z tends to be a bit thriftier with their dollars than millennials, but

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they are the generation to grow up completely online, and therefore trust the advice and product endorsements of their favorite influencers. This might involve inviting the top influencers in the town to the store and letting them try out equipment and giving them some free merch, like hats or T-shirts, to wear on camera.

9While it may not be something you’d think about, having a strong Wi-Fi signal and allowing customers to connect in-store can go a long way to having younger people come in and spend time shopping. Millennials and Generation Z’s use of technology in-store, their need to stay connected to friends via social media while they shop and how they’re shopping is changing consumer spending patterns. While the latter generation was born with a smartphone in hand, it doesn’t keep them from shopping – and even preferring to shop – in brick-and-mortar stores, as long as they have access to their ever-important social network.

10 Use a multi-pronged approach. Most younger buyers have multiple devices that they interact with during the day. They deem themselves huge multi-taskers jumping from one app to the next in a flash. But this means they often miss key points in a sales presentation and are more difficult to communicate with. Have some online recommendations where they can view the products or reviews so they can see them online as well, and this will help get them to be a paying customer.

11 Focus on deals. Despite their buying power, millennials and Gen X’ers earn nearly 20 percent less than their parents did at this point in their lives. The average salary of someone between the ages of 25 to 34 is approximately $40,000 compared to what their parents made at the same age. That’s why billiard retailers should be offering them coupons and deals. Nothing attracts a younger shopper like thinking they are getting a good deal.

12 Yelp and other online review sites are your friend. Most younger generations look at online reviews before they buy. With access to information more available than ever before, people have more ways to research and educate themselves on the products they’re interested in before they come into your store. That’s why you need to encourage your customers to post reviews on Yelp and other sites.