AUSTIN BILLIARDS IS ALL ABOUT FAMILY

By Anthony Stoeckert

For more than 50 years, Austin Billiards has been selling pool tables and other games to the people of Austin and Central Texas. Located in one of the nation’s most dynamic and popular cities, the store offers an array of pool tables, along with foosball, shuffleboard, air hockey, table tennis, arcade games, and more, along with furnishings, while providing top-notch service and repairs.

And it all started with three Brunswick tables.

In the early 1970s, Eric Teggeman was working in his brother-in-law’s trophy shop, and Brunswick owned a company that made trophy figurines – tiny models of athletes that were placed on trophies.

“One day, my dad was opening up a box of figurines, and on top of the box was a little flyer that said, ‘Become a Brunswick billiard dealer with as little as a three-table opening order,’” says Jim Teggeman, Eric’s son and the owner of Austin Billiards. “So my dad borrowed $1,000 from his brother-in-law, ordered three tables and got his dealership as a Brunswick dealer. He set the three tables up on the trophy shop showroom. After about three to five months, my uncle – his brother-in-law – told him, ‘You’re taking over my trophy shop, you need to get your own store!’”

ERIC’S STORY

In November of 1971, Eric opened the first Austin Billiards store, where he sold Brunswick, Fischer, and Ebonite tables, along with cues and cue tips, and eventually serviced tables.

Eric was first introduced to pool as a kid growing up in the 1940s in Thrall, a small farming town in Texas, where Eric’s father owned a grocery store. Local families would head to the store, mostly on weekends, to buy the necessities they didn’t grow on their farms. In the back of the store was a room with some pool tables and other games, like dominos, where men gathered and socialized.

“My dad used to rack the balls for a nickel when he was a young kid, and he started playing the game a little bit,” Teggeman says. “So he had a little interest in billiards, and my grandfather made pretty good money with those tables in the back of that grocery store.”

Eric later attended the University of Texas, working for the Texas Railroad Commission during the summer. One year, his boss at the commission was short-staffed and wanted Eric to work in the fall. Eric’s father gave him permission to take one semester off to make the extra money. Then Uncle Sam came calling, and because Eric wasn’t in college, he was eligible for the draft during the Korean War. Eric’s father had a connection who told him Eric was about to get drafted and suggested he sign up for the Air Force before he received his draft notice. That’s exactly what he did.

“He was a navigator,” Teggeman says. “He was on the refueling planes that refueled the SR-71 spy planes and after 20 years, he retired a major.”

After retiring, Eric worked for his brother-in-law’s trophy store. Then came that fateful day when he ordered those Brunswick tables.

JIM’S STORY

Jim Teggeman’s career at Austin Billiards started when he was a kid.

“When I first came to work, I was pretty much a shop boy,” he says. “I would stock the shelves, clean the floors and wait on customers. Then when I learned how to put the tables together, I started going out and doing installs. I did installations for a good 20 years for him. I trained service guys –as we hired new employees, they’d send them out with me to teach them so that they would be able to go out on their own.”

After all those years, Austin Billiards had enough crews and Jim was able to leave the road and manage the store. He handled ordering, inventory and the business side of Austin Billiards.

Eric’s billiard empire in Texas grew to the point where he had two stores, as well as some pool rooms and bars.

“He finally was ready to retire when he hit his 80s,” Jim says. “He worked up until he was 80, checking on his billiard rooms.”

A Family Business Changes Hands

By 2012, Eric was ready to retire and started selling the buildings he owned. At the time, Austin Billiards had a 15,000-square-foot showroom. Jim bought the business from his father and moved to a growing area of the city.

“I went into a much smaller location, just because I was taking it all on myself,” he says. “And I leased the space in a strip mall, very small with a 3,500-squarefoot showroom. I wanted to start off small and see how long I wanted to continue doing it, considering I had already been doing it 25, 30 years.”

As it turns out, Jim wanted to continue running Austin Billiards for quite a while. He was in that spot for 10 years before moving the store to its current location on Austin’s Anderson Mill Road, a 15,000-square-foot space. That move happened recently, in March of 2022. And though Eric passed away in 2018, Jim continues to honor his father’s legacy.

“Something that my father always wanted was to have a showroom and the warehouse under one umbrella,” Teggeman says. “We always had off-site warehouses and he hated that. It was a dream he never lived to see, and I have that now. I’m proud to accomplish something he always wanted.”

Jim says his premier lines at this point include Legacy, Imperial, A.E. Schmidt, and CL Bailey, but one of the keys to his success is knowing which brands are the right ones to carry at any particular time.

“I’ve been through some economy downfalls and different lines of pool tables,” he says. “I never rule out one manufacturer. This business is on a tidal wave – you go through waves and it depends on who’s producing and manufacturing the better product at any given time. I never destroy the bridge because I never know when I’m going to have to circle back around.”

Changing As Austin Changes

Austin Billiards has long offered a wide range of products, and in recent years, Skee-Ball and arcade games have been very popular. Outdoor furniture is another growing part of the business because Austin’s weather allows for outdoor entertaining for most of the year.

One area where Jim has seen a big change is the growing demand for different table styles, which he says is a result of people from other parts of the country moving to Texas.

“They’re coming from Florida, California, down from New York, to Texas,” he says. “Recently, through this pandemic, with this influx of out-of-state people moving to Texas, I’ve seen the style desire really open up. The people out of California and Florida want a different style from people in the south, who want a traditional pool table. We’re seeing demand for people who want styles that we’re not used to seeing.”

And a lot of those people who are moving to Texas are specifically looking to Austin.

“Austin has a really diverse group of people,” Teggeman says. “It’s a fantastic city. I don’t think I’d ever want to move anywhere else. I love to visit other places, but I’m always glad when I come back home.”

How it started:

He added that Austin is on the cusp of Texas’ Hill Country, which isn’t mountainous but also isn’t flat, unlike a lot of other parts of Texas.

“Austin is unique,” he says. “We’re surrounded by three or four lakes and we have some elevation in Austin. It’s growing in leaps and bounds. I hear people all the time say that if they’re going to move to Texas, they’d move to Austin. Not Dallas, not Fort Worth, not San Antonio, it’s Austin. We have high tech, and hills, lakes, and lots of live music. We have a little bit of everything without being too big like Houston or Dallas, even though we’re getting there.”

And the diversity of the city has resulted in Austin Billiards catering to a wide variety of customers.

How it’s going:

“You get the pool room players who are big-time players looking at cues and cases, and then I have the family with three or four kids who want a table for their garage,” Teggeman says. “Our designers have commercial projects going on. We cover the full spectrum. We have builders who are building $2 million to $5 million homes, and then a guy who’s counting dollar bills to buy a new cue case. We see them all.”

Austin Billiards is doing its part to make sure Austin remains the special place that it is by getting involved with several local causes, including the Mullet Open, a golf tournament that supports a center for neglected and abused children; the Texas Book Festival, which was founded by former First Lady Lau- ra Bush; and, JDRF, which helps people with Type 1 Diabetes.

“You have to give back a little bit to the community,” Teggeman says. “I’ve lived in this city 52, 53 years. It’s important to contribute back to your city and help different groups.”