SERVICE IS A SPECIALTY

In addition to selling pool tables, Jim Teggeman and his team are experts at maintaining them, as Austin Billiards offers recovering, re-cushioning, and pocket repair services. Austin billiards also moves tables, from home to home in the Central Texas area, and within homes. It’s a tradition that began with Eric.

“He went to some schools,” Teggeman says. “Back in the day, Brunswick would have mechanic schools, where you could learn the trade. And he learned a lot of it on the fly.”

Eric taught Jim, and today Jim works with young mechanics who are experts and are dedicated to providing customers with excellent work, even if their approach is different from his.

“I watch them put a pool table together and it’s so much different from how I did it,” he says. “We accomplish the same goal, but the process is a little different. Everyone has their tricks of the trade. But if they go out with me and I’m the lead, I do it the way I do it, and they look at me like ‘What are you doing?’” he says with a laugh. “We’re always looking for ways to improve or for new tricks we don’t know about.”

Austin Billiards is a true family business. Not only have Eric and Jim been running the store for more than half a century, Jim’s sisters have worked there. And his mother, Frances, ran the store when Eric was out installing tables.

“My mother was the one who ran and built this company,” Teggeman says.

Jim’s daughter, Madison, has been working at Austin Billiards for five years, marking the third generation of Teggemans to share their expertise at the store. That family element has been vital to the store’s legacy.

“I think we’ve been successful because we’ve been really friendly,” Teggeman says. “The whole time we’ve had the business, there have always been family members here. There’s a family atmosphere when people come here. We really get to know our customers well, we get social and learn a little about them, not just what they want to buy. Families come here shopping as a family.”

Another key member of the Austin Billiards team is Jim Ivester, a friend of Teggeman’s for more than 20 years who started working at the store about five years ago. “He’s been a great asset to the growth of my company, a loyal employee, and he’s helped tremendously with my social media and marketing,” Teggeman says. “He’s just been a blessing to have.”

Jim loves sharing the history of the store with customers, and now there are people buying tables from Austin Billiards whose fathers, grandfathers, and even great-grandfathers bought tables from Eric all those years ago. And sometimes, Jim’s crews will FaceTime him to show him a table they are working on that he and his father serviced years, or decades, ago. “A lot of times, we’ll sign our name with a Sharpie on the bottom of the table with the date,” Teggeman says. “They’ll see a table I signed with my dad – ‘Eric and Jim set up this table in 1978.’ They’ll take pictures and send them back to me.” Those tables are still out there and being used. And that is a testament to the commitment of Austin Billiards – and of Jim and Eric Teggeman.