“Anybody who knows cues,” original founder Bob Meucci says, “they’re going to order a Meucci.” Meucci Cues produces five lines of professional pool cues built from southern ash and fine exotic hardwoods from all over the world, inlaid with designs of stained wood and precious metals. Not only are the cues beautiful, but each is carefully engineered for maximum performance, offering players more power with less effort. From the Yellow Rose of Texas, inlaid with yellow puka shell, to those designed with Central American cocobolo wood and mother of pearl, the cues produced here are carried by more than 2,400 dealers and distributors worldwide and used by hundreds of top players in the American Poolplayers Association. The lowest-end model of Meucci cue is around $300, and the average purchase
— but it didn’t play out. After that initial setback, Meucci found two investors for $5,000 each to support a startup fueled by the skill he had carried with him for so long. Following its first year in business, Meucci Cues grew by 50 percent each year for 10 years. Those two investors got a final cut of $200,000, and Meucci eventually severed all ties and gained his independence. Since then, a changing economy and increased foreign trade in the U.S. has led Meucci to alter his business model. Unable to compete with the high volume of imports from Asian manufacturers that spiked under new tariff laws in the late 1990s, Meucci switched gears, aiming production toward a high-end market with lower production numbers. While the numbers may not be as big as those first few years, Meucci Cues has hit a sweet spot in the hearts
I N
M E M PH I S
Meucci Cues > > >
64 |
BY
K AT H E R I N E
B A R N E T T
price paid by distributors is around $750. A machinist by trade, Meucci has been mastering his skill since the age of 12, when he started working in his father’s tool and die shop. Helping to build kidney dialysis machines and jar lids for Kraft food products at a time when you still “had to do it with your brain,” using hand machinery, as he recalls, Meucci was also honing an invaluable skill set in an era before the CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machinery used to build the same products today. At 19 years old, he built his first pool cue. “It became second nature,” Meucci says of the building and production experience he gained growing up. “To make a pool cue was nothing for me. Where everyone else who made them back then used wood chisels and wood lathes and sandpaper and no two were ever the same,
INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINES S.COM | F EB/M A R 20 15
and pool halls of players across the country. After a few years spent enjoying his success on nearly 2,000 acres in Senatobia, Mississippi, the owner has increased his presence at the warehouse and given Meucci Cues a new tagline — Bob’s back. Most days, Bob can be found in the factory, talking with employees or teaching pool in the billiards room, where he offers lessons to amateurs and professionals alike. With his expertise and supervision, business is steady and growing with current projects like a sponsorship for Roku’s The BILLIARD Channel and professional players Loree Jon Jones and Max Eberle on staff as product representatives. Bob recently started designing another product for his factory to produce — duck calls, just as beautiful and unique as each cue he produces. Meucci’s hand-crafted products have quickly become must-have collectors’ items. His most expensive cue is a $50,000 model with a design of the Taj Mahal set in precious stones, originally purchased by a collector in Japan and recently sold for the third time for just under $300,000. That one Bob made just for fun. The custom cue of any collector’s dreams is just a short drive away from the Bluff City — and for a nominal fee, Bob will grab a marker and sign that classic “M.” For more information on Meucci Cues, including where to purchase, please visit meuccicues.com. Katherine Barnett is a freelance writer and former intern for Contemporary Media Inc. who now works full-time at Chi Omega Executive Headquarters in Memphis.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY MEUCCI CUES
Building a pool cue takes 300 steps and 55 machines. Just south of the Mississippi state line in Byhalia, Bob Meucci has it down to an art. From the calm of the billiards room in the Meucci Cues warehouse and headquarters in Byhalia, nothing but the faint smells and sounds of construction suggests the craftsmanship behind its walls. Every pool cue that leaves this facility, and each machine used to build it, is a Bob Meucci original, and each cue’s trademark cursive “M” marks one of the most recognized billiards brands in the world.
I made them within a thousandth of an inch, because I used metalworking equipment. And that started the whole thing.” The technology Meucci developed during this time blazed a trail for the future of the industry. Today, nearly every pool cue made in the United States is based on technology developed by Meucci more than 50 years ago. A natural entrepreneur, Meucci traveled the country for years supporting different startup companies, working independently, yet was continually sought out for his expertise in pool cue technology. When an invitation came to relocate to the Memphis area and start his own company in 1975, he took the chance
M A DE