Calling the shots
Billiards business will pass to sixth-generation owner.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
History permeates the senses as you step through the doors of Jones Brothers Pool Tables in North Little Rock. It’s more than just the smell of the aged wood from which the pool tables are made. It’s more than even the knowledge that the game of pool (or billiards) has been around for centuries.
There’s an underlying feeling that there’s more to this business than meets the eye.
The pool industry is a close-knit one, with many of the companies involved having been owned by the same families for ages. Jones Brothers is no exception.
James Spangler, 30, currently works alongside his uncle and is being groomed to take over the family operation. Once he does take over, he will be the sixth generation of Schmidts to run the pool table business. But his training really began about two decades ago.
“When I was 10, I would go to the factory and box up widgets,” Spangler said, noting that his pay was always in the form of Chicken McNuggets.
When he turned 16, though, Spangler’s family told him he needed to go out and get a “real” job. So he started working at McDonald’s.
“I think it’s because they wanted me to earn what I got and did not want me to think that I was just going to have things handed to me,” he said.
Ernst Schmidt, a German immigrant who settled in St. Louis in 1850, was a cabinet maker and ivory turner who specialized in making cane handles, pipe stems and billiard balls. He got the family involved in the billiard industry, founding A.E. Schmidt Company. And his descendants have expanded that involvement over the decades. Ernst’s son, Oscar, built the first Schmidt pool table in 1882; his grandsons, Edwin and Ernest, began shipping cues, cloth and balls all over the country in the 1930s; and his great-grandson, Harold, owned billiard rooms, hosted a weekly billiards television program in St. Louis, and bought Jones Brothers Pool Tables from a friend in 1959.
Jones Brothers sells pool tables and accessories, game tables, and just about everything else you need to outfit a recreation room at a private home or a public venue such as a Boys and Girls Club or a Dave and Buster’s restaurant. Table prices start at about $1,300.
When Spangler reached college age, his family reached out and brought him back into the pool table business. He was working as a manager at a McDonald’s in St. Louis and struggling to fit classes into his busy schedule. The family business gave him more flexibility — and allowed him to learn nearly every aspect of the business from the ground up.
“I would go to college during the day and spend my nights working,” Spangler said. “It would be 2 a.m., and I would be in the showroom covering tables.”
Spangler said he also worked in the factory, sanding table legs and staining them.
“I kind of got thrown into the fire and did whatever they told me to do,” he said.
Then a wholesale customer in Des Moines, Iowa, asked Spangler to move there and become part of the sales team. He spent a year surviving the cold weather and learning all he could about the sales portion of the business before his family came calling once again.
Harold Schmidt and his son, Bob, owned and managed Jones Brothers and knew they would need a successor to the family business.
“My dad saw that there needed to be a succession. I have girls,” Bob Schmidt said, noting that many Schmidt women have worked in the family business along the way but that his three daughters are not interested in being part of the pool business.
It’s an opportunity Spangler could not turn down. His uncle who runs the St. Louis manufacturing company has three boys, all of whom are interested in joining the family business.
“This offered me a better chance of working my way into owning my own billiards business,” he said.
And Bob Schmidt said it means a lot to him to have a family member succeed him.
“There’s a lot of pride in the family with what they’ve done. That pride has been instilled in all of us,” he said, noting that the billiards business is a noble one that involves “dealing with the earth.” Everything from the wood the tables are made from, the slate that provides the surface, the wool that covers that surface, and the leather that forms the pockets comes from the earth, making pool an “organic game.”
And Spangler said he looks forward to carrying on the torch, even though he doesn’t count himself as an avid pool player (“I like to do things that I’m good at,” he said, laughing).
“It’s something you can look back on and be proud of. Your uncle or father built something, and I can take it to the next step. And my child could take it to the next level, if he wants to,” Spangler said.
One way Spangler said he is trying to grow the business is by forging relationships with Boys and Girls Clubs around the state. Used to, he said, people would walk into the store and, drawing on memories of their childhoods spent around the family pool table, anxiously search for just the right one to place in their own rec rooms. Nowadays, children aren’t raised on pool; they are raised on Nintendo and other electronic games.
“Pool is an ancient game in a modern society,” Spangler said.
The 3rd Degree
with James Spangler
What’s the most played song on your iPod?
Kenny Chesney, “Old Blue Chair”
What would you eat for your last meal?
Probably a Delmonico rib eye, loaded baked potato, Caesar salad, and an ice-cold Bud Light (bottle).
If we went out on Saturday night, where would we find you?
At home watching a movie with my wife.
Who would play you in a movie of your life?
A young Jackie Gleason.
What would be your super power?
I don’t know if it’s a super power or not, but I’d like to be able to teleport myself from one place to another.
Comments
Post a comment
(Requires free registration.)