The first BullShooter Regional tourney of the season was hosted Sept. 9-11 at the Park Inn by the Radisson in Kissimmee, Fla., kicking off the annual Arachnid dart tour with a bang. The event was co-sponsored by the factory’s distributors in the region: Betson Florida, Brady Starburst and Legacy Coin. Over 300 players came from Tennessee, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Florida and as far off as Hawaii to compete. Eleven main events were hosted from Saturday to Sunday with a Luck of the Draw event on Friday night. All events were double elimination and organizers said the tournament ran well with many…
Author: RePlay Editor
Community Hubs Creating a Fair Social Experience Benefits Your Locations & the Industry by Howard McAuliffe, Partner, Pinnacle Entertainment Group The marketplace for Family Entertainment Centers is growing significantly, which is great news for us. I believe that to keep this momentum going, it’s important that we make sure we’re operating at the highest level possible for individual profitability, as well as our collective brand. In order to create really great facilities, it’s important to understand the difference in overall philosophy between creating an attraction vs. capitalizing on high traffic with the goal of getting as much money from the…
When is Good Enough “Good Enough”? Thoughts on the “If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It” Mentality by Jack Guarnieri, Jersey Jack Pinball & PinballSales.com On a recent wonderful warm evening, my wife Joanne and I took a ride to a popular ice cream shop that’s “Down The Shore.” The place was packed and we went in to take a number. Ours was number 6 and they were calling number 22 so we had 83 people ahead of us. Still the waiting is part of the “experience.” I believe all of us in business observe and try to learn from…
Gala & Meeting Time AAMA Chief Honors John Schultz & Salutes New, Energized Leadership Q: What will the highlights of the coming AAMA Meeting and Gala be? A: Clearly at the top will be honoring John Schultz with the Lifetime Achievement Award (but keep reading because there’s a lot happening on top of that). I’ve reflected a lot on John and his lifetime of work that we’re honoring. He’s spent 45 years in the industry in a variety of positions, and he’s played a huge role in the turnaround of the AAMA over the last seven years. As an example, when…
HAPP-y 30th Anniversary Parts Powerhouse Has Grown from Garage to Global There are a lot of analogies in business about the spark of an idea and how it grows to something much bigger –– the acorn to a mighty oak, the ripple to a wave, and so on. But in the amusement industry, you might actually start saying something “Happ-ened” to indicate how a company grew from a small, family business into a multinational operation. July marked the 30-year anniversary of a parts supplier that has become a staple in the amusement industry: SUZOHAPP North America. Originally “Happ Controls,” a…
Editorial Well, unless you’ve been taking a dirt nap, you’re aware of an amusement trend sweeping the planet called Pokemon Go! At the time I write this, it hasn’t any monetary bearing on coin-op other than pulling young people away from the game centers so they can roam the streets looking at their smart phones for what they call “hotspots.” And, as most folks (including this game’s players) would agree, this is probably just one more fad (albeit one that took off like a dry brush fire). Everyone can, however, agree that this is a super-clever use of an existing…
How Smart Stayed Smart for Over 50 Years A Constant Eye on the Future Helps Maintain the Company’s Simple Truth: “It’s Always Worth the Cost of Producing Quality Product” Smart Industries has come a long way since its beginning as a mobile menagerie of arcade and other amusement machines that traveled from town to town in the 1960s. The company that Jeff Smart runs, and his late father Gordon founded, is now headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, and since 1985, Smart Industries has been developing and manufacturing cranes and a wide variety of other amusement machines. The many years of…
Redemption: Is It Art or Science? The Balance that Creates Success Starts with the Fundamentals By George McAuliffe, Chief FEC Strategist, Redemption Plus I’ve seen a lot of tools and trends come and go in my time in the FEC business. Debit card systems have been the single, highest-positive-impact innovation in all of those years (IMHO). So I thought that we’d explore that impact with a cross section of game and FEC operators in this column, asking what the top benefits have been in switching over to debit cards. Andy Bartholomy, aka Andy B, is a leader in the bowling…
Non-Stop Learning Gaines Butler on Upcoming AMOA Plans Q: What’s your takeway after attending the many state association meetings? A: For most of us operators, our perspective on the coin-op universe is largely shaped by the geographic limits of our routes. It’s where we spend most of our time, our energy, our focus and other resources. Many of us get a couple or maybe a few glimpses of what lies beyond our home turf each year when we attend events such as the AAMA-AMOA Amusement Expo, the State Council meeting or some other industry gathering. When I was elected AMOA president…
Editorial A well-known U.S. senator is loyally supporting one of his party’s current candidates by suggesting that their campaign people get to work improving the voting public’s “perception” of the person. By using marketing techniques, he’d like to alter what many of the voters in that particular candidate’s jurisdiction have already judged him to be, which, according to a lot of chatter on the media, has been largely negative. As someone said, trying to alter the voters’ perception of this person is like painting an outhouse white and hanging a “nice room for rent” sign on the door. Gratefully, most…