(upbeat music) - Welcome to Business Forward, I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, Tony Stucker.

Tony is the president, CEO, he's the big guy of Pop-A-Shot, owner of Pop-A-Shot.

And you and your wife, Kelly, bought the business a few years back.

We'll get to that in a second, but really glad to have you on the show, welcome.

- Well great, well, thank you.

We're very excited to be in Peoria and I'm very excited to be here today.

- Well, we love Central Illinois and we're glad to have you.

So, well this is gonna be a fun show.

Just for our viewers, explain what Pop-A-Shot is.

Now I've played it a thousand times, if you'll explain it.

- Yeah, sure, so Pop-A-Shot is the original arcade basketball game.

So basically, you know, anytime someone sees any type of basketball game in an arcade, a home, bar, restaurant, whatever, Pop-A-Shot's kind of the generic term now.

It's, we're kind of the Kleenex of arcade basketball games, so-- - The Xerox, right?

- The Xerox, the cliques, the bandaid, whatever you wanna say, that's what everyone refers to.

So, Pop-A-Shot was started 40 years ago by a former college basketball coach in Kansas.

Came up with the name, the idea for the game, created it.

Back in the '80s and '90s, Pop-A-Shot was it.

Probably if you were playing any type of arcade basketball game anywhere, it probably was a Pop-A-Shot.

- Yes and it's a fun, fun game and, but it's fun for all ages.

- Right.

- This isn't just a kid's game.

- No, not at all.

And I think one of the great things about it is, from a basketball standpoint and really from every single point, it's kinda fair or equal for everyone.

You know, there's videos we've seen, you know, a few years ago, Kobe Bryant was on like the Jimmy Kimmel show or something.

And, you have this local dishwasher in LA, you know, cleaned his clock.

You know, some people say, well, yeah if you were Shaq or something like that, it'd be easy, cause you can make every basket.

That's probably true but, it really, to get a high score it really is more of a volume thing.

So actually in some ways, being tall and having long arms can be a negative.

- Yeah, it's actually speed.

- Yes.

- I mean, it's, you know, it's take the ball and shoot.

take the ball and so, and it's an art form.

- Yes.

- And so I don't think size really has anything to do with it.

- No, no, it's a skill and people improve, but yeah, you're right.

I mean, it's fun for everyone from, you know, it doesn't really matter as long as you're, you know, five, six years old and you kinda get the ball to the hoop.

After that, it's just, you know, anyone can play and does, it's pretty easy to play and fun.

- And you mentioned Kobe, but there's NBA guys, there's other athletes, they have em in their basements and houses and all that and everything.

It's all on the internet, you can see it's pretty cool.

That has to make you feel good that your product is in a lot of people's homes.

- Yeah, it is, it does.

And, you know, that's one of the things I tell people is, you know, we bought the company almost five years ago.

I bought it from the founder, Ken Cochran, who unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago.

But, I feel like a lot of ways we're kind of just, you know, we're kind of the caretakers of the Pop-A-Shot brand and all of that because yeah.

And it's great to hear people, whether they're playing for the first time or some people always say, you know, I'll get messages that they grew up playing, now their kids are playing.

And yeah, I feel, like I said, we, I did not invent the game, I didn't come up with it, but now I feel like, you know, we're kind of the, responsible for carrying on the legacy.

- And there's many, you've taken it to really another level too because you've put out more versions and it's not just that original version that you think of, right?

- Correct.

So going back to when Pop-A-Shot first started they were primarily the coin operated ones, the ones you see in bars and restaurants, that's really where they focused.

Back in like the late '90s, they kinda left that market.

Other players came in and now, except for a couple of rare examples, you're not gonna see an official Pop-A-Shot in any bar or restaurant, those are all other, you know, competitors.

When we bought the company, they were just making some high-end commercial great games, like for NBA teams and things like that.

We started introducing a home model because we went online when we were buying the company, saw on Amazon.

You type in Pop-A-Shot and again, it's kinda this generic term, no other company could call their game Pop-A-Shot and that's how people refer to it.

So we thought, well, you know, if we are Pop-A-Shot, we can make a game as good as theirs, you know, we think we can do well.

So, starting four years ago, we started making our first home version and subsequently, yeah, we've added a single version, an entry-level model, an outdoor version.

So, we've kind of continued and they're all basically the most popular games like on Amazon now, so.

- Wow, okay.

So I'ma get back into that in a second, but let's talk about you.

You've had different businesses obviously, and, you know I find it interesting.

When I was reading about you and your wife, Kelly, did you ever think you were gonna be in the basketball business?

- No, no, not at all.

My background was, I had a journalism degree, working in advertising, online ad sales, published a magazine for a while, nothing that was basketball related.

You know, and in fact, I tell people, I first discovered I was, it was about five years ago, I was working on an online ad company.

Just kind of the writing was on the wall, it was not gonna be a long-term thing.

So I started looking for businesses to possibly buy.

I went online and one day just put in a website, relocatable businesses and came up on Pop-A-Shot.

that's how I found it.

- Wow.

- And honestly, I did not know Pop-A-Shot was a company, I knew what it was, but I thought, again, it was just a generic term.

I did not know there was a Pop-A-Shot.

So, again, it was owned by the founder, he'd been trying to sell for a while, he hadn't been in great health, they really hadn't done much in the way of marketing, product development for a while.

So, I tell people kinda the good, the bad was, I was, you know, because they hadn't been doing real well, I was able to afford to buy the company.

But the other side was there was a lot of work to be done.

- Right.

But in a way, that's not a bad thing either.

- No, no.

- Because with your background, from, you know, from a marketing standpoint, you and your wife can sit there and put together the plan that you want without having somebody, I guess influence something that's already happened.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

So we're able to kinda start from scratch.

So, it was a challenge, but it was fun.

Everything from recreating the brand to the website, to the products and everything, it's been a lot of fun.

- I think it's pretty cool that the founder of this company, I mean, that's back in 1981.

And, you know, I'm 50 years old and I think, I've always remembered Pop-A-Shot, right.

And it's always just been just an iconic brand, started in Kansas, then you both purchased the company in 2016.

- Right.

- And, you move it to Peoria, Illinois.

What made you move a company from Kansas to Peoria, Illinois?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

People ask that.

When we bought the company, my initial thought was, well we'll move it to California where we live.

Well, we live in the San Francisco Bay area.

Everything from property to labor, everything is very expensive there.

And, so we decided, okay, makes more sense, let's leave in Kansas.

We have experienced people there, you know, it's much less expensive.

And instead of bringing the company to me, I'll go to the company.

So basically, you know, every month or so I would, you know, travel back to Kansas and do that.

After a couple of years after we started to grow the company, we realized that, it was in a small town called Salina, Kansas, right in the middle of state, about 40,000 population.

And, you know, it's a fine place but as we started looking for people with different skills, they just weren't available.

So, I thought okay, well, again, it's not gonna be probably cost-effective to move it to the West Coast, from a shipping standpoint, it makes sense to be somewhere in the middle of the country.

My wife Kelly is from Peoria, she grew up here, she still has family here, her dad, her sister, brother-in-law.

She went to Bradley, you know, I, we got married here, come here, you know, every year or so.

So I was very familiar with Peoria and it just kinda made sense.

And so on the trip here a couple of years ago, started looking at the warehouse district, I'd never really spent time there.

I'd previously lived in Chicago, love the old warehouses and things like that.

We looked around, eventually found one on Southwest Adams that we thought was perfect for us, bought that a couple of years ago and then just renovated it to be our offices.

- And Peoria couldn't be more, you know, they're, we're thrilled.

- Yes.

- We're thrilled to have another company and I think, you know, in looking at business right now with COVID, COVID probably really hasn't affected your business from a marketing or anything standpoint but it probably ups some sales because people are at home bored.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Right?

- Yeah we, COVID wasn't and, you know, I always hesitate cause obviously COVID was devastating to a lot of industries and businesses.

It did help us, you know, our primary customer now for our product are families, you know mostly kids at home.

So, anything from bad weather to, in this case COVID, anything that kinda keeps kids at home for parents looking for something for them to do, helps our business.

So, basically when things started shutting down last March, our sales took off.

And so March and April in the Spring were extremely strong for us.

- Yeah.

So Central Illinois, you've got your company based here now.

Are there other advantages of being here?

Shipping's one, you said.

Because it's not just shipping in the United States, you ship all over the world.

- Yeah, we're still very, very heavily domestic.

- Okay.

- We're looking definitely do much more cause basketball is obviously a global sport and growing everywhere.

But, you know, we're, there's still so much opportunity, growth in the U.S. that we really haven't looked at at international that much.

The other issue with international is just our game size.

It's fairly large, for most of our games and most of the world don't, you know, they don't live in houses the sizes we do.

You know, the kind, for us our best customers are people like in the Midwest East who have basements, put the game down there, you know, that.

So most of the world isn't like that, plus just the size of the shipping.

So, international is a huge, huge growth opportunity.

But, in Central Illinois, I think there's a number of things, in addition to just the geography.

I think from a kind of a workforce standpoint we have, there's amazingly talented people here.

Certainly, you know, CAD being here and whether CAD Alums or, you know, CAD family members, wherever, there's a lot of people here, you know, for an area this size, I think a lot of talented people.

You know Bradley and the universities here, I think, you know, so the level of talent and experience and stuff is much higher than you might expect for a city this size.

I think Illinois, you know, Peoria, Chicago are great basketball communities.

You know, one of the things too, it just kinda by chance, a lot of our partners from shipping and manufacturing stuff are in the Chicago area.

So, being that close to them is also helpful.

So whether, you know, to tag on a trip, you know, stop there either way.

So that, it's kind of perfect in a lot of ways for us.

- I was just visualizing just now you saying that.

So if you take Peoria and then Galesburg and champagne and Bloomington and then even go to Iowa and then go over to Indiana, Indiana is the hot bed.

So you've got three states right in a row that probably you do a lot of business.

And speaking of Central Illinois, you've got, you know, a heavy, heavy increase in medical too.

And so, you got, hopefully more people are moving.

- Yeah.

- I think that's the goal.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

No I think, you know, with the OSF, their new headquarters there just down the block from us, so yeah, we're excited.

- So any cool stories about the warehouse district?

Like when you're going through those buildings, I mean, your mind, having that artistic mind that you have, going through those buildings, tell me something.

- Yeah.

Well the very first building we looked at was and I've heard it pronounced different ways, the Schick or Schick Manufacturing, kitty corner from where we ended up.

Beautiful old four level building, like 40-some thousand square feet.

I knew it was much more than we needed but loved walking through and had an old conveyor belt from the lower level, the upper level, it didn't work.

And they, in the basement, there was a safe down there, huge walk-in safe that wasn't open, they didn't have the combination.

So, one of the things I was thinking is, okay, if we were to buy this building, do we do some type of, you know, old Geraldo type, you know.

- Like get Al Capone involved?

- Exactly.

We can start spreading stories that, you know, may be Capone was here and maybe this and that and then do, you know, maybe a live stream or something to help pay the cost, but-- - Oh yes, cool.

- Yeah, no, it was a needle building, but it was just, it was much more than we needed.

So, the one we got was our size.

But yeah, no, it's fascinating walking through some of these buildings, you know, the kind of, you'd see things and like what if, try to figure out what there was, you know.

Some are obvious, but a lot of em you can't really figure out, you know, what the pulley systems were for or things like that.

So a lot of great history.

- I think the history in all of Central Illinois is really cool.

And we're here to talk about Pop-A-Shot but the, I love that towns like Peoria are renovating areas.

I know there's others that are doing it too, but so, well welcome to Peoria.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

- Yeah I know you've been here a year, but welcome.

So, you touched on international and I wanna go back to that because I think it's very interesting when you look at, like what the NBA does.

The NBA markets internationally probably better than any sport out there that's tied to your brand Pop-A-Shot.

And, you know, I was just thinking as I was talking to you a couple of weeks ago setting up this talk, was like, China's gotta be huge.

And, you know, and I think the opportunities would be enormous piggybacking with NBA even though there's heavy trademarks and everything with NBA but there's gotta be something, right?

- Yeah, I know there are and in fact, it's interesting you mentioned the NBA.

We just, I lost track of time, I think it was last week, officially signed in agreement with the NBA.

So, we're actually going to be producing officially licensed games, we're just working on the mock-ups this week.

Hopefully, starting as early as mid to late January that we'll be selling the game.

So, we'll have a custom backboard board for each team.

We've been doing this with colleges where we have about 22 colleges we got licenses with, I think including Bradley.

So you can buy your official Pop-A-Shot Bradley game as well as, you know, 20 other schools.

But this will be our first professional league.

So you'll be able to buy, you know, Chicago Bulls or Celtics, Lakers, Warriors, whatever you want.

So, it's something we've been working on for a while, I think we've got to that point.

One of the things, you know, that was a key to moving here too in our space and everything was being able to do this type of printing in-house.

In Kansas, we did customization, we outsourced it.

When we moved here, it worked out perfectly, not only the space and, you know, bought the equipment, but we found someone who was, you know, had this printing background from Bloomington, hired him and he's been fantastic as a graphics person and printer.

And so, it enabled us to do everything from custom games, you know, we do a lot of things, we just did one for Coke right before the holidays.

We're working on like Bud Light, Labatt's now, Harpoon.

A lot of breweries do a lot of custom games, but, and then again, the licensed games, so it's a huge opportunity for us.

- Yeah.

You know I was just thinking, I might have to get my son the Chicago Bulls version, that's pretty cool.

- Yeah.

- Side note, what are one of the colleges that should top seller?

- I think, I'm trying to think who our top, well, our first deals were with the University of Kansas and Kentucky.

- Oh, wow.

- Yeah, we were in Kansas, Kentucky.

They also, it's a whole licensing thing but they worked with a couple of different companies so it made sense to kind of do those and they've been, you know, our top sellers, they were the first ones.

But subsequently we've added other ones, Michigan's been very strong, I think Ohio state, you know, we've gotten to the big schools, yeah, yeah.

So, you know, again, trying to find the alums and so, yeah.

- So, when you, I think, there's a lot of opportunity out there obviously but, how do you market a product like this when it is that generic name, so to speak, even though you own the real name?

You know, because, there's a lot of junk out there too.

Yours is quality.

- Right.

- But there's garbage.

- Yeah.

So we're really...

It is, you're right, it's kind of a double-edged sword.

The nice thing is that, you know, a lot of people online will search when they're going to Google or Amazon, where we'll search for Pop-A-Shot.

Again, that's how they just know the product.

So, you know, we come up there.

So that's, you know, we have a headstart on a lot of things, as opposed to, you know, the Acme Arcade basketball game or something.

You know, they shouldn't be, they see Pop-A-Shot, they look for it and there we are.

So that's an advantage.

I think beyond that, it's just, yeah, plain up the legacy, the brand, the trademark, the history, we try to put that in everything.

And yeah, I think also we try to make, I think our games are the best where we're not competing on price.

You know I tell people, sometimes I'll go into a Walmart or something and see a game that's on sale there for less than it costs us to make our game in China.

Obviously it's a very different type of game and so, we're not interested.

At some point, yeah, at the low price, it's all about production, logistics, things like that.

That's not our specialty, we really wanna make the best, most entertaining games, have great customer service.

That's another thing I think really sets us apart, is, you know, these are large games, a lot of moving pieces.

As much as we try to make it perfect, you know, things will get damaged in shipping, people have problems, things break, what have you.

So, our customer service is something we've really emphasized from the beginning.

And I'm really proud if you go on, look on Amazon or other review sites, how many people will say, yeah, there was an issue, but it, you know, Pop-A-Shot fixed it right away.

Because yeah, that's something, again, we really wanna stand behind our product and you know, it's a fun game and like, so we know that things can happen, but so we wanna be there to make sure it all works out.

- Isn't it amazing in today's world that online reviews drive a business and even 10 years ago, no one was even thinking about it, right?

- Exactly.

Exactly.

You know, their, I mean, their currency, it's extremely important.

Especially those initial ones, you know, right now our home DualShock, which we've been producing for a few years, I think we're up to around 2,000 reviews on Amazon.

And not to say that we don't care, obviously, especially if someone has a problem, we want to take care of them.

But, yeah at this point, any single review is not going to move the needle that much after 2,000 reviews.

But, those early ones yeah, you know, to, you know the number of stars you have or things like that, it's especially important cause, you know, I know I, myself, I always look at reviews.

- Right.

- And, it can be frustrating too.

I mean, that's a whole other thing, is, one of the more frustrating things is when people get our product and say was damaged in shipping, which happens.

You know, there's a backboard that's cracked or something, obviously it was a shipping issue.

It's very frustrating when some people's first reactions is to go on Amazon, write a review, give it one star and say, this isn't good.

- It stinks.

- Yeah.

And, you know, without giving us a chance to fix it first, but that's another discussion - What's the, for every hundred that are shipped, how many do you, how many get banged up in shipping?

- Not that many in shipping, you know, there might be a couple, we've gotten better at protecting the backboards and things like that.

But, you know, we've got electronic sensors, most of our games use infrared sensors for scoring, they can be kind of tricky.

Sometimes the insulation, you know, the, even the, plugging em into the electronics and things.

So things can go wrong.

No, we don't have a huge problem of shipping, but, you know, even there's just sometimes user error.

We've tried to, you know, make our directions as clear as possible, have you know, troubleshooting things, but still we'll get people, they put the nets on upside down or this and that.

Yeah.

And so, and I understand all that.

Like I said, there's, you know, it's what it is.

So we try to be, as, you know, hopefully share as much information as possible, but realize this is gonna happen.

- Yeah.

So arcades, when I was a kid, you'd go play, go to the arcade with a roll of quarters and you'd have fun.

Are arcades, just the thing of the past now?

- I don't think so.

So, you know, we don't make any games now for arcades, everything we're doing for the home.

We want to get back in arcades with a Pop-A-Shop brand.

And in the past couple of years I've been working with, it's a very different market, the product and the marketing, everything is very different from what we're doing.

So, we had talked to some arcade companies, companies that make games specifically for arcades about, you know, props, licensing deals and things like that.

I know just from these relationships that, you know, up until a year ago, when the pandemic struck, they were having a positive, good businesses ever.

You know, some of em were telling me that, you know, in 2019 they had record-setting revenue profits, things like that, so things were great.

Obviously this is, you know, the pandemic basically kinda brought their business to a halt.

Not only did everything shut down, there've been a lot of bankruptcies, closures, things like that.

I really, I think there will be a bounce back, I think in places like Dave and Buster's where it's kind of a restaurant, you know, eatery.

There's some other brands like that smaller ones and things like that.

I think it's definitely people still want to go out and experience it.

May not be the classic kind of arcade maybe that we remember as kids, where it's just a bunch of video games right next to each other in a small space.

It might be again, more entertainment.

I think, you know, virtual reality, there's a lot to be done there.

Places like Topgolf, I don't know if you're familiar with that with the golf, you know, places where it's kind of an entertainment, dining, drinking, you know, I think there's a lot of things there, so-- - I wasn't even thinking of Topgolf, might be a big one.

- Yeah, there's a lot of, yeah, a lot of opportunities.

So, we're now starting to look at perhaps doing some out of home games, you know, arcade cup games ourselves for the coming year so that when hopefully the market does open up, you know, perhaps next year, we can start jumping in there.

- You have a relationship with Bradley University with the Turner School of Entrepreneurship.

We had, Bill McDowell was on our show a few weeks ago and he leads that.

But, what projects, what would you work with Bradley on?

- So, they've been helpful, when we first moved here, got in touch with them and started working.

They had provided some research and data just on markets and that.

Last Spring, a year ago, we did a, I worked with a class there, a senior class on international marketing.

You know, that's one of the things both in Kansas and here, anytime there's a group of a class that wants to do some type of project, we're always, you know, helpful for anyone to think about it.

I tell people, as opposed to some industries where there's a lot of people, you know, a lot of high tech industries, you've got a lot of people professionally around the world thinking about things.

- Right.

- When it comes to arcade basketball, there probably aren't many.

So, a college class, you know, there could be, you know, half a dozen students who have never even thought about arcade basketball.

You know, they can become experts very quickly cause again, it's not a lot of people thinking about it.

- It's so cool.

- So we worked with a class there that identified what they thought were the top markets for us to go into internationally, so that was very helpful.

Yeah, the COVID happened and we weren't able to quite, to meet at the end, but they did a fantastic job.

So I could see doing things like that.

You know, hopefully those kind of real-world things help us and help students too, to kind of think about real-world things.

I think, you know, in terms of that, you know, is we do product development.

I would love to continue working with Bradley, with students or what have you to talk about, you know, again, for any type of thinking, they might be able to provide, we provide real world, you know, immediate feedback.

So, and then I think, you know, as we start to hopefully export more, I think there's a lot of opportunities there.

Again, that's a huge area for us that's, we just don't know much about.

So, I know Bradley and Turner and everyone have a lot of resources there, so we could tap into that.

- There's a lot of good schools around here in Illinois state, in Eureka and ICC and so on.

And so, you've got a lot of just potential there to tap into.

- Right.

- How many, do you have staff here right now?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So we have 10 people here full-time in our warehouse.

We have a couple that work a couple part-time, a couple of remote.

But yeah, we're looking to grow and I tell people and anyone viewing this, we're always looking for smart people.

You know, we've got some specific roles in sales, marketing, things like that.

But just also, you know, someone who wants to hopefully join up a fast growing company and, you know, we all wear many hats.

You know, I tell people this isn't, we're kind of the opposite.

You know, I, for instance, CAD, you know, God bless him, you know, by a huge company like that.

For the most part, when you get hired at CAD, you probably have a pretty good idea of what your role is and what it will be in your career path.

With us, we're not exactly sure, again, yeah, we just bought this five years ago.

Yeah, what we hire people for specific roles, but there's just a world of things.

I mentioned international, I mean, it could be within a couple of years we have a staff of people who were working just on international that don't exist now.

So, you know, we look for, again, people, you know, smart, ambitious, hardworking people who, you know, are willing to kind of think outside the box and wear multiple hats and roll up their sleeves and-- - Well and what's cool about it too is, you bring your business here, it's greatly appreciated because I think all of us love Central Illinois.

Illinois gets a bad rap a lot of times, but there's just a lot of good people here and there's a lot of good opportunity here.

So, I appreciate you coming on the show.

This is, we could talk more, this is a very, very fun topic.

Thank you Tony Stucker, Pop-A-Shot.

What a, I'm buying one.

(laughs) I'm getting a Chicago Bulls for my son.

- We'll take care of that for you.

- All right.

Well, I appreciate it, I'm Matt George and this is Business Forward.

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