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http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/mar2005/sb20050331_4850_sb040.htmPortrait of a Pinball Wizard
Gary Stern entered the business early. Now, as the owner of the sole surviving machine manufacturer, he's the only game in town
Most entrepreneurs dream of building a successful company and one day eliminating the competition. For Gary Stern, that dream became a reality. As president and owner of Stern Pinball, he presides over the planet's sole surviving pinball-machine manufacturer.
In 1932, there were an estimated 150 pinball-machine makers worldwide. Today, Stern Pinball stands alone. Based in Melrose Park, Ill., about 10 miles west of Chicago, Stern has been the only game in town since its remaining competition folded in 1999, making Gary Stern -- its silver-haired, pinball-tie-wearing Willy Wonka of sorts -- the only person keeping this piece of Americana from extinction. "If we ever quit," he says, "that will be the end of pinball."
The game, developed in Chicago around the time of the Great Depression, has come down to this: A single privately held company with 56 full-time employees and revenue of just over $30 million that puts out three or four new models a year. The entire world's supply of new coin-operated pinball machines is limited to the roughly 10,000 that roll off the Stern assembly line each year.
"IT'S KISMET." Stern has been around bumpers and flippers nearly his entire life. In 1961, at age 16, he began working as a stock boy for Williams Electronics Games, a Chicago-based pinball manufacturer. His father, who got his own start in the 1930s as a game operator, ultimately founded Stern Electronics in 1976, and father and son ran the business together, after Gary's stint as an attorney.
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