Kurt Immler says he owes his fortune to the fact that he grew up around the corner from a bowling alley.
“My life revolved around shooting pool and bowling, and it still does today,” he says.
Immler was almost 20 when he started working at Brunswick Charger Lanes in Norton, owned by Chicago-based Brunswick Corp. — a multifaceted company that manufacturers high quality recreational products and operates bowling, fitness and entertainment centers across the country.
“I started at Brunswick Charger Lanes as a porter and slowly moved up from working behind the counter to being counter supervisor to bookkeeper to overseeing day-to-day operations,” he says.
The pay, he confides with a chuckle, left a lot to be desired. But Immler declares that he couldn’t have paid for a better education in business administration.
“You don’t think that working at a bowling alley would be a great life experience that would move you on to bigger and better things,” he says. “But that was the most well-rounded education I could ever have in the workplace.”
Immler learned product rental and retail sales by renting and selling bowling shoes, balls, bags and billiard tables. He mastered the food and bar industry by way of the alley’s full-service snack bar and pub. And since machines constantly broke down, he became a mechanic as well.
“That gives you a lot of insight into so many customer situations. When I look back on that, it really was a priceless education. I worked for Brunswick for about eight years, and I went from bowling to billiards,” he laughs.
In 1992, Immler met an enterprising entrepreneur named Rick Johnson, who in the late ’80s had established Ohio Billiards in Wooster. Johnson hired Immler as a salesman and installer, and within three years, Immler was bringing in so much business from the Stark County area that Johnson decided to move the company to its current 2,900-square-foot showroom at 4627 Everhard Road NW, near North Canton’s Belden Village.
By that time, Johnson had become so absorbed with his other entrepreneurial ventures that he relied upon Immler to run Ohio Billiards. Then, in early 1995, he approached Immler with an incredible proposition.
“He offered to sell me the business for the cost of the inventory only. Considering the reputation and customer base we’d already built for Ohio Billiards, it was truly the opportunity of a lifetime,” says Immler. “I pulled together all the collateral I had, went to the bank and convinced them to give me a loan — and I bought the business in April 1995 for $120,000.”
Since then, Immler has tripled sales from the $350,000 figure on the books when he bought the company.
“I almost topped a million last year, and I’m on the page to go over a million this year,” he says, noting that the company has since become Ohio Billiards LLC and now employs six people.
Coincidentally, says Immler, Brunswick manufactures all the pool tables he sells, and Ohio Billiards is among the Top 10 Brunswick dealers in the country.
“I choose to be an exclusive Brunswick dealer because I believe it’s the best pool table on the market. But what’s so crazy about it is that, here I was, a former employee of Brunswick, and now, I’m one of their biggest customers,” he says.
Immler confides that there’s great satisfaction in that, because now Brunswick treats him as if he’s royalty. But it’s also changed his perspective, in many ways. Specifically, since he’s become an entrepreneur, he pays greater attention to how his supplier handles issues ranging from cost effective and efficient operations, to customer service and worker retention.
“Now that I’m a business owner, I’m more aware of how other companies make use of their resources,” he says. “For example, in the past, we would get four or five different UPS shipments a day from our vendor, but we wouldn’t need all those parts immediately. I suggested that Brunswick ship everything in one semi-load with our billiard tables. Cutting down on little things like that could do so much to cut costs.”
Immler says he’s delighted that his former employer is making positive changes that every company should make.
“They’ve become increasingly more efficient and more customer responsive because they’ve started listening to their customers — the dealers that are on the front lines selling their products directly to the public,” Immler says. “One way they’ve done that is by forming what they call the Billiard Council, comprised of dealers from around the country. They take us to Florida, put us in a room and we brainstorm together to find ways to do things better.
“Brunswick also shares their ideas with us about what they’d like to do, and they ask for our opinions.”
Immler says he’s thrilled that Brunswick has also implemented cooperative advertising programs for its dealers, based on sales volume. Last year, that added about $20,000 to his advertising budget.
“To me, that was an excellent decision on Brunswick’s part, because the most important change I made when I took over this business was to increase my advertising budget — and the use of advertising has made my business triple in size,” he says, noting that he favors print, radio and television advertising. “As I’ve increased my advertising every year for five straight years, I’ve watched gross sales increase in double-digit performance for the last three years alone.”
Most of all, Immler confides, he’s become more sensitive to how Brunswick and other companies treat their customers and their employees — specifically, how workers are compensated and valued.
“A lot of suppliers go out of their way to try to keep their customers happy, and yet they don’t necessarily treat their own people that way, which is unfortunate,” he says. “I would urge every company to treat employees just as well as they do their customers.”
Revisiting his memories at the bowling alley where it all began, Immler frowns when recalling his meager paycheck at Brunswick Charger Lanes. But he credits his former supervisors for giving him opportunities to learn.
“When I think about where I’m at right now in my life, I know that I’m very lucky,” he says. “I got a great education for free and I got a break that a lot of people never get. I had some managers that had faith in me, giving me the opportunity to keep moving up the ladder. That means a lot to any employee. It still means a lot to me.”
Concluding that it all worked out for the best, Immler reveals that he recently expanded his business to include pinball machines, video games and bar-top trivia games — and now, he owns those recreational games installed at Charger Lanes.
“It’s really kind of neat because one week’s profit from those machines, which I split with Brunswick, is more than what I earned in a month as an employee there,” he says.
“But then, if I’d never worked there, I probably wouldn’t be here today.” How to reach: Ohio Billiards, (330) 499-7665
