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Ep 155: Is American Being Sued? with David Fix
17 Plays3 months ago
David Fix comes on the show to give us a status update about American Pinball which includes: lawsuit, lay offs, new game, and more.
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Transcript
Introduction and New Pinball Machines
00:00:07
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Loser King Pinball Podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
I am Josh Rook.
00:00:10
Speaker
With me, my co-captain.
00:00:11
Speaker
Scott Larson.
00:00:13
Speaker
And we are on episode 155.
00:00:14
Speaker
We've got an awesome episode today.
00:00:16
Speaker
But Scott, before we get to our guest for today, new pinballs coming out.
00:00:22
Speaker
Where are you going to be buying your machines?
00:00:23
Speaker
You know, new pinballs are coming out.
00:00:24
Speaker
And I'm looking across my screen at my new Metallica.
00:00:29
Speaker
And I just ordered...
00:00:30
Speaker
some accessories for it.
00:00:32
Speaker
So I'm getting the topper and you know what, people can love it or hate it, but I hear it looks really great in person.
Recommendations for Pinball Purchases
00:00:37
Speaker
So I did get the topper and I have some shaker motors and I have some other stuff on board.
00:00:42
Speaker
So including if you want actual, if you want pinball machines, if you want used pinball machines, if you want the new latest and greatest,
00:00:50
Speaker
or if you just want to bling up your machine, we know that Zach and Nicole Mini are always helpful with what you need.
00:00:58
Speaker
Easiest way to get a hold of them is actually to message them, but they do have a phone number.
00:01:04
Speaker
I usually get a hold of Zach on Facebook Messenger.
00:01:07
Speaker
But they do have a phone.
00:01:08
Speaker
They have a website.
00:01:09
Speaker
So flipping out pinball, definitely reach out to them and they will hook you up.
00:01:14
Speaker
Definitely.
Rumors and Legal Issues at American Pinball
00:01:15
Speaker
So our guest that's joining us right now, he reached out to us a couple of days ago, said he wanted to come on and talk about some stuff.
00:01:21
Speaker
I know that there's been a lot of rumors floating around about American pinball itself.
00:01:24
Speaker
We don't know if a new reveal is on the horizon.
00:01:27
Speaker
There's just so many questions and there's so much information floating around.
00:01:31
Speaker
And David Fix wanted to come on and talk about this stuff.
00:01:34
Speaker
And I mean, there was even kind of a bomb dropped last night that you were telling us about.
00:01:39
Speaker
I kind of want to let's just get right into it.
00:01:41
Speaker
Let's go with Paul Reno, who was the co-designer for Galactic Tank Force, I guess is now suing American Pinball.
00:01:48
Speaker
Is that right?
00:01:49
Speaker
Well, I can't go into much details about the lawsuit or what's going on about it, but I'll just tell you that we are already in communications.
00:01:58
Speaker
We've been with him.
00:02:00
Speaker
It's kind of like just cleaning up some other details that needed to be cleaned up.
00:02:07
Speaker
Let's take
American Pinball's Legal and Contractual Structure
00:02:08
Speaker
a step back here for a second.
00:02:09
Speaker
I'll explain how this works a little bit because everybody thinks that American Pinball is Dave Fix and I'm the chief cook and bottle washer, as it were.
00:02:19
Speaker
As it works here with American Pinball, I am the executive vice president of American Pinball, but I'm over the R&D and the production department.
00:02:28
Speaker
The accounting department, HR, is still being run by Amtron, which is our parent corporate.
00:02:36
Speaker
So they take care of all the deals and contracts, and Amtron has its own in-house lawyer who takes care of all the contracts with all the employees and all external employees.
00:02:49
Speaker
So somebody like Paul Reno and Dennis, who made up Wingding to bring the game to American Pinball, they're an outside entity.
00:02:58
Speaker
Okay,
Internal Roles and Production Challenges
00:02:59
Speaker
so they dealt directly with Amtron.
00:03:02
Speaker
All right, so if they're having problems, of course, who's the parent company?
00:03:07
Speaker
It's Amtron.
00:03:08
Speaker
American Pinballs, me, you know, and the rest of the guys.
00:03:11
Speaker
But there's divisions that are run pretty much by Aintron.
00:03:16
Speaker
So if accounting goofs up or they don't do the paperwork correctly or something is amiss, they're going to come after us.
00:03:24
Speaker
And in this case, there were some discrepancies that need to be cleaned up.
00:03:30
Speaker
And they, I didn't even know about it until it was on the thing last night.
00:03:36
Speaker
I guess everybody at AIMTRON got the emails about it the day of the filing.
00:03:43
Speaker
reached out to Paul.
00:03:44
Speaker
We've been talking already.
00:03:46
Speaker
I brought the horses back in the corral kind of thing and just like, you know, let's start talking and let's get to an amicable situation and figure this out.
00:03:55
Speaker
Paul and Dennis are old friends.
00:03:57
Speaker
I mean, I know Dennis has had some, you know,
00:04:01
Speaker
times that he's not with us right now.
00:04:03
Speaker
He's been laid off.
00:04:05
Speaker
But, you know, Dennis does have a couple designs with us and not only with us, but other companies too.
00:04:10
Speaker
So that also, because it's contract goes through Amtron, which is the company that takes care of it.
00:04:19
Speaker
So Bharat, who is their legal counsel, he's the one that would be doing all the contracts with the other employees.
00:04:28
Speaker
So it's kind of a weird thing because I know Dennis was like, I want a contract.
00:04:34
Speaker
I want this.
00:04:34
Speaker
I'm like, okay, deal with Barat.
00:04:36
Speaker
You guys set it up.
00:04:37
Speaker
Barat set this up.
00:04:39
Speaker
You guys have to deal with finance.
00:04:41
Speaker
So it's out of my hands.
00:04:43
Speaker
It's more in their hands to deal with stuff.
00:04:46
Speaker
So that's...
00:04:48
Speaker
Go ahead.
00:05:19
Speaker
what you're telling us is facts, essentially.
00:05:22
Speaker
So pinball news, and I have to go back and listen to it, but I pretty much said that under my impression that he was still supposed to be dealing with Barat,
00:05:31
Speaker
on the contract with that basis.
00:05:33
Speaker
Now, I don't know the standings of that, because it's every quarter that I sometimes get to see the man, and he's legal counsel for this entire company.
00:05:44
Speaker
So, you know, it's not like I can just like drop in his office and say, hey, where are we with this?
00:05:49
Speaker
You know, I can send him emails, but he also has tons of emails and he's answering to Amtron,
00:05:56
Speaker
And the CEO all the time, Mukesh, on that.
00:05:59
Speaker
So there's sometimes I get pushed to the side, which, you know, I'm only allowed to do what I can do besides that.
00:06:09
Speaker
Looking at the, and I have to listen to the podcast again, but at that time, we were under the understanding that Dennis would be under contract.
00:06:19
Speaker
And would come back at some later date to finish his game because right now the entire department at American Pinball is focusing on the next game, which was not Dennis' game.
00:06:31
Speaker
I do have the quote.
Market Position and Sales Strategies
00:06:32
Speaker
Do you want me to hear it?
00:06:34
Speaker
It says verbatim from the May 2024 pinball news interview.
00:06:38
Speaker
Dennis is not a young guy.
00:06:39
Speaker
He kind of came to us and was like, you know, I could be doing better by, you know, being home a little bit more and being this and the other thing.
00:06:46
Speaker
And we kicked it around a couple of times and he said, Hey, this is what I want to do.
00:06:50
Speaker
You had said, we want to lay you off.
00:06:53
Speaker
We want to put you on contract basis.
00:06:57
Speaker
We want to build your game.
00:06:58
Speaker
It's not the hot priority right now.
00:06:59
Speaker
It's not shelved.
00:07:01
Speaker
It's either other little things that can be done.
00:07:04
Speaker
Let's talk about this and have a contract made up.
00:07:06
Speaker
We'll do this on a contract basis.
00:07:08
Speaker
And if you're open to it, we can come and do what we need to do.
00:07:15
Speaker
But I got to kind of lay you off from the day to day.
00:07:19
Speaker
And Norman had replied saying that essentially you came to him saying, hey, they offered me a contract, but it wasn't what we originally agreed upon.
00:07:27
Speaker
And I was told if I didn't accept it, I would be terminated.
00:07:31
Speaker
So he wasn't terminated.
00:07:32
Speaker
In fact, I was in the meeting and I told him that we were waiting on the contract and I told him that he was being laid off at the time.
00:07:39
Speaker
in fact it was funny because well not funny but it's just you know yeah he came to us and said hey i'm not my game's not the next game can i go on a contract i'd rather be working at home i'm not coming in all this time so that kind of opened the door which i then threw upstairs and of course they were like yeah that's fine let's put them on contract and and i'm like
00:08:02
Speaker
okay, you guys have to deal with this because that's not my mine in the sand.
00:08:06
Speaker
You know, it's not like I have enough on my plate than sit here and go through all the squabbles of contracts with people.
00:08:14
Speaker
So that's, and that's what the lawyers, that's what the lawyer in-house legal team handles for Amtron.
00:08:20
Speaker
They do all the contracts.
00:08:22
Speaker
So,
00:08:23
Speaker
He came to us.
00:08:24
Speaker
He said that.
00:08:25
Speaker
Yes, I said, let's make up a contract.
00:08:28
Speaker
Deal with them.
00:08:29
Speaker
Deal with Nermal.
00:08:30
Speaker
Deal with the rest of the team.
00:08:32
Speaker
And get this set up.
00:08:35
Speaker
That's where I left it.
00:08:36
Speaker
He...
00:08:38
Speaker
If he didn't like the contract, he could continue discussing it with them.
00:08:42
Speaker
But at this time, the project was on hold.
00:08:45
Speaker
It's sitting in the lab.
00:08:46
Speaker
We've gotten some new parts in that were ordered.
00:08:49
Speaker
We've put it up.
00:08:50
Speaker
We've been building and working on it here and there, but it's not flippable at this moment.
00:08:56
Speaker
So we're really on a holding pattern with where we're going to continue with this game.
00:09:03
Speaker
So I do have a question with American Pinball.
00:09:06
Speaker
So
00:09:07
Speaker
The lifeblood of a company is manufacturing and shipping product.
00:09:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:15
Speaker
Now, American Pinball is not a young company.
00:09:18
Speaker
They're in this transition zone.
00:09:22
Speaker
I will argue, though, I don't see a lot of sales from the last two titles in
00:09:29
Speaker
And eventually to keep the doors open, to keep the lights on, you have to move product because that's really where that, how you keep a company alive.
00:09:38
Speaker
Now with other companies, they have parallel development.
00:09:42
Speaker
So you have one, one machine that's coming out, one machine that's behind, and sometimes they get swapped because we saw another company do just that recently where something wasn't ready.
00:09:55
Speaker
Now, they still are having all those people on staff and having them parallel development.
00:10:01
Speaker
So why is American Pinball a little different in that, you know, are you not able to generate the same volume?
00:10:08
Speaker
Are you not able to meet the same schedule?
00:10:12
Speaker
I'm really trying to understand where American Pinball fits into the company perspective of all other companies.
00:10:20
Speaker
So we're a small company.
00:10:22
Speaker
That's the first thing.
00:10:24
Speaker
We have a small budget.
00:10:25
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:26
Speaker
I mean, that's another key word right there.
00:10:29
Speaker
I know you're talking about another company which had a switch games and then brought out another game.
00:10:34
Speaker
I would love to have five or six games sitting in the lab just waiting to be released whenever I felt like it.
00:10:41
Speaker
I don't have the luxury of that.
00:10:43
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:43
Speaker
So I have a very small team.
00:10:45
Speaker
I have Sophia Ryan, who's my mechanical engineer.
00:10:48
Speaker
She has a couple juniors sitting over in India.
00:10:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:52
Speaker
And then I got Ryan McQuaid, who is the designer.
00:10:56
Speaker
And then Dennis was a designer.
00:10:58
Speaker
I have one person in art right now.
00:11:01
Speaker
I had another person in art.
00:11:04
Speaker
And I have one and a half software engineers and one rules guy.
00:11:10
Speaker
So at the end of the day, it's all hands on deck, right?
00:11:15
Speaker
This is a passion of love for everybody in this company.
00:11:18
Speaker
Um, so I know what you're talking about.
00:11:20
Speaker
If you're talking about a company that is huge, like the monster that I call it down the street, uh, we saw just recently, and I'm going to, I'm going to give kudos and,
00:11:31
Speaker
Good jobs.
00:11:32
Speaker
And I want to say to Jack Danger, I love his Uncanny X-Men.
00:11:35
Speaker
I played it at Expo.
00:11:37
Speaker
I've played it elsewhere.
00:11:38
Speaker
It's probably a game I want to buy.
00:11:41
Speaker
It's a really nice shooting game.
00:11:43
Speaker
And we saw at Expo what a big company like that can do.
00:11:49
Speaker
Sometimes the competition, to quote George Gomez, sometimes the competition is not down the street.
00:11:57
Speaker
It's across the hall.
00:11:59
Speaker
So you saw Uncanny X-Men come out, and it's a big enough company that within three weeks, they brought out Metallica.
00:12:07
Speaker
And, you know, that's kind of crazy, right?
00:12:11
Speaker
Usually there's a couple weeks, quite a few weeks that come out and the game gets, you know, developed.
00:12:17
Speaker
So, but I love Uncanny X-Men.
00:12:19
Speaker
It's a great playing game.
00:12:21
Speaker
You know, I'm a pinball fan, right?
00:12:23
Speaker
I'm fan first.
00:12:24
Speaker
I have a ton of games, you know, I love them.
00:12:28
Speaker
I just kind of made a deal with my wife.
00:12:31
Speaker
I'm buying a James Bond premium.
00:12:34
Speaker
I like it.
00:12:35
Speaker
You know, I'm a big Bond fan.
00:12:37
Speaker
I have Sterns.
00:12:37
Speaker
I have Americans, you know, that kind of thing.
00:12:39
Speaker
So it's not just like I'm like just, you know, I'm live and breathe American.
00:12:44
Speaker
I mean, you go in my basement here in Chicago.
00:12:49
Speaker
I don't even have an American game down there yet.
00:12:51
Speaker
going to put one down there.
00:12:52
Speaker
There's a galactic going in there, but that's down the road.
00:12:57
Speaker
But big enough companies can make that maneuvering.
00:13:02
Speaker
You've got to remember they also have huge manufacturing lines, and that line has to be fed.
00:13:10
Speaker
Okay, so if you are making X amount of games, you got to feed that monster, which is all the personnel on the line, all the parts coming in.
00:13:21
Speaker
That game has to be made.
00:13:22
Speaker
That has to be get out.
00:13:24
Speaker
And the sales have to be there, right?
00:13:25
Speaker
So if you go from one and the sales are bad, then they're going to scramble because they got to keep that monster fed.
00:13:32
Speaker
They've built so many games.
00:13:34
Speaker
Sales hasn't turned around.
00:13:35
Speaker
They're going to put on another game.
00:13:37
Speaker
I can't do that.
00:13:38
Speaker
Now, what I did do this year is that we've been selling a lot of our back catalog.
00:13:43
Speaker
We've been making a lot of Hot Wheels, a lot of Houdini still.
00:13:47
Speaker
We built and sold.
00:13:50
Speaker
We have three limiteds from the, as of today, three limiteds of the barbecue left.
00:13:56
Speaker
And I only have two of the standard versions of barbecue left in the building.
00:14:01
Speaker
So that is already scheduled for 2025 because we went through the whole buildup on that and so forth.
00:14:09
Speaker
It's funny to me, Scott, too, is that you might look at people in the industry or the collectors and go, oh, you know, I all have, you know, these Metallicas, right?
00:14:19
Speaker
But there are other markets in this.
00:14:22
Speaker
And I don't want to quote somebody, but there's a three-legged stool, right?
00:14:26
Speaker
There's this one, that one, and this one.
00:14:28
Speaker
Well, the coin-op market, which is like Iapa and whatnot, we sell a lot of games there.
00:14:33
Speaker
So there's locations that have very old barbecue in them.
00:14:39
Speaker
So we have that.
00:14:40
Speaker
We also, earlier this year, right around end of September, October, just before Expo, we signed a deal to help a company called Polycade.
00:14:54
Speaker
And I'm happy to say that we've been working with Polycade for the last three months.
00:15:00
Speaker
We have
00:15:01
Speaker
brought in and shipped over 1,000 Polycade units out of our facility up until just recently.
00:15:08
Speaker
Actually, we're over 1,000 heading to, I want to say 1,200 this coming week.
00:15:15
Speaker
So there's a goal for the company.
00:15:16
Speaker
We've been moving a lot of stuff, plus the pinballs.
00:15:19
Speaker
We've been at different shows, so we've been moving.
00:15:22
Speaker
But you've got to be multifaceted, right?
00:15:24
Speaker
So if you're a big company like Stern,
00:15:27
Speaker
You're going to have many other games that you can bring out at a different time frame and bring out these games where they need to be to fit in.
00:15:34
Speaker
I mean, think about it.
00:15:35
Speaker
You saw, what did we see it from Stern this year?
00:15:38
Speaker
We saw John Wick.
00:15:40
Speaker
We saw then Godzilla Black and White.
00:15:43
Speaker
Then we saw the home edition of Jurassic Park at all the... Costco.
00:15:49
Speaker
Costco, yeah.
00:15:50
Speaker
And then we saw Uncanny X-Men, Metallica.
00:15:54
Speaker
And now we're going to probably see another game...
00:15:57
Speaker
Maybe in the next few weeks.
00:15:59
Speaker
So that production lines there is massive and they got to keep that fed.
00:16:04
Speaker
Meanwhile, at JJP, we saw, of course, Avatar, right?
00:16:09
Speaker
Beautiful game came out.
00:16:10
Speaker
Nice.
00:16:11
Speaker
Mark Seidens, very first game, beautiful game, got to play it too.
00:16:15
Speaker
Doing very well.
00:16:17
Speaker
We also see, and I'm going to just be the first time to go on the record here, I want to say that we in the industry saw the worst sales since 2009 in the months of June and July.
00:16:32
Speaker
August started picking up.
00:16:33
Speaker
September came right back.
00:16:36
Speaker
Actually, I usually ship a lot of overseas containers in June and July, and a lot of that got bumped over to September, August.
00:16:46
Speaker
I don't want to get into
Preparation for New Releases
00:16:47
Speaker
deep and hard numbers, but it gives you an idea that you've got to kind of be flexible to move with the company and to keep us rolling and keeping the lights on.
00:16:57
Speaker
Okay, so it seems like to keep the lights on, you've been...
00:17:01
Speaker
Focusing, you've been pivoting.
00:17:02
Speaker
You have an arm of the pinball, but you also have these deals with Polycade, which I did see because, you know, Don and I stopped by and we were able to see the Polycade and play it.
00:17:14
Speaker
And that's a good thing.
00:17:17
Speaker
I will argue also, your name is American Pinball.
00:17:20
Speaker
And so when, what people have been anticipating is your next release.
00:17:26
Speaker
I mean, it's been long rumored.
00:17:28
Speaker
It sounds like from what, from what is in the ether, it sounds like it's a fun shooter and it sounds like it's something that will.
00:17:37
Speaker
So when can we see this game?
00:17:39
Speaker
Like, cause that would, that would seem to be the natural question is great.
00:17:44
Speaker
Let's see a game that we can sell and to get American pinball back into the conversation.
00:17:49
Speaker
Oh, absolutely.
00:17:51
Speaker
I have to say that the next game is, of course, licensed.
00:17:55
Speaker
And we also want to make sure that it was done.
00:17:59
Speaker
I want to say the last few games that when we bring them out, we were always trying to get code kind of finished and code kind of polished and good.
00:18:09
Speaker
This one, we want to make sure it's ready.
00:18:13
Speaker
Now, at Expo...
00:18:15
Speaker
It was there in the back rooms at American Pinball.
00:18:20
Speaker
Select high profile distributors were in there taking orders for the game, loving the game, giving us their feedback and so forth.
00:18:29
Speaker
The code was not done though.
00:18:31
Speaker
Code was not ready.
00:18:33
Speaker
So as the game progresses, we want to make sure the code is great.
00:18:37
Speaker
Right.
00:18:38
Speaker
we really kind of, and this is, this is nothing new in an industry, right?
00:18:43
Speaker
Think about it.
00:18:44
Speaker
Stern does this a lot.
00:18:46
Speaker
There are certain people who know what the next games are, have been there, played it.
00:18:51
Speaker
Same thing with Chicago gaming, same thing with, you know, JJP.
00:18:56
Speaker
There, there are certain ways that they handle it to see how the title does.
00:19:00
Speaker
And, and,
00:19:02
Speaker
I'm excited about the next game.
00:19:03
Speaker
I really am.
00:19:04
Speaker
But I want to make sure it's ready for you guys.
00:19:06
Speaker
I want to make sure it's ready in the right quantities.
00:19:09
Speaker
I want to make sure everything is there.
00:19:12
Speaker
I don't want to have a kind of a failed launch.
00:19:15
Speaker
I mean, we're getting parts in.
00:19:16
Speaker
We're putting parts on the game.
00:19:18
Speaker
We're testing the parts.
00:19:19
Speaker
Listen, GTF, I thought was going to be a hit, right?
00:19:23
Speaker
And we took it to Texas and we had bending targets, right?
00:19:27
Speaker
And I'm like, how is this possible?
00:19:29
Speaker
You know,
00:19:30
Speaker
A U.S. manufacturer of the targets, U.S. manufacturer, you know, had worked with us.
00:19:36
Speaker
The prototypes have over four or five thousand plays on.
00:19:39
Speaker
They never bent.
00:19:41
Speaker
But when you sat there in the room with them, you could go like this and bend it.
00:19:44
Speaker
And we're like, how is this possible, guys?
00:19:48
Speaker
It took some time to get that right, but we can't afford.
00:19:54
Speaker
I'm too small of a company to afford a failure or something that doesn't hit all the screws.
00:20:01
Speaker
It has to be perfect on this next shot, for sure.
00:20:06
Speaker
I just want to rewind for a couple seconds to some previous stuff that we were talking about.
00:20:12
Speaker
You were talking about your
Financial Constraints and Layoffs
00:20:13
Speaker
role in American Pinball is the
00:20:16
Speaker
the chief director over research and development of American Pinball.
00:20:20
Speaker
And so, so correct me if I'm wrong on this.
00:20:22
Speaker
So you're saying that like the Paul Reno lawsuit and the Dennis Norman stuff wasn't necessarily up to you because that kind of goes past because Amtras are financial and they're over contracting and stuff like that as well.
00:20:33
Speaker
Right.
00:20:34
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:35
Speaker
Just want to catch all that.
00:20:36
Speaker
One name I noticed that you didn't say that it was all hands on deck.
00:20:39
Speaker
Jack Hager was also one of the people we've had on our show art director wise.
00:20:43
Speaker
And that's, is he still there working for you?
00:20:44
Speaker
He got laid off too.
00:20:46
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:47
Speaker
He got laid off too.
00:20:48
Speaker
Unfortunately.
00:20:48
Speaker
And then,
00:20:50
Speaker
You know, there's a bunch of people and I hate to say the word playoff.
00:20:53
Speaker
You know, we don't like that.
00:20:55
Speaker
But, you know, there's budgets, there's timeframes.
00:20:58
Speaker
I had a conversation with Jack.
00:21:00
Speaker
I invited him to Expo.
00:21:01
Speaker
He was there.
00:21:03
Speaker
I told him that we were trying to get past one corner.
00:21:05
Speaker
He's actually working some freelance stuff.
00:21:09
Speaker
You know, I told him that, you know, certainly as soon as we turn the corner on this, I don't need to bring him back.
00:21:14
Speaker
He's, you know, kind of excited.
00:21:16
Speaker
Another name that you probably haven't heard of recently.
00:21:20
Speaker
And, you know, we had a couple more layoffs, you know, because we have to be ready to move.
00:21:25
Speaker
Right.
00:21:25
Speaker
So one of the layoffs that we had was Steve Bowden.
00:21:29
Speaker
OK, and that just happened like a week ago.
00:21:31
Speaker
Steve's a great guy.
00:21:33
Speaker
He went off and, you know, he had the layoff.
00:21:36
Speaker
I've had him back in the office this week.
00:21:38
Speaker
We're already talking about when we're going to bring him back.
00:21:41
Speaker
trying to figure out finances and working with Amtron and the finance department and saying, okay, here's the budget for 2025, right?
00:21:51
Speaker
This is where we're shooting for it.
00:21:52
Speaker
And they're trying to get the fiscal year kind of wrapped up.
00:21:56
Speaker
We're also this year, we're going to do a mandatory shutdown between Christmas and New Year's.
00:22:02
Speaker
Right.
00:22:03
Speaker
So the employees are going to take their holiday pay and whatnot and vacation time because Christmas and New Year's is a very, very slow time at the companies.
00:22:13
Speaker
Right.
00:22:13
Speaker
So it's very slow.
00:22:15
Speaker
So we're going to do a mandatory shutdown.
00:22:16
Speaker
Right.
00:22:18
Speaker
My old company, ICE, we always did a mandatory shutdown, 4th of July week, Christmas between New Year's.
00:22:25
Speaker
We always did
Company Structure and Shared Services
00:22:26
Speaker
that shutdown just to kind of regroup, you know, have a small hands-on-deck people that are just doing some inventory count or something along those lines.
00:22:34
Speaker
But the bulk of it is just kind of like, hey, let's take some time off.
00:22:38
Speaker
Everybody just spend time with their families kind of thing.
00:22:42
Speaker
So –
00:22:43
Speaker
There was a lot to unpack there.
00:22:45
Speaker
Yeah, I know, I'm sorry.
00:22:46
Speaker
You're good.
00:22:47
Speaker
So correct me if I'm wrong then.
00:22:49
Speaker
So is American Pinball more of like a division of AIMTRON?
00:22:55
Speaker
And you're essentially just building Pinball for Amtron, but it's being tagged as American Pinball.
00:23:01
Speaker
Is American Pinball its own company?
00:23:03
Speaker
American Pinball is its own company.
00:23:05
Speaker
It's owned by Mukesh Vasani and Nirmal Vasani.
00:23:09
Speaker
They're the owners of it.
00:23:10
Speaker
They also own Amtron, which is the parent company, which they've brought under the same thing.
00:23:16
Speaker
And for them, the best way they figured this out was...
00:23:19
Speaker
We have Amtron with their finance department, HR department, and legal department.
00:23:24
Speaker
We'll just use them in this realm so you don't have to have all those people sitting there.
00:23:32
Speaker
So American Pinball pretty much makes the games, codes the games.
00:23:36
Speaker
They just don't have to worry about financing and legal and stuff like that because Amtron takes care of that.
00:23:40
Speaker
And HR, healthcare plans, and all that other stuff.
00:23:43
Speaker
Gotcha.
00:23:43
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:44
Speaker
The other thing, too, is you spoke to...
00:23:47
Speaker
The worst numbers in June and July.
00:23:48
Speaker
I know that Kerry Hardery released a video about a month ago stating that you guys didn't sell any games in that time.
00:23:54
Speaker
Can you speak to that true?
00:23:56
Speaker
What?
00:23:57
Speaker
Sorry, not that true.
00:23:57
Speaker
Can you speak to that?
00:23:58
Speaker
Is that how bad it was?
00:24:00
Speaker
I guess.
00:24:01
Speaker
We did sell games, but they were the worst amount of games.
00:24:05
Speaker
Yes, we still had games leave in June and July.
00:24:09
Speaker
Were they, you know, were they like 20 a week kind of deal?
00:24:13
Speaker
No, but there were games leaving.
00:24:16
Speaker
It did hit our financing a little hard, but then by the time we had some containers leave in August, it kind of rolled back up for them.
00:24:25
Speaker
So, you know, it's a roller coaster, guys.
00:24:28
Speaker
You know, it's like, you know, you're doing this with sales and so forth.
00:24:31
Speaker
And I don't, I don't, how do I say this?
00:24:36
Speaker
I don't fault anybody that they're not buying games in June and July.
00:24:41
Speaker
Right.
00:24:42
Speaker
That's vacation time.
00:24:44
Speaker
People are spending money on family vacations.
00:24:46
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:24:47
Speaker
And this is, we're now past COVID, right?
00:24:51
Speaker
for a good period of time and people now are finally getting that vacation that they've been wanting to do with the family for a good period of time and they're going to take it you know and it was a good summer and listen i had distributors right i'm calling up a distributor like hey how's things going that's great i'm on the i'm on the boat in the bahamas right now i'm on a two-week vacation on the on a cruise okay i'll catch you later
00:25:15
Speaker
I talked to another distributor.
00:25:16
Speaker
Oh, I'm on an Alaskan cruise.
00:25:18
Speaker
Oh, I'm on this cruise.
00:25:19
Speaker
All the distributors were like on vacation either other week.
00:25:24
Speaker
You know, it's like, okay, who's actually working, selling games?
00:25:27
Speaker
That kind of thing for distributors, right?
00:25:30
Speaker
So it was just, that's the time of the year.
00:25:32
Speaker
And there's a reason that Williams...
00:25:36
Speaker
Bally, Gottlieb,
Competitive Strategies and Product Development
00:25:37
Speaker
they never brought out a new pinball in June, July, and August because the sales were always right in the bottom because nobody's looking at games at that time of the year.
00:25:47
Speaker
Stern stays away from it.
00:25:49
Speaker
I was amazed that they brought Godzilla out when they did because that was so right on the heels of all this.
00:25:56
Speaker
I'm sharing.
00:25:56
Speaker
I'm a little bit more open today.
00:25:59
Speaker
I love Godzilla.
00:26:00
Speaker
Godzilla's a great game, too.
00:26:01
Speaker
That's another game I like.
00:26:04
Speaker
So
00:26:05
Speaker
you know, there's companies out there that are going to go through a lot of, you know, turmoil, right?
00:26:12
Speaker
I mean, Stern has got to be going through turmoil just like I'm going through turmoil.
00:26:16
Speaker
And I'm sure, you know, hey, the spooky guys, Corrin and Luke, they did a beautiful job with the Evil Dead.
00:26:24
Speaker
I mean, I love that game.
00:26:25
Speaker
Chris Ranchi knocked it out of the park with artwork.
00:26:28
Speaker
I mean, that game looks great.
00:26:29
Speaker
Can't wait to shoot it, you know?
00:26:31
Speaker
So,
00:26:33
Speaker
I mean, I'm looking at this, I'm like, every company has to go through some growing pains, growing stuff, and we're going through some really tough times.
00:26:41
Speaker
So it seems like you are getting primed for, I'll put it this way, a soft reboot of the company where you're trying to make sure that your next rumored game that a lot of people are anticipating is
00:27:00
Speaker
that you're going to say, hey, okay, here it is.
00:27:04
Speaker
We're releasing it.
00:27:05
Speaker
By the way, we have X amount ready to sell today.
00:27:11
Speaker
Is that a fair analysis of what your plans are?
00:27:15
Speaker
Just like what we did with Legends of Valhalla.
00:27:19
Speaker
When we brought Legends of Valhalla out, we said, here's our next game.
00:27:24
Speaker
Here's the locations.
00:27:25
Speaker
Go play it.
00:27:27
Speaker
So we are going to pretty much do the same thing there
00:27:30
Speaker
We're going to make the announcement.
00:27:32
Speaker
It's going to be, hey, here it is.
00:27:35
Speaker
These distributors have it.
00:27:37
Speaker
These locations have it.
00:27:39
Speaker
Go play it and enjoy.
00:27:42
Speaker
And the idea on that is that they're not going to be waiting around.
00:27:45
Speaker
They're just going to have games in boxes.
00:27:48
Speaker
And they've already been playtested.
00:27:49
Speaker
They've been tested.
00:27:50
Speaker
They're running perfectly.
00:27:53
Speaker
The next game designer, he's already told me he has a schedule.
00:27:57
Speaker
He showed me the schedule that once production starts...
00:28:01
Speaker
Because production hasn't started yet.
00:28:03
Speaker
We have produced samples, but production has not started yet.
00:28:09
Speaker
So it's a whole different world than what you guys are envisioning.
00:28:12
Speaker
So I talked to Don from the Don Pinball Podcast, and he's trying to get this all under control.
00:28:19
Speaker
He's like, how does that work?
00:28:20
Speaker
I'm like...
00:28:21
Speaker
Listen, it's a whole string of manufacturing stuff.
00:28:26
Speaker
But the game designer has already given me his schedule that he is going to be testing the first, like, hundred games, and they have to pass his standard while they go in boxes.
00:28:37
Speaker
And that was actually a way that Williams used to do it.
00:28:41
Speaker
It was like, you know, if you're the game designer, you've got to go live on the lines.
00:28:45
Speaker
while your game comes off and make sure every game is a hundred percent the way it was and train the line.
00:28:50
Speaker
And that's, that's a key point, right?
00:28:53
Speaker
So he's already given me a schedule on that.
00:28:56
Speaker
He's going to be doing that.
00:28:57
Speaker
So it's going to be really cool.
00:28:59
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:59
Speaker
So speaking of Don and Don's pinball podcast, there was a little snafu as it is, I guess down at IAPA, you guys had words about the next rumored game.
00:29:09
Speaker
And supposedly he claimed it was on the line.
00:29:12
Speaker
He did a podcast that it was on the line saying that you would sit that was on there.
00:29:15
Speaker
And then he retracted that podcast because he came down to American Pinball after some things were said, got to play the next rumor game, said it plays great and flipping.
00:29:24
Speaker
I'm a little jealous myself.
00:29:25
Speaker
I haven't got to play it yet.
00:29:27
Speaker
And he said that you're on hold right now because you have to sell three barbecue LEs because you have to have them all gone before you can start production on the next rumored game.
00:29:39
Speaker
Can you speak to that?
00:29:40
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:40
Speaker
So it sounds like a mixture of two conversations, but I will touch on both of those.
00:29:47
Speaker
While we were at IAPA, there was a rumor going around that I had to sell so many barbecues in order to get the next game on the line.
00:29:56
Speaker
At which point I told Don, I said, I have the classic version of barbecue.
00:30:01
Speaker
The initial run was gone.
00:30:03
Speaker
We had like two left, I think.
00:30:04
Speaker
I think that's all that's left.
00:30:06
Speaker
They're show games.
00:30:08
Speaker
And we had the initial run of the limiteds.
00:30:11
Speaker
We only had four left at the time.
00:30:13
Speaker
Now it's three.
00:30:14
Speaker
So, you know, people had this thought in mind that we had all these barbecues sitting in the back of the warehouse and it was eating up our whole budget and we couldn't proceed to the next game, which is not true.
00:30:28
Speaker
Okay.
00:30:29
Speaker
And then, you know, Don was asking me, how is the game proceeding?
00:30:34
Speaker
You know, and did you, and I explained to him,
00:30:37
Speaker
that a sample had been produced now or went through the production line.
00:30:42
Speaker
The sample went through the production line is what I said to him.
00:30:45
Speaker
He kind of took it like, oh, the game's on the production line.
00:30:49
Speaker
And then he ran with it on the IEPA, you know, his review, which I'm like, when he... So the whole world went nuts over this.
00:31:01
Speaker
And I'm like...
00:31:03
Speaker
Okay, we didn't say that.
00:31:05
Speaker
And Don, can we have you come down?
00:31:06
Speaker
Sure, we'll come down.
00:31:07
Speaker
And then there was another post.
00:31:11
Speaker
Nap Arcade went crazy.
00:31:13
Speaker
Which I find interesting because like Nap Arcade, you guys, Pinball News, Don...
00:31:21
Speaker
Kerry Hardy, anybody who's in the industry has my number.
00:31:26
Speaker
They know what number to pick up to call American Pinball.
00:31:29
Speaker
A lot of them have my cell phone.
00:31:31
Speaker
I think you guys have my cell phone.
00:31:33
Speaker
And I also have an email.
00:31:34
Speaker
So I tell people, I say, if you've got a question about American Pinball, call me.
00:31:38
Speaker
I will set the record straight.
00:31:41
Speaker
And it wasn't until I caught an app arcade that I found out that Don said something offline or about it being on the line that I said, okay, Don, we got to get you in here.
00:31:51
Speaker
We got to get this straightened out and explain to you what we meant and get that corrected, right?
00:31:56
Speaker
So that we don't get people all hot and bothered about this.
00:32:00
Speaker
And meanwhile,
Clarifications and Addressing Rumors
00:32:01
Speaker
I heard today that Napper K took that all down.
00:32:04
Speaker
Is that, I guess?
00:32:06
Speaker
Yes.
00:32:08
Speaker
He took it down and Don took his part down.
00:32:10
Speaker
Yes.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yep.
00:32:11
Speaker
So that's all been retracted now.
00:32:13
Speaker
Besides the newest episode where Don came and visited with you at the factory and you guys got to play games and stuff like that.
00:32:19
Speaker
I gotcha.
00:32:20
Speaker
I gotcha.
00:32:21
Speaker
And did, did you, either you guys talked to Jason or Don about, you know, like, okay.
00:32:26
Speaker
I talked to Don.
00:32:26
Speaker
Okay.
00:32:29
Speaker
I called Don and talked this morning and really it was, he, he was under the impression that that was, you know, it seems like your view of the conversation is different than, than what he remembered.
00:32:41
Speaker
And I don't think it was malicious.
00:32:43
Speaker
You know, Don is Don is Don.
00:32:46
Speaker
Don always talk.
00:32:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:48
Speaker
Don's great.
00:32:48
Speaker
And so I called him this morning.
00:32:50
Speaker
He was, so we both actually worked at night.
00:32:52
Speaker
So, you know, last night.
00:32:53
Speaker
So I called him, I'm like, you're not sleeping.
00:32:55
Speaker
Are you?
00:32:56
Speaker
Um, and so no, we just had a pleasant conversation.
00:32:58
Speaker
He did mention that he, he was again, I'm jealous that he was able to play the next game.
00:33:04
Speaker
And he said, it shoots really well.
00:33:06
Speaker
He is excited about that.
00:33:07
Speaker
Um, I know Josh did talk to Jason, right?
00:33:10
Speaker
Josh.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yes.
00:33:12
Speaker
And Jason had just had said that, and this is verbatim.
00:33:15
Speaker
He just, with the pending lawsuit stuff coming out, he just didn't want to be involved with any of that.
00:33:20
Speaker
So he just retracted because he didn't want to be involved in any of that.
00:33:22
Speaker
And I hope, I hope Jason's not mad for me saying that if, if I don't know, if so, okay.
00:33:26
Speaker
I think we all like Jason.
00:33:29
Speaker
Jason's a, Jason's a good friend and Jason, his, his passion is to report news and, uh,
00:33:38
Speaker
And it goes with the territory that with the news, we are all going to speculate about what's going on and we're going to aggregate things that we hear from our friends.
00:33:47
Speaker
And so I agree with Jason in the abundance of caution.
00:33:51
Speaker
He's just like, look, I don't know what's going on here.
00:33:53
Speaker
So we'll put a pause on that.
00:33:56
Speaker
But I am a big fan of Jason and what he does at NAP Arcade because I do go there regularly.
00:34:02
Speaker
But I also understand him just saying, look, this is...
00:34:06
Speaker
I don't want to go into anything that could possibly be legal territory.
00:34:10
Speaker
And
Partnerships and Production Management
00:34:11
Speaker
so we'll just take a pause on that.
00:34:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:13
Speaker
No, it makes sense to me.
00:34:15
Speaker
And I didn't, I was going to reach out to him and say, Hey, listen, you want to set the straight strict, the record straight.
00:34:22
Speaker
Just let me know.
00:34:23
Speaker
I mean, you got my number.
00:34:24
Speaker
I've, I've given it to him numerous times with emails and everything.
00:34:28
Speaker
So,
00:34:30
Speaker
I mean, if I'm in the middle of the meeting, leave a message.
00:34:33
Speaker
I'll get back to you.
00:34:34
Speaker
It's not like, oh, the news is calling me.
00:34:37
Speaker
It's not like that.
00:34:40
Speaker
All loser kids are calling.
00:34:41
Speaker
I better step out of my present meeting so I can get on this.
00:34:45
Speaker
Mr. Fix, Scott Larson's on the phone for you.
00:34:47
Speaker
Hold my call for the afternoon.
00:34:49
Speaker
Cancel my appointments.
00:34:51
Speaker
Yes, cancel.
00:34:51
Speaker
Tell all the licensors, get lost.
00:34:54
Speaker
Yes.
00:34:55
Speaker
I was going to say, Kerry Hardy does not have your number, so I'll text it to him.
00:35:00
Speaker
You're going to get some interesting pictures.
00:35:02
Speaker
Probably.
00:35:03
Speaker
But, you know, what's funny is I worked with Kerry down at Texas during he did the unboxing of GTF.
00:35:10
Speaker
He did a bunch of other things.
00:35:11
Speaker
So, you know, it's like, listen, I don't hide.
00:35:16
Speaker
Hey, I just did an unboxing for my Metallica.
00:35:18
Speaker
So if you want to ship me a next game, I will give you exclusive unboxing videos to show exactly what we need to do.
00:35:28
Speaker
Yes.
00:35:28
Speaker
I just live close to Salt Lake City, just down the street.
00:35:31
Speaker
You can just, it's even a loaner.
00:35:33
Speaker
It's fine.
00:35:33
Speaker
Just ship it out.
00:35:34
Speaker
I'll give it a shot and we'll ship it back.
00:35:37
Speaker
Gotcha.
00:35:38
Speaker
We can talk about it.
00:35:40
Speaker
We should have you back into Chicago.
00:35:41
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:35:43
Speaker
No, that'd be great.
00:35:44
Speaker
We did.
00:35:45
Speaker
Like, Don, I did stop by Expo, I think.
00:35:47
Speaker
We were just there.
00:35:48
Speaker
It was two weeks before Expo.
00:35:50
Speaker
Oh, it was slightly before.
00:35:52
Speaker
Yeah, we were going around.
00:35:55
Speaker
I think you were there for Avatar, weren't you?
00:35:58
Speaker
Yes.
00:35:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:00
Speaker
I was there.
00:36:00
Speaker
First part of September.
00:36:03
Speaker
We definitely wanted to focus on Avatar.
00:36:06
Speaker
I paid money to change my time so I could come in early so I could see a few other things.
00:36:11
Speaker
But we tried to keep that.
00:36:14
Speaker
The focus of that trip was on Avatar.
00:36:16
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:36:17
Speaker
That's why we reported other stuff later.
00:36:19
Speaker
I didn't have anything ready yet.
00:36:22
Speaker
You didn't.
00:36:22
Speaker
That's true.
00:36:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:23
Speaker
But we actually, you did take us on a tour on the line.
00:36:26
Speaker
So that was kind of fun.
00:36:27
Speaker
Yep.
00:36:28
Speaker
You got to see the lines.
00:36:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:29
Speaker
And right now, like I said, Polycade, you know, over a thousand units been rolling out of there.
00:36:36
Speaker
That place has been a madhouse.
00:36:37
Speaker
And that's what Don's been watching.
00:36:39
Speaker
I mean, think about it.
00:36:41
Speaker
That's like a semi every, you know, every day we have a large semi leaving with just Polycades.
00:36:48
Speaker
Right.
00:36:49
Speaker
And then the other semis come in for we've had semis backed up down the street now a couple of times.
00:36:54
Speaker
Okay.
00:36:55
Speaker
So that gets into exactly what we were talking about before that to keep the lights on, you have to have some business revenue.
00:37:01
Speaker
And so right now you're saying that that is what's keeping lights on American pinball.
00:37:06
Speaker
You're, you're going, you're, you're,
00:37:10
Speaker
utilizing your time right now while you're waiting for the next game to be finished.
00:37:14
Speaker
And that's how you're doing that now.
00:37:16
Speaker
And we're also building hot wheels.
00:37:20
Speaker
We were at IEPA and we sold a lot of hot wheels and we sold some Houdini's, you know, it's, it's kind of a, you know, it's interesting.
00:37:30
Speaker
All those titles, Houdini, hot wheels, they're all, you know,
00:37:36
Speaker
evergreen people love those titles and they've been especially in the coin op business have been moving quite well so we've been excited about you know still doing stuff four years out we had an extension with mattel because we have a good working relationship with mattel and uh we got the extension we're still building them in fact uh kroger
00:37:57
Speaker
Did a Or Mattel and Kroger did a giveaway Of a Hot Wheels which that person Won the Hot Wheels and we Shipped out that Hot Wheels Just before Thanksgiving so that they had it on Thanksgiving week and So that they could have it as their new winning game That they won a brand new Hot Wheels So we
00:38:16
Speaker
I mean, yes, Polycade is filling some gaps.
00:38:19
Speaker
Pinballs are still moving.
00:38:21
Speaker
But it's like we still, you know, it's a tough market, man.
00:38:26
Speaker
It's a tough market.
00:38:28
Speaker
So are you sharing also the manufacturer line with Polycade and whatnot?
00:38:31
Speaker
So you're having to kind of balance that.
00:38:33
Speaker
Are you manufacturing Polycade at your locations?
00:38:35
Speaker
Is that your question, Josh?
00:38:36
Speaker
No, we're not manufacturing the Polycade.
00:38:40
Speaker
So the Polycades are made.
00:38:42
Speaker
But there's so many options that sometimes they have to be changed up.
00:38:47
Speaker
Right.
00:38:47
Speaker
So we got to put a different deck in or we got to put this in or they got to be striped.
00:38:52
Speaker
And, you know, we're doing we're helping out Polycane an awful lot.
00:38:55
Speaker
And, you know, Tyler Bushnell is is an old friend and he's a good friend of Ron.
00:39:03
Speaker
Ron, who's our sales manager.
00:39:06
Speaker
So he actually worked for PolyK for a long time.
00:39:08
Speaker
And then he said, hey, David, we, you know, PolyK is in a bind.
00:39:12
Speaker
They need a spot.
00:39:13
Speaker
I said, let's take it to Amtron.
00:39:15
Speaker
We took it over to, you know, corporate.
00:39:17
Speaker
I let Ron run with it with the legal.
00:39:20
Speaker
He spent a good part of, I don't know, a couple of weeks with them going back and forth on meetings.
00:39:25
Speaker
Meanwhile, I'm just focusing on the pins and the development there and trying to get some sales through.
00:39:31
Speaker
And again, it's a small company.
00:39:33
Speaker
It's very tight.
00:39:35
Speaker
It's kind of like we know what everybody had for lunch because we all went out to lunch together.
00:39:39
Speaker
It's tough.
00:39:42
Speaker
I want to talk about real quick.
00:39:43
Speaker
Let me run back to... I actually want to circle one thing before you do that.
00:39:48
Speaker
So I know what the polygates are.
00:39:50
Speaker
So why don't you give me like a 60-second summary so people know exactly what these things are?
00:39:55
Speaker
All right, so Polycade is a multi-video game platform.
00:40:01
Speaker
Okay, so you can connect it to your Steam account.
00:40:04
Speaker
You can connect it to your games.
00:40:07
Speaker
You can buy the games from Polycade on their website for like $2.99 and then run Centipede, Pac-Man.
00:40:15
Speaker
Polycade, what
Podcasting Challenges and Licensing Issues
00:40:16
Speaker
he did was, Tyler, he went out because his father is Nolan.
00:40:21
Speaker
Went out and talked to all the original manufacturers and got all the licensing, right?
00:40:25
Speaker
So now this is a full licensed multi-cade product that can hang on the wall or has its own stand.
00:40:33
Speaker
It comes in white or black.
00:40:35
Speaker
It has decks that can be interchanged.
00:40:37
Speaker
It can be coin-op.
00:40:39
Speaker
It's an all-steel cabinet.
00:40:40
Speaker
It's a very nice little machine.
00:40:43
Speaker
You can look it up at polycade.com.
00:40:46
Speaker
Awesome.
00:40:47
Speaker
So what were you going to say before, before Scott?
00:40:49
Speaker
What I was going to say is I know that it's funny because I listened to podcasts and understand before I got into the industry, right?
00:40:57
Speaker
Before I went to work for American pinball, I used to listen to everybody's podcasts.
00:41:02
Speaker
Okay.
00:41:02
Speaker
I listened to Clay Harold, this old pinball.
00:41:06
Speaker
I used to listen to the Silver Ball podcast.
00:41:09
Speaker
I mean, from Rob Craig.
00:41:11
Speaker
I listened to, you know, there was a ton of guys that were, I mean, game room junkies.
00:41:17
Speaker
Preston down in Atlanta.
00:41:21
Speaker
I mean, there was a lot of people that do podcasts.
00:41:24
Speaker
And you guys do.
00:41:25
Speaker
You know, you've been doing them a long time.
00:41:27
Speaker
One of the things that I was going to say is it drives, it's tough.
00:41:31
Speaker
is there's a lot of speculations on what a license is or we don't have a license or what this is.
00:41:37
Speaker
I'm just going to say that as a manufacturer, I cannot disclose any license that I have.
00:41:46
Speaker
I cannot disclose what licenses I'm working on.
00:41:49
Speaker
I can't do any of that until the manufacturing date of that license comes out.
00:41:56
Speaker
Done.
00:41:56
Speaker
That's what is legally binding to us.
00:41:59
Speaker
So I know you can tell me, hey, Dave, I heard you lost this license.
00:42:02
Speaker
Sorry, can't comment on that.
00:42:04
Speaker
Because did I lose it?
00:42:08
Speaker
No.
00:42:09
Speaker
But I can't comment on it.
00:42:11
Speaker
Right.
00:42:11
Speaker
So that's that's where I get kind of tripped up.
00:42:14
Speaker
And sometimes it's like I might read somebody's thing trying to bait me into disclosing something that I cannot legally disclose.
00:42:24
Speaker
So that brings
White Label and Custom Projects
00:42:25
Speaker
up one question in my mind then.
00:42:27
Speaker
And now since Berrio's Barbecue has released, I don't know if you can speak to this or not.
00:42:31
Speaker
I was told originally there was licensed aspects to that game that were sponsorships.
00:42:39
Speaker
They were brands that were involved in that.
00:42:42
Speaker
Is that true?
00:42:43
Speaker
And then they were removed because they didn't get the final write-off or whatever?
00:42:49
Speaker
There was no licenses for...
00:42:53
Speaker
Berrios.
00:42:55
Speaker
But Berrios game and that design was what we call a white label game.
00:43:02
Speaker
So that is pending.
00:43:05
Speaker
So what that means in a white label is that game was designed so that it could be insert licensor game, right?
00:43:15
Speaker
Audio gets changed.
00:43:17
Speaker
Artwork package gets changed.
00:43:19
Speaker
Brief rule sets.
00:43:21
Speaker
But it has all that aspects of that licensor for small runs, okay?
00:43:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:43:28
Speaker
So right now we do have pending, I want to say three licenses for Berrios.
00:43:37
Speaker
So that game will probably come back as somebody else's game down the road, but we can't go into that detail because I'm touched, I'm bounded by contracts not to go into that, but
00:43:48
Speaker
you're good yeah so it's similar to like it's similar yeah supreme with stern was like the spider-man home version and it's also been prime you know uh oh it dennis's game primus was a contract game but yeah they yeah but it was a remake of the absolute ribbon was a reskin of woe nelly and woe nelly that's the game i was looking for yeah and primus was a reskin i thought of woe nelly as well yes it was so
00:44:12
Speaker
So it's similar to that.
00:44:13
Speaker
So you're calling this a white label?
00:44:15
Speaker
Is that what you call it?
00:44:16
Speaker
Yep.
00:44:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:17
Speaker
All righty.
00:44:17
Speaker
So, okay.
00:44:19
Speaker
That makes sense on that.
00:44:20
Speaker
And for us, that made sense because when you have a manufacturer, right, that's going to buy so many parts, we can buy parts at a much cheaper rate.
00:44:30
Speaker
And then I can re-skin it because the metal rails are the same.
00:44:35
Speaker
All the mechanisms are the same.
00:44:36
Speaker
The plastics are different.
00:44:38
Speaker
The play fields are different, but those can be made pretty quickly, right?
00:44:42
Speaker
The metal parts, the ramps, all that stuff, that takes a lot of time, a lot of R&D and research, right?
00:44:49
Speaker
So that takes a lot of, you know, so just give you guys a clue.
00:44:53
Speaker
To make a plastic ramp, okay, can take somewhere up to 10 to 12 weeks, right?
00:45:02
Speaker
And it'll take many revisions.
00:45:05
Speaker
So we'll give them a plastic ramp.
00:45:07
Speaker
They do what we call a wood mold.
00:45:08
Speaker
They'll send us the ramp off the wood mold, which we then have to verify and approve if we need to make any adjustments.
00:45:17
Speaker
We make adjustments to the wood mold.
00:45:19
Speaker
And then they make an aluminum cast mold.
00:45:21
Speaker
Now that takes a lot of time before we get the actual plastic ramp made, which is vacuum formed over, right?
00:45:29
Speaker
So that's a long lead time part.
00:45:32
Speaker
Also eight to 10 weeks on wire forms.
00:45:35
Speaker
So that nice little trail that comes down and looks really cool and it's all stainless steel, that takes a long time for them to bend all the wires, make the guides, make them just for us.
00:45:45
Speaker
And once they have it,
00:45:47
Speaker
exactly what we want, then we can tell them to start making them.
00:45:51
Speaker
But it still takes, there's long lead time parts.
00:45:54
Speaker
Having a white label cuts down those long lead time parts because it's the same ramp, it's the same wire form, I already have it in stock.
00:46:02
Speaker
I don't have to redo it.
00:46:04
Speaker
All I have to do is charge them for doing artwork on the back glass and audio.
00:46:12
Speaker
Think about it.
00:46:13
Speaker
Stern, or Data East at the time, did a game called Tommy.
00:46:17
Speaker
It was also Richie Rich.
00:46:19
Speaker
It was also Torres Spelling.
00:46:22
Speaker
It was also, you know, they did that also.
00:46:24
Speaker
They did, you know, white labels have been around a long time.
00:46:26
Speaker
Wait, they did a Tori Spelling game?
00:46:28
Speaker
Do you mean an Aaron Spelling game?
00:46:30
Speaker
Aaron Spelling.
00:46:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:46:31
Speaker
Sorry.
00:46:32
Speaker
I knew it was one of the spellings.
00:46:33
Speaker
I couldn't remember who it was.
00:46:35
Speaker
Oh, Aaron was the dad.
00:46:36
Speaker
Aaron was the dad.
00:46:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:38
Speaker
But I think Tori was on the back glass.
00:46:40
Speaker
Okay, yeah, I think they made two of them, if I'm correct.
00:46:43
Speaker
He had a half a million dollars for the pair.
00:46:46
Speaker
Well, he had a lot of money.
00:46:48
Speaker
Well, Candy Spelling, I know the story because Joe Kamikow told me all this time that she caught a news article about pinball machines and having customized pinball machines, and she picked up the phone and talked to Joe Kamikow and said, hey, I want to do a game for my husband, and he was like,
00:47:08
Speaker
well, it's going to be like, you know, two games, it'll be half a million dollars.
00:47:12
Speaker
And she says, okay, I'll write the check.
00:47:14
Speaker
And it was like, okay, well, we got the money, now let's do it.
00:47:18
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:20
Speaker
You know, that kind of thing.
00:47:21
Speaker
So, you know, it's been around before.
00:47:24
Speaker
And, you know, you've seen, you know, some games that have been white-labeled before where they can be changed into other games, right?
00:47:31
Speaker
Something
Financial History and Future Outlook
00:47:32
Speaker
that may be popular, but not popular enough to run with it, right?
00:47:37
Speaker
Not like, you know, like, oh, we're going to do a small ban, right?
00:47:41
Speaker
You know, let's say a ban that's not very noticeable in the U.S., but maybe overseas they are.
00:47:48
Speaker
Like Aquabats, right, Josh?
00:47:50
Speaker
There you go.
00:47:53
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:54
Speaker
Here's a question for your business model.
00:47:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:58
Speaker
We know that most businesses are in a startup phase and then they're in like a sustained phase.
00:48:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:48:07
Speaker
And typically the startup phase can last anywhere from like four to 10 years where they're actually spending more money than they're bringing in.
00:48:19
Speaker
And then eventually they flip over.
00:48:22
Speaker
I mean, Amazon lost money for so long because they were in this development phase before they became profitable.
00:48:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:48:32
Speaker
Yep.
00:48:33
Speaker
Where is American pinball on that curve?
00:48:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:37
Speaker
So Amazon was a book thing before bookstore before became Sears and Roebuck online.
00:48:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:44
Speaker
Sears totally missed the boat on that because they are like, like Sears were idiots.
00:48:49
Speaker
Sears is like completely irrelevant today.
00:48:52
Speaker
Because like Amazon just looked at the internet and said, we can do that.
00:48:56
Speaker
Sears used to do that mail order.
00:48:58
Speaker
Why don't we do it?
00:48:58
Speaker
So they just did that, but it takes investment.
00:49:01
Speaker
Any, any business takes investment before it gets traction.
00:49:05
Speaker
And then finally you get a return on your investment.
00:49:08
Speaker
So again, you know, you're in a good position and that you do have a parent company that does help you out.
00:49:15
Speaker
Where on the curve are you?
00:49:18
Speaker
Well, it ebbs and flows.
00:49:20
Speaker
I hate to say that.
00:49:21
Speaker
Okay, let's go back.
00:49:22
Speaker
I'll just do this.
00:49:24
Speaker
2021, I remember going into the end of 2021, which was my officially first full year at American Pinball.
00:49:34
Speaker
And I sat down with the finance team at Amtron, and they gave me the numbers, and I was horrified.
00:49:41
Speaker
But Mukesh was very excited about that because it was half...
00:49:47
Speaker
Of what they were losing.
00:49:49
Speaker
Every year.
00:49:50
Speaker
Before I started.
00:49:52
Speaker
It was literally half.
00:49:54
Speaker
The next year.
00:49:54
Speaker
2022.
00:49:54
Speaker
Was.
00:49:55
Speaker
The first year it was ever in the black.
00:50:03
Speaker
Okay, so that was great.
00:50:05
Speaker
We're in the black, right?
00:50:07
Speaker
There were some changes, you know, some things have ebbed and flowed.
00:50:11
Speaker
At that time in 2023, I was looking to, you know, kind of keep the company we had.
00:50:19
Speaker
We lost some key people, right?
00:50:20
Speaker
We lost, I want to say, my purchasing guy.
00:50:24
Speaker
He went, got this, you know, purchasing company, gave him a blank check.
00:50:29
Speaker
Let's just say I lost him, right?
00:50:31
Speaker
So I had a changed purchasing department and Amtron actually has a purchasing department.
00:50:36
Speaker
So they took it over.
00:50:37
Speaker
So they were kind of running the purchasing.
00:50:40
Speaker
They still are.
00:50:41
Speaker
They run finance.
00:50:43
Speaker
They run legal.
00:50:44
Speaker
They run HR.
00:50:45
Speaker
And they run actually the purchasing.
00:50:47
Speaker
I forgot.
00:50:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:48
Speaker
But we do have one of my guys, Mitesh, he sits there and he interfaces with the purchasing department saying, hey, we need these parts, we need that, with this.
00:50:56
Speaker
And they make the phone calls, right?
00:50:57
Speaker
They make the phone calls, they order the stuff, and then it goes from purchasing right to the finance, which is in the same wing of Amtron, and it just goes that way.
00:51:05
Speaker
So where I was going with this is in 23, we lost some people, we lost some other stuff, some stuff got goofed up.
00:51:13
Speaker
We were back in the red.
00:51:15
Speaker
Not a lot, but, you know, we were still in the red in 2034.
00:51:19
Speaker
We're still in the red.
00:51:21
Speaker
You know, I was hoping to get out of it by the end of this year.
00:51:25
Speaker
We're close, but, you know, it's still we got to work on it.
00:51:29
Speaker
You know, there's still numbers that have.
00:51:32
Speaker
I haven't sat down with finance and that's their department.
00:51:35
Speaker
Right.
00:51:35
Speaker
They kind of keep me.
00:51:37
Speaker
you know, at arm's length and just say, hey, how are sales coming?
00:51:42
Speaker
Do we have any forecasts and projections?
00:51:44
Speaker
And what do you got selling?
00:51:45
Speaker
We're moving all these polycades.
00:51:47
Speaker
This is coming in.
00:51:48
Speaker
Okay, thank you.
00:51:49
Speaker
We'll get back to you.
00:51:51
Speaker
And then I'm waiting to sit down with them in about two weeks or three weeks after the shutdown to have, you know, what did we do for 2024, right?
00:52:01
Speaker
So it's a little disjointed in my world, but there is definitely those divisions that I have to play with in a company.
00:52:10
Speaker
Sorry, I'm going to do one follow-up and I'll toss it over to you, Josh.
00:52:14
Speaker
Is it fair to say that you're on that bubble between like,
00:52:19
Speaker
like sustained profitability?
00:52:20
Speaker
Because the concern I would say from the pinball community is that American pinball may not be around next year or the year after that.
00:52:31
Speaker
It's a good question, Scott.
00:52:34
Speaker
And I will say that since I've been here every year, the podcasters and all the people have always said, oh, American pinball is dead.
00:52:45
Speaker
They're going to be out of business.
00:52:47
Speaker
You know, the day fixes got one foot on the banana peel, the other one in the grave kind of thing.
00:52:54
Speaker
I don't know where we are with this, really.
00:52:57
Speaker
I want to say that I think we're okay.
00:52:59
Speaker
But that's up to the finance department.
00:53:01
Speaker
It's up to Mikesh.
00:53:02
Speaker
That's up to the team that owns the company, right?
00:53:06
Speaker
They're the ones that are going to be sitting there at the end of the year, sitting there going, hey, these are the numbers.
00:53:11
Speaker
This is where we're at.
00:53:12
Speaker
This is what we're going to do.
00:53:14
Speaker
Scares the hell out of me.
00:53:16
Speaker
because who knows what could happen at any point in time.
00:53:19
Speaker
It's just like getting hit by a bus.
00:53:21
Speaker
It could happen at any point in time.
00:53:23
Speaker
I hate to say it, but I don't want to get hit by a bus.
00:53:26
Speaker
I think I put a big dent in it.
00:53:28
Speaker
I put on too much weight with this company.
00:53:29
Speaker
But, you know...
00:53:33
Speaker
You're optimistic,
Closing Remarks and Contact Information
00:53:35
Speaker
though.
00:53:35
Speaker
I'm always, you know, I'm optimistic, keeping my options open, looking at everything and trying.
00:53:43
Speaker
You know, I haven't checked out.
00:53:45
Speaker
I am here.
00:53:46
Speaker
I'm here every day.
00:53:47
Speaker
I'm with the team every day and fighting like hell to get what we need to get done.
00:53:55
Speaker
Josh, you wanted to ask a question?
00:53:57
Speaker
Actually, Scott kind of asked the question I was going to ask.
00:54:00
Speaker
I'm sorry, Josh.
00:54:01
Speaker
Didn't mean to steal your thunder.
00:54:02
Speaker
No, you're good.
00:54:03
Speaker
Honestly, I've run out of time, so I do apologize.
00:54:07
Speaker
I'm going to have to shut this down, but I really want to thank you, David, for coming on.
00:54:10
Speaker
If someone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to get a hold of you?
00:54:14
Speaker
Call American Pinball, 6800.
00:54:16
Speaker
You can also send me an email.
00:54:20
Speaker
It's there.
00:54:21
Speaker
I try to get...
00:54:25
Speaker
to a lot of emails.
00:54:26
Speaker
You've got to remember, small company, get bombarded.
00:54:31
Speaker
I try to help as much as we can.
00:54:33
Speaker
We try to answer all the questions.
00:54:37
Speaker
I try not to go on pin side.
00:54:40
Speaker
I really think that that's kind of been a little bit more, how do I say this, can be very discouraging.
00:54:48
Speaker
And if anybody had
00:54:50
Speaker
Depression or problems could cause some real bad things to happen to people.
00:54:55
Speaker
And I try not to stay over there and see that stuff.
00:54:59
Speaker
But reach out to me at American Pinball.
00:55:02
Speaker
My email's there, you know, or you can call the direct number.
00:55:06
Speaker
And I know you're going to give Kerry Hardy my number, so he'll probably be calling me tomorrow.
00:55:10
Speaker
So I'll be hearing from him.
00:55:12
Speaker
And Kerry Hardy also, I talked to Paul Reno this morning, and he reached out to Kerry to make sure that there was a correction on Kerry Hardy's post from last night that the design of Galactic Tank Force was Dennis Norman and Paul Reno.
00:55:28
Speaker
It was a co-design thing.
00:55:29
Speaker
It wasn't all Paul.
00:55:31
Speaker
So I know that was probably corrected today, too.
00:55:34
Speaker
So...
00:55:35
Speaker
We try to correct the things, but we're a small company.
00:55:38
Speaker
We're trying like hell.
00:55:39
Speaker
We're fighting.
00:55:40
Speaker
I'm not sitting on a cruise in the Bahamas or sitting somewhere nice.
00:55:47
Speaker
We're always trying to get the next game out.
00:55:50
Speaker
All right.
00:55:51
Speaker
If you want to get ahold of us, we are loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com.
00:55:54
Speaker
We're on Facebook, Instagram, all the socials, even threads.
00:55:57
Speaker
Someone's like, you're on threads.
00:55:58
Speaker
I came here to even see if it's true.
00:56:00
Speaker
It is true.
00:56:01
Speaker
I want to thank those that have been buying products.
00:56:03
Speaker
If you want to see our pretty face, we're on YouTube.
00:56:05
Speaker
Yes.
00:56:06
Speaker
If you go to YouTube, even if you're not on YouTube, just go subscribe.
00:56:08
Speaker
It helps us out.
00:56:09
Speaker
Leave some comments, leave a like.
00:56:11
Speaker
It actually does help out with the algorithm and finding us as a podcast for pinball machines when people are looking for pinball.
00:56:19
Speaker
I want to thank those that have been buying product, loser key product this past month.
00:56:22
Speaker
It must be Christmas time.
00:56:23
Speaker
Holy crap.
00:56:23
Speaker
We've got stuff going all over the world down to Australia, into Europe.
00:56:27
Speaker
I was, I was kind of shocked.
00:56:28
Speaker
I was kind of like, what's, what's going on?
00:56:30
Speaker
Oh, it must be Christmas time.
00:56:31
Speaker
The high tops, baby.
00:56:33
Speaker
High tops.
00:56:33
Speaker
High tops.
00:56:34
Speaker
Yes.
00:56:36
Speaker
That, I think that does it for us.
00:56:37
Speaker
Scott, you got the last word for us?
00:56:39
Speaker
Nope.
00:56:39
Speaker
You know what?
00:56:40
Speaker
Have a Merry Christmas and happy holidays.
00:56:42
Speaker
And we're looking for a nice recap.
00:56:45
Speaker
episode of the year and it's been a successful year but challenging so stay safe have fun and play pinball