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Stern Pinball - Dutch Pinball Open Expo 2024 - Pinball News

Pinball News (Dutch Pinball Open Expo 2024)·video·44m 32s·analyzed·Nov 5, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Gary Stern reviews 77 years of pinball history and Stern's modern manufacturing/community strategy.

Summary

Gary Stern presents Stern Pinball's history, manufacturing evolution, and strategic vision at the Dutch Pinball Open Expo 2024. He traces the company's origins from his father Sam Stern's 1947 acquisition of Harry Williams' company through the modern era, emphasizing the new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility as evidence of joining the 21st century. Stern outlines three-tier game production (Pro/Premium/LE), the Stern Army community initiative, and Insider Connected as key growth strategies, positioning connectivity and sophisticated game design as essential to pinball's future competitiveness.

Key Claims

  • Stern produces three quarterstone games per year in three tiers: Pro, Premium, and Limited Edition

    high confidence · Gary Stern states 'we make three quarterstone games a year, three main games, good, better, best, pro, premium, LE'

  • Stern Army has just over 1,000 members organizing events at least once monthly in commercial locations

    high confidence · Gary Stern: 'We have the Stern Army with 1,000 Army members, a little over 1,000 Army members now, that are introducing pinball to various locations'

  • Approximately 600 breweries in America currently have pinball machines operated by commercial operators

    high confidence · Gary Stern: 'We've got about 600 breweries that have put in pinball machines with operators operating them, four or more each'

  • First-time home buyers of pinball machines show a 40% conversion rate to purchasing second machines and becoming enthusiasts

    medium confidence · Gary Stern: 'in 40% of the cases, believe this, is going to buy a second game. He's going to become an enthusiast'

  • The new Stern manufacturing facility is 165,000 square feet with an additional 50,000 square foot innovation center nearby

    high confidence · Gary Stern: 'We have 165,000 square feet of this building... We have another building nearby with 50,000 square feet where we do our woodworking and we do some innovation'

  • Insider Connected was introduced on Godzilla three-plus years ago and has millions invested with hundreds of thousands of players

    high confidence · Gary Stern: 'We introduced it on Godzilla three plus years ago. We've got millions of dollars invested... We only have hundreds of thousands of players so far'

  • Stern's new manufacturing facility is the only truly modern, fully integrated game manufacturing building in the entire game business

    medium confidence · Gary Stern emphasizes: 'This building... is the only truly manufacturing building that I've ever seen in the game business. I don't mean just pinball, I mean the game business'

Notable Quotes

  • “I'm more excited about the future of pinball than I've ever been before about pinball.”

    Gary Stern@ 1:56 — Sets tone for Stern's optimistic industry outlook and future vision

  • “This building, fully air conditioned, well lit, clean... You eat off the floor, it's clean, it's efficient. It's a modern factory. We have joined the 21st century with our factory.”

    Gary Stern@ 23:54 — Emphasizes manufacturing excellence and infrastructure investment as competitive differentiator

  • “A pinball machine without connectivity is like a Sony Betamax. It's old news.”

    Gary Stern@ 37:18 — Articulates strategic positioning of connectivity as essential to market viability

  • “My father used to say, if you give people a shitty place to work, they'll do shitty work. We have a really good place to work.”

    Gary Stern@ 22:56 — Reflects manufacturing philosophy inherited from company founder Sam Stern

  • “We are going to connect people, the community. We want to build the community. We're going to do it with technology.”

    Gary Stern@ 34:40 — Articulates core strategic vision balancing community-building with technological advancement

  • “We're most important creators of compelling entertainment, game designers... the best designers in the industry that the industry's ever had.”

    Gary Stern@ 35:17 — Positions design excellence as core competitive advantage over manufacturing capability

Entities

Gary SternpersonSam SternpersonHarry WilliamspersonSeth DavispersonJoe KaminkowpersonCharles BellpersonSteve Kirkperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Legacy manufacturing abandoned in favor of outsourcing (e.g., plating operations); Stern focusing manufacturing on assembly and innovation rather than full vertical integration

    high · Gary Stern: 'All metal parts are plated. We don't do that ourselves now. We send that out. We're more heavy duty assembling.'

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern expanding manufacturing capabilities and investing in state-of-the-art facility infrastructure as competitive advantage

    high · Gary Stern emphasizes new 165,000 sq ft facility is 'the only truly manufacturing building that I've ever seen in the game business' and represents joining '21st century' manufacturing

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern Army growing to 1,000+ members organizing monthly events at commercial locations; positioned as key community building mechanism

    high · Gary Stern: 'We have the Stern Army with 1,000 Army members, a little over 1,000 Army members now, that are introducing pinball to various locations, events'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Stern shifting game design sophistication to match modern gamer expectations; moving beyond simple rollover targets to complex modes and rule systems

    high · Gary Stern: 'Today, that 45-year-old... probably a gamer... much more sophisticated... It's no longer three rollover legs... There's modes. There's so much in it.'

  • ?

    event_signal: Dutch Pinball Open Expo 2024 attracting significantly more European attendance than previous years, noted as major industry show rivaling Chicago Pinball Expo

    medium · Gary Stern: 'so many Europeans were there this year, more than I think in the past' and notes European attendees less likely to travel to Chicago now due to local show quality

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.134

0:01
This is a Pinball News Production. Thank you all very much. Welcome to the Jonathan and Martin Show. You guys have missed too much together. I really appreciate being here. I'm shocked at what a great show this is. I didn't know for the last decade that there was such a show like this it's really good to see the community out everybody coming to this show all the different manufacturers here showing their stuff so it's really very exciting again I didn't really expect it I was in Europe and said oh I'll cover and I came over here and I'm so glad I'm here so we appreciate all of you some of you were just in Chicago, in my area. How many of you went to Pinball Expo?
1:03
Okay, a few of you. So some of you, they may be a little bored. A lot of you may be a little bored, is what I have to say. But some of you may be a little bored because I'll repeat some stuff.
1:15
Those of you who were, did you guys hear our set that I speak at the Pinball Expo? Okay, so we got one that's a total repeat. How many of you who were there, did you tour our factory? Yeah. It is impressive. I am impressed. I am very impressed with it. So I'm glad to have the chance to tell some of you about it, show a few things to you all.
1:43
This thing is built as a 40 years of pinball. I think that's what they called it in Chicago. Yeah, we did this one. 40 years of pinball. I'm not sure if we should talk about the 40 past years or the next 40 years, because I'm more excited about the future of pinball than I've ever been before about pinball. Where we're going, what you're seeing, what we're doing, what other people are doing, very exciting. And we've got a long way to go as we join the modern world. But we'll talk some about the past, the past 40 years or the past 77 years, actually, because I'm 79 and my father started as a pinball manufacturer when I was two. My father started at Sam. That's Sam there. That's Sam. And Sam and Sam Stern. I think that's me.

Seven million people walk by Stern pinball games daily at Costco

medium confidence · Gary Stern: 'Seven million people, seven million a day I think it is, walk by those games. It's phenomenal'

  • “He refurbished one machine... talked him into taking his machine. Now, all of those machines in that... are Bob's machines, Paradise Pinball. He's a very large operator, 1,000 plus machines... the head of the Association of Operators.”

    Gary Stern@ 29:15 — Illustrates virtuous cycle of home enthusiasts becoming commercial operators, driving industry growth

    • Steve Ritchieperson
    Neil Falconerperson
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Harry Williams Manufacturingcompany
    Chicago Coincompany
    Williams Electronicscompany
    Stern Armyorganization
    Insider Connectedproduct
    Costcocompany
    Paradise Pinballcompany
    AMOAorganization
    Prologiscompany
    Jonathan Yousmanperson
    Martinperson
    X-Mengame
    Godzillagame
    Metallicagame
    Jawsgame
  • $

    market_signal: Costco partnership introducing pinball to mass market with 7 million daily foot traffic; strategic expansion beyond core enthusiast demographic

    medium · Gary Stern mentions Costco introduction of 'less expensive game, not quite... a little smaller' with objective to 'introduce a whole new group of people to pinball'

  • $

    market_signal: Geographic expansion: brewpub market (600+ locations) becoming significant distribution channel alongside traditional bars and bowling alleys

    high · Gary Stern: 'We've got about 600 breweries that have put in pinball machines with operators operating them, four or more each'

  • $

    market_signal: Home enthusiast market segment showing maturation with 40% conversion to multi-game collectors; some becoming commercial operators through natural business cycle

    medium · Gary Stern: 'in 40% of the cases... is going to buy a second game. He's going to become an enthusiast' and describes cycle of enthusiasts becoming operators by placing games in bowling alleys

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Seth Davis brought in as President/CEO with expertise in finance (GE), business strategy (Wharton MBA), and gaming (Disney streaming/games background)

    high · Gary Stern: 'we hire Seth Davis... 47-year-old... He came in as president... decade with General Electric... Wharton Business School... decade plus at Walt Disney... actual gamer'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern emphasizing design excellence and creative talent as primary competitive differentiator rather than manufacturing capability alone

    high · Gary Stern: 'We're most important creators of compelling entertainment, game designers... We design games and we have the best designers in the industry'

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern prioritizing connectivity and cloud-based platform (Insider Connected) as future competitive moat, with millions in continued investment

    high · Gary Stern: 'A pinball machine without connectivity is like a Sony Betamax. It's old news... Everything is streamed today. Everything's in the cloud, and you have to be in the cloud.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern transitioning from legacy systems to modern bus-based architecture enabling cloud connectivity and advanced features

    high · Gary Stern describes shift from 'matrix system' to 'bus system' enabling connectivity, comparing evolution to automobile wiring systems

    • 2:42
    It's either me or my brother David, but it's actually me. I'm pretty sure of that. Oh, this is great. So, no, I'll hang here. I got some notes. My father started as a game operator, somebody who puts games in bars and drugstores and what have you, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the east of the United States, and that's where I was born.
    3:05
    That was in the 30s, late 30s, and he became, thereafter, he became a game distributor, somebody who buys games from the manufacturer and sells them to other game operators. He became a game distributor so that he could game games sooner and at a better price. So, in any event, in 1947, when I was two and he was a 35-year-old punk kid, He came to Chicago to see his supplier, Harry Williams, who was probably a 39-year-old punk kid. You notice they're all very dressy. That was the way of the time.
    3:46
    So that's Harry there. That's Harry and one of his wives and daughter. Harry had three wives. Not at the same time.
    3:56
    But no way, this gets weirder. He had three wives, and I tend to digress when I do these things. He had three wives, two of them passed away on the same day. I don't mean the same date. They passed away on the same day. It's very bizarre. But, okay, that's interesting, but I don't know what story. Any event. So this was some of the people of the days, and as I said, they dressed a little more formally than we do today. You want to click it for me, and let's see what I got next. So this, we're going to talk Harry Williams for a while. This was Harry's airplane. So when my father, he had a Bonanza single-engine plane. When my father came to Chicago in 1947 to see him, Sam sat behind Harry's desk, and he put his feet up on Harry's desk, and he said, why don't you sell me the company?
    4:54
    Harry said, well, I'll have to think about that. went up in his airplane, flew around Chicago for three hours, came down, sold my father half a Williams. So from the time I was two, we were pinball manufacturers.
    5:10
    This is Harry's boat in California, not Chicago. Mine's in Chicago. Mine's not like that. But any event. And this at Williams, you notice the stars on the floor.
    5:26
    This was the executive dining room, also called the Starlight Room. That's where they had lunch. A little bit of a different world than today. Let's move on and do another one here. What do I got next? Okay. So, that's Harry Williams. That's Sam Stern, Gary Stern, Gary Stern, Sam Stern. Classic picture of Sam Stern. Absolutely classic.
    5:53
    Sam was, he was Mr. Pinball. He knew. He knew. As a matter of fact, he knew what he was doing. And some more of us meet through the years with some embarrassing pictures. They tend to dress me up as things. And I tend to let them dress me up. I don't know why. And then, oh, I wish I had that. You know, next time I'm going to get the whole range of kids' pictures. Because after they made me up for the filming that you shoot in the magazine cover, That was a Saturday afternoon, but I had to get downtown. So I left the makeup on for about the next seven, eight hours, drove in my convertible downtown, picked up my motorcycle, went to the gas station, went to the harbor, went to the club, all that, all dressed up like that.
    6:46
    Ooh, I'm not going to talk about the other one where I did that kind of thing. Yeah, actually, another time they dressed me up and made me up in green as Grandpa in the Munsters. And we were at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Well, my friend Joe Kamenkow, who was our head of design earlier, and my associate, I'm going to call him my partner, he had tickets to the hockey game, ice hockey. And his tickets, his seats, were right on the ice next to the team.
    7:24
    Team, seat, seat. And I'm all made up like Grandpa. And then you look up on the temperature on the big TV, and there is the actual Grandpa and me, because the announcers picked me up and showed me that. Anyway, these buildings are interesting.
    7:42
    This is where we were on Janus Avenue in Melrose Park. That's about 40,000 square foot. That's not our first building there. We started it at about 25,000 square foot. We actually started it in my basement in 1986.
    8:05
    My father passed away in 1984, so he never got to see this company. But we started in my basement. It was Shelly Sachs and me.
    8:16
    And then putting together a business plan, Joe Camaco joined us. We moved into a temporary office, two rooms. Two rooms in a 300-and-some-thousand-square-foot building that they tore down after we left. I don't think that was the reason.
    8:33
    And then we moved into a 25,000-square-foot in Valrose Park, then a 40,000-square-foot building. This is 4242 West Fillmore. That's the second Williams building. That's where they were. The first building was on Huron Street. When Sam bought in they were on Huron Street. It was a six story manufacturing building. The reason it was six stories, the first story was Jack's holding up the second story. The third story was Jack's holding up the fourth floor. And the fifth floor was Jack's holding up the sixth floor. So then they moved to 4242 West Fillmore. The area is a blighted area now.
    9:26
    It's a horrible area now. It wasn't horrible, it wasn't great in those days. I started at age 16 with my first paid job that was working in the stock room. If you're in manufacturing, material control is where you either make your money or lose your money.
    9:47
    It's where if you don't have enough parts, you waste labor. If you have too many parts, you throw them out when you're done. MRP, material requirements and planning, material control is very important. The most important thing the design group does for manufacturing is they create the bill of material, the parts list that drives everything. And if they create the bill of material and they leave off the flippers, Eddie Spears and our purchasing department will know, hey, there's no flippers. But if they leave off some bald guy, then you're going to buy $3 million of parts and not be able to build any games because you don't have that part. This is our building, the first building in Belrose Park, 106,000 square feet, about 10,000 square meters. That is the Lump Building. It's no longer there. It belonged to a big real estate company called Prologic.
    10:52
    And they own a lot of the property there. They sold the building to the neighbor just to our west, which was a multi building It was multi because it was a data center for know all kinds of data It had big air conditioners on the roof I think it had about six basements I don know that but it seemed to go forever Down our road, they had put in a fiber optic cable, so we were the fiber optic highway. So Prologic sold our building to the neighbor and then the neighbor said, okay we don't want to renew your lease but we will pay you to go away. So they paid us to get out and we moved into our new building which we'll look a little bit at later. This was the old again 4242 West Fillmore and you can see these are just interesting pictures of manufacturing back in the day. This room I haven't looked at this picture. This is the plating department. All metal parts are plated. We don't do that ourselves now. We send that out. We're more heavy duty assembling. pinball factories back in the day were true to full fully integrated manufacturing with punch presses and metal bending and everything this was plating department my when I was 17 I was the personnel director temporary for the summer and one of the guys didn't make it in there and so they sent me in and sent him in to see me.
    12:35
    And sitting down, and he comes in and sits down, and he's looking at me. I'm looking at him. And I said, they didn't tell you anything, did they? They were firing him. He wasn't letting him off. And this 17-year-old kid was going to have to do it because they didn't tell anybody. So it was trauma for me. It was bigger trauma for him. But this was the old factory. You can see the people lined up in the way we used to make things. Let's see what we've got next. Oh, this is more pictures of us making things. I guess I've gotten here for a reason. This is the 2020 Janice, the 40,000-square-foot building.
    13:17
    This is Lunt as we continue to grow. Cable department. Let me back up for a minute. A few of you saw the new building and took the tour. There were 1,000 people. taking that tour, probably a few over that.
    13:34
    We had 1,000 tokens that we gave people. And I think we had three left. I got one, so that's four. But some people didn't get them. So well over 1,000 people came through to see that building. I'm very happy because we're all very proud of it. We'll talk more about the fact that it is the only truly manufacturing building that I've ever seen in the game business. I don't mean just pinball, I mean the game business. This thing is fantastic. We'll talk about that a little more. I'll digress around. That was luck. There's a reason I have this picture in here. this is an old it's not, it's a painting of an old Williams game called Oh Boy you can tell that it's old 50's game, I have to look it up maybe 60's, I think 50's and the reason I have it here back up, the reason I have it here the artist who painted this sold at Suffolk Bees for something over $100,000 about 10 years ago. He was a very good artist, very well known. Somebody had his name last time I did this, and I forgot. I always forget to write it down. Charles whatever. Say it again. Charles whatever. Louder. You've got your own microphone.
    14:59
    Charles, I'll look up his last name. You've got to look it up. Okay. So he was doing color studies, and I just found this interesting because in his color studies, he painted the reflection of the back glass on the play field glass it's nothing new it's something that existed in pinball for a long long time when we started the first Stern I had taken over the assets of Chicago Coin they had a calendar their calendar was this artwork So I took it for a backless and made the first Stern pinball for electronics with it. You got it? Charles Bell. Bell? Yeah. B-E-L-L? B-E-L-L. Charles Bell. He's a well-known artist. Well-known enough that Jonathan found his name. I didn't. Okay. Next one we'll talk about. Gametron. The reason I have this here.
    16:03
    Gametron. What's the next one? Do you know what I think it is? Yeah. Now, GammaTron was a narrow-body version of Flight 2000, one of my favorite old Harry Williams games.
    16:20
    And the reason I show you this is twofold. One is Steve Kirk, the game designer, and myself, we decided to make a conversion kit for Bally Games. Unfortunately when we came out with it It was about the same time As Steve Ritchie's High Speed Why would you convert an old Valley game When you could trade it in And buy a new High Speed In those days Well why would you ever convert a game That was one of the flaws of Pinball 2K They thought people would convert games Now you just trade it in Just like today Games have value but the game instead of a ball walker we used ejects, we had one pop bumper instead of three, narrow body, it was a far superior game than play 2000, wide bodies wide bodies, I was telling this young man, wide bodies, the problem with wide bodies, Harry taught me is the ball slows up going from left to right too much, so you really don't get the action that you want you have to put in more parts like the old ball walker so it cost you too much remember this is a business we got to make money so we can make the next game and so narrow bodies there was one Neil Falconer game designer, software designer for Bally and then Bate East and later IGT slot machines whenever companies started coming out with wide bodies. It showed panic. And so he would put out his resume because he knew the business was going to suffer. And he was right. We did it when we shouldn't. So in any event, this was the Gamma John 1. What do I have next? Where are we going? I just took that one out. So let's skip that one for now. Skip that one. All right. Now, we're going to talk about pinball today. You saw some of the other factories. You saw the Lunt factory. This is the factory that we're in now. Those of you who toured saw it, and this is in at night, and I couldn't be more proud of what our people have done here. This building, we share it. We don't have all of it yet. We have 165,000 square feet of this building, call that 150 or so square meters. We have another building nearby with 50,000 square feet where we do our woodworking and we do some innovation, our innovation center. this building what we've done here the mayor wanted us to do this and this is it at night and it's the anchor piece of a road in the industrial park and it is the future it is bringing our manufacturing into the 21st century just as we're bringing the games in the 21st century.
    19:43
    Go back, go back, go not so quick. This is the silver ball. You know, go back a couple. Go back, keep going, go, go, go, ignore those, keep going. Go a little further, a little further. Where's the sign here?
    20:01
    No, we went too far. No, here, one more. Keep going. More, more, more. No, no. You keep going the wrong way. Go to the beginning, towards the beginning. Towards the beginning. Not that far. One more, one more, one more, one more.
    20:26
    No, that one, that one, there, there, that sign, which is from Prologis, who by the way, is our landlord in the new building. People used to come and get their picture taken in front of that junky sign. So we decided that people are gonna come by, well yes, now we're going to the new building. We have great murals, you know, lighting up at night about pinball. We also happen to have hidden in here the elk of Elk Grove Village because we're in Elk Grove. But the ball is so people, instead of in front of a jockey sign, can take their picture in front of that ball. A 70 foot in diameter, weighs 800 pounds, is held in the ground by 16 inch pylon things down in the ground.
    21:19
    Polished stainless steel. One of the things that you see reflection at night often, I have a picture on my phone. I should show you all, but it's not up here. On a cloudy day, it is so freaky. It's beautiful to see it. All different kind of weather. Great stuff on it. Absolutely great. All right, let's go to another one. Let's see if we'll have more pictures. What we do, you all probably know, but I will say again, is we make three quarterstone games a year, three main games, good, better, best, pro, premium, LE, and the last year, Jaws, WIC, Now X-Men, by the way I am taking an X-Men premium to Vail, Colorado, which is where I live. I love that game have to have it We do some specials So here was our Godzilla in the black and white and this is stunning the remastered Metallica which you will see shortly the X you can play here
    22:27
    We do great machines, great design work. You know, what I want to get, give me the next slide and let me see where I'm going. Okay, we have modern manufacturing, sculpts and all that, but let's talk about the factory. And somebody's having a tour. Look how short they are compared to the high ceiling. This building, fully air conditioned, well lit, clean. My father used to say, some of you who are in the, pardon my language here. My father used to say, if you give people a shitty place to work, they'll do shitty work. We have a really good place to work, both for our engineering, design, accounting, everybody, product development, and the factory. And so we have typically about 450 people, maybe 500. We have a lot of consultants doing software, especially on Insider Connected, which we'll talk about because that's really the future.
    23:28
    And so this thing is absolutely stunning. We're going to start arranging. We're working on regular tours where you can sign up and take a tour. but we certainly at Pitbull Expo are thrilled to have people tour.
    23:45
    So we have... And this is the only factory ever in the game business that is... You eat off the floor, it's clean, it's efficient. It's a modern factory. We have joined the 21st century with our factory.
    24:02
    What would I show next? Ah, Insider Connected, which, by the way, We have the app, the new user interface. You'll have a new user interface next week to even improve it.
    24:22
    But before I talk about that, let's talk about all the things that we've done to grow Pinball and to grow the Pinball community. When I say we have good, better, best, three versions, we have I used to get somebody used to belittle me for saying that we have three legs to our farmer's stool like you milk a cow we have game operators the commercial business which is really we have game players in locations in our country bar arcades we're starting to see some here in bars, bowling alleys right now we have a lot of games going into, and we are doing this and supporting it and introducing it, a lot of games going into bar, into brew pubs.
    25:13
    And typically the brew pubs, it's a small industrial area. It's not a bar, but the brewing beer is very big in America. And typically we have one guy who comes from that industry and we hired them just to help find it. Plus, our guys like to go to different cities and drink beer, and that's how this all started. So we've got about 600 breweries that have put in pinball machines with operators operating them, four or more each. Very good split for the operator, good business, and good for the location. So we're doing things to grow pinball. We have launch parties that never existed years ago. We have the Stern Army with 1,000 Army members, a little over 1,000 Army members now, that are introducing pinball to various locations, events to those locations. All this to drive, to build the community, drive the interest. Because, again, three legs to that stool. Game operators, general homeowners who just want something at home, especially in COVID. I'm watching here because I want to leave time for questions we have plenty, don't know many answers but we've got plenty of time operators, which really means 20 somethings, 30 somethings playing games in location just general homeowners who want a flex for the home there's a difference in those homeowners today by the way 20 years ago, 10 years ago when somebody bought a game for the home he was buying it. It was what they call a flex. Something cool to have. His kids played games. Today, that 45-year-old give or take who's buying a game for the home for the first time, he's probably a gamer. He probably played console games. It'd be arcade games, but he probably played console games, everything else. He's much more sophisticated of a gamer, so the games are more sophisticated. It's no longer three rollover legs at the top, A, B, C, light them, light red special, get an extra ball. There's different game rules. There's different ways to play the game. There's modes. There's so much in it. And that gamer who bought a game for the homes, in 40% of the cases, believe this, is going to buy a second game.
    27:44
    He's going to become an enthusiast. He made by a third, a fourth, in some of your cases, 10, 50, 100 games.
    27:52
    Okay, got to have a lot of space, but some of you. In fact, sometimes you run out of space. This is a cycle we see. And we did a market study with a big marketing company. And when you run out of space, some of you have taken games, and certainly in my country, and gone to a bowling alley and said, you don't have pinball. Can I put my pinball in here? And you become an operator so that more young people can play the game, can buy the game when they're 45, buy many more games, become operators. And in fact, in America, the head of the AMOA, the Amusement and Music Operators of America, used to be the MOA when I was a kid. The Music Operators of America, they operate jukeboxes, but they also operate a lot of amusements now. The president of that association started with one time machine, stern time machine, cleaned it up, restored it, went to a bowling alley. No. Yeah, bowling alley. It is a bowling alley. It was there recently. talked him into taking his machine. Now, all of those machines in that, whether they're pinball or something else, are Bob's machines, Paradise Pinball. He has some family entertainment, some bar arcades. He's a very large operator, 1,000 plus machines, more. He's the head of the Association of Operators. All because he refurbished one machine. So that's part of this cycle that's important to us, and to build a community and to build Pinball and build it to its future. What else do we do? We talk about a new and better factory. We hired a lawyer here. I go back to only a few of you were at Pinball Expo.
    29:48
    And I'm going to speak like Trump was running for president, because he weaves. He says he weaves the speech. He goes all over the place. Well, I'm going to go all over the place a little too. So we hired Lloyd to join us in order to do some of the things that we do in America. And what was really interesting to Seth and myself, Seth's our president, is that at Pinball Expo, so many Europeans were there this year, more than I think in the past. I'm going to get statistics. But it really seemed, especially during our tour, there were very many people from Europe. Now, this show is really good, so maybe you don't have to come there anymore. But the neat thing about the show in the Chicago area is that past and current designers, all those kind of people are at that show, and you meet a lot of different people. what else are we doing to grow pinball huh yeah we grow the community and the army as I said a thousand army members organizing events at least once a month in a commercial location so that we can grow it do I have another slide what do I got ok we'll get back to how you can help let's sit there Another thing that we did to grow pinball is I ran a pinball company that we were scrappy. We're still scrappy, but we were scrappy. We fought. We did things not always in the most elegant way in order to get things done. But the business has grown. So we hire Seth Davis, and he's CFO. Nick comes from the liquor industry, which is somewhat related to us. Our games are in bars.
    32:03
    Seth is a 47-year-old. He's been with us for three years. He came in as president, but I remained as chairman and CEO. now I'm chairman, he's the CEO and he, this is because we're going to grow this business and we're going to grow and make better games for you and grow, make better games in this factory with better systems his undergraduate degree is in accounting and in information technology then he spent 10 years a decade after university with General Electric, GE, which was the pinnacle of companies to train with, trained in finance and manufacturing. He went back to Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, great business school, classy business school, fine business school, and got his Master of Business Administration. Then he spent a decade plus at Walt Disney, at Disney. Okay, he involved with streaming and with games. He is an actual gamer he plays games he knows the games he knows the video games one of the things that we do comes from the video game business you know we are constantly updating code sometimes it the complete things sometimes it to change things sometimes it's to make something new in the video game business they're always dropping new code to reinvigorate the game to give it more life we're not just fixing things we're not just bringing out code because we're not done we're bringing out code and you'll see sometimes we'll bring out mass of codes all at one time a lot of codes all in all together that's part of how to change this business and because of insider connected with it downloads automatically we'll come back to insider connected a little bit Let's go to my last page, second to the last page. This one. What's our vision? I want to point out a couple words. To create compelling entertainment that inspires a lifelong love of games, sparks passion, forges friendships, and connects people everywhere through fun, innovative, technologically advanced pinball games and experience. Okay. things to point out here. We are going to connect people, the community. We want to build the community. We're going to do it with technology. And we are going to create games. Now we talked about, I talked about, you didn't. I talked about high-tech manufacturing, better manufacturing, so forth. We're not, we make our own games. We make them in America, on China or anything like that. But not principally, I'm not going to say we're principally or most important game manufacturers. We're most important creators of compelling entertainment, game designers. We design games and we have the best designers in the industry that the industry's ever had. And the most complete, big design teams, I must say, with the software and the kind of games that we're talking about for players today that are grew up playing games or more into games. And we do it with technology, with high technology. You know, we changed from a matrix system years ago to a bus system. Some of the people said to me, why are you doing that? I'm a lawyer. I don't understand it at all. But I knew that to go to advance is what we had to do. You know, your automobile used to have a matrix system. like the old Williams systems and what have you. And you had a cable the size of my wrist in that automobile. Now you've got a few wires going to smart boards that operate the car. The same is true in pinball. And doing that, that gave us the possibility to do what I think is the most important thing. Let's go back to one of the pages that talks about connectivity. Oh, good, connectivity. Why is this important? It's important because this is the future of any product. Any product today to have any future has to have connectivity. You've got to have it. You've got to start your car with your phone today. Let it warm up in the winter. I have a new washer and dryer. It's calling me to tell me when the clothes should be taken out. I really don't care to have a conversation with my washer-dryer, but it wants to talk to me. You don't watch network TV. You stream TV.
    37:18
    A pinball machine without connectivity is like a Sony Betamax. It's old news. The old Sony tape players that didn't make the VHS. Nobody uses any of that. Everything is streamed today. Everything's in the cloud, and you have to be in the cloud. Our games can be played without being connected, but you can play more with some of the rules and effects and things that come out of the cloud. Insider Connected is based similar to Xbox Live. We only have hundreds of thousands of players so far. We started six years ago. We introduced it on Godzilla three plus years ago. We've got millions of dollars invested and continue to invest and continue to come up with new achievements. we will continue to add to it. We'll continue to ask you what you want. Where's that slide? Okay, I'll find that one. Yeah, yeah.
    38:31
    Feedback with title survey we just did. Only because we have Insider Connected can we do that. And again, we see the play go up. We see people's earnings. so they'll put more games out, go up. We saw when we did March Madness, we saw a big spike. We know what days people are playing. That's going to surprise you. It's Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Ah, that, that.
    39:01
    There's, huh? No? Not Friday, Saturday, Sunday? Yeah, yeah. Huh? No, we can speak about Costco. Of course we can. What we've done in America with Costco, a major retailer, we introduced a less expensive game, not quite, you know, it's a little smaller. The purpose of it is to sell games and make money, because that's what we do. The purpose of it is to introduce a whole new group of people to pinball. Seven million people, seven million a day I think it is, walk by those games. It's phenomenal. Walk by those games and see pinball. There's still people who say, oh, you still make pinball? There used to be people when I said I'm in the pinball business said, oh you work for Bally? Now they know Stern. Most of them know. And we've done a company called Brand Trust. We did a survey. I'll tell you the other thing we learned with Brand Trust. This is the point that I wanted to get to. You want to help other people. There's Costco. More people. But we want to help more people. One of the biggest problems of somebody deciding to buy a pinball machine, I'm going to call it, I'm going to use the wrong word, I'm going to call it fear. They don't know what they're doing. They don't know who to go to to buy a pinball machine. They see one in your house and say, oh that's cool. They may not ask you where to buy it. I've known some people who have pinball at home and who just introduce their friends and then their friends have pinball. They don't know how to do it. They don't know if it's smart. They don't want to buy something expensive and turn out to be stupid. They don't want to buy it and have trouble with it or not know where to get it fixed. They need what's called a Sherpa, a leader, a guide to help them buy pinball. Can do that. You can help, whether it's my game or somebody else's. I prefer it's mine. You can help them find and guide them through buying a pinball. Any of your friends who come home, come to your home and play pinball, or you play in a bar or wherever you play pinball, and they say this is fun, you can have this. You can have this at home just like I do.
    41:36
    But that's sort of scary. Walk them through. Help them. Hold your friend's hand. Help them do it. because with that with that, inside of Connected with better games, better factory a guy like Seth, Seth is smarter than I am, has better questions than I do him leading us into the future better than I can all of that is going to grow pinball and with telling us what you want and we'll ask you other things with our introducing all the things we're doing but you're introducing more people and helping them, guiding them, you can help grow Pinball. And you can help grow the community. And that's what we're all trying to do.
    42:20
    With that, have I left anything out? I don't think so. And if I did, it doesn't matter. Huh? Yeah, just Q&A. My boss here says Q&A. We're getting a little short of time anyway. Has anybody got a question for me that I may or may not answer? What's your question? Yes, keep talking.
    42:38
    Yes, Gary. You keep talking about connectivity, but how long do you think it will last? I mean, eventually... No, no, no. Let me answer your question. Well, I'm not done yet.
    42:52
    Well, eventually, once it's interconnected, it has its online service terminated, the functionality will become completely impossible for, say, Venom. No. No, it won't. It won't become impossible, everybody. we, the games, we're not turning it off it's staying on and the cloud is there it's going to become as impossible as streaming is and streaming is not going away it's all here, don't worry about that that's not possible it will continue and we will continue to support it that's most important because we want our games to have so they have value for you alright, anybody else got a question? Raise your hand and I have a mic for you.
    43:40
    That was easy. Not everybody at the same time. Well, thank you, Garrison. Thank you all very much. Thank you.
    43:55
    Gary, we'll be back. I thought you wanted to hear it again. I just want to say something before. I just want to say thank you to Marcel and Jonathan, because without people like them, we don't have events like we have here. So we need to continue to support that kind of people who loves our passion of people.