Sharon Pennington and Jim Baugus, co-owners of D&C Amusement in Kingsville, at a local bar where they supply and maintain the pool tables, dartboards, jukeboxes and more. Photo by Carrie Robertson Meyer/ Third Coast Photo
D&C Amusement Co. in Kingsville is more than a retail store that houses the largest selection of dart and billiard supplies in South Texas. It also provides the latest in internet-based jukeboxes, dartboards and other games to bars and homes across the region.
“It's no joke. We really do have the biggest stock of of pool, billiards and darts gear here in South Texas,” said Sharon Pennington, co-owner and vice president of the company. “I have people driving up from the Rio Grande Valley and Corpus Christi to shop.The nearest stores that even rival my stock are all the way in San Antonio and Houston.”
The family-owned company has served as a one-stop shop for amusement in South Texas for more than 30 years. They service vending machines, pool tables, jukeboxes and dartboards while also providing full pool table services, including assembly, moving and covering. D&C Amusement also sells pool and darts supplies to the public.
The company’s primary function is operating an amusement vending route for Kingsville and South Texas, Pennington said. That includes setting up electronic dartboard leagues that travel the state in competitions.
“When we set up equipment in a bar, like jukeboxes, pool and billiards tables, dartboards, etcetera, we maintain them 100 percent at no cost to the owner,” she said. “We share any commission we get with the owner.”
The care and covering of pool tables is a speciality of D&C Amusement.
“You can trust us to take great care of your pool table, whether it be an antique or brand-new modern style out of the box,” Pennington said. “We’ve been covering pool tables since 1980, and some of our technicians have been with us for over 20 years. We take great pride in doing a quality job at very competitive prices with a quick turnaround time of one day.”
Lead technician Marty Martinez, for instance, has been with the company since 1993.
“My favorite part of the job is the pool table work,” he said. “I like working with a wide variety of cloth and enjoy the challenges of covering different types of tables. I feel a sense of pride transforming a table from ragged-looking to just like brand new.”
The company was formed in 1980 when two local businesses merged into a single corporation and was later bought by Pennington and James “Jim” Baugus.
“The people we bought the business from had been doing business with my mother at her bar for many, many years,” Pennington said. “They pursued us in an effort to get us to buy D&C Amusement.”
The timing was perfect for Pennington, who had just graduated from Texas A&I University and was looking to start a career.
At the same time, Baugus, president and co-owner of the company, had just finished serving his second term in the U.S. Navy. He was about to sign up for a third go-around when he was asked to join the business venture.
“It came down to a choice,” he said. “If I continued my Navy career, it meant leaving my family and friends. So instead, I decided to be a part of D&C Amusement as a business partner. I’ve never regretted it since.”
Baugus and Pennington took over the company in 1988. It has survived by keeping up with constantly changing technology.
“In the early ’80s, a video arcade game machine, like Ms. Pac-Man, could cost as much as $2,000 and would generate an income of at least a $500 a week or more,” Baugus said. “There was even a time where countertop video games machines by Merit were the hottest thing in the market, and everyone kept buying them.”
But soon, home systems such as Playstation and Xbox and, later, smartphones and their game apps took over the world of gaming.
“It was amazing how quickly the arcade machines faded away,” Baugus said. “And now, there are hundreds of route people like myself who have these machines sitting in warehouses unable to sell them.”
With arcade game machines no longer in the repertoire, the company focuses on newer entertainment equipment to stay in the game. Baugus relies on internet research to keep track of the latest trends and identify which type of equipment is in demand. That way, he can upgrade on a regular basis while selling off older inventory.
“It’s just like buying an energy-efficient appliance,” he said. “At first, it’s expensive, but later, it ends up saving you a lot of money. In this case, machines that are more convenient for people to use, like those that take credit cards or digital payment versus dollar bills, tend to result in better profits.”
For Pennington, changes in technology are what keep the business exciting.
“When we first got started, a lot of our jukeboxes still played 45 vinyl records, and then we switched over to CDs,” Pennington said. “Now, we only have two of those because the rest of our jukeboxes are internet-based where customers can select songs and pay for them using a smartphone app like AMI BarLink.”
Instead of getting up and walking across the bar to drop money into the jukebox, customers can select music anonymously from their table or even play music at other nearby bars.
“I love it when I go out with my girlfriends and surprise them by programming the songs on my phone and teaching them how to do the same,” Pennington said. “I love where this technology is taking our business.”
New technology also extends to the dartboard. As an organizer of pool and darts leagues, Pennington no longer has to rely on pen and paper to keep score.
“At first, we could load up the leagues on the dartboard itself, and each team’s scores would be collected on a memory card, transferred onto a computer and manually tabulated on an Excel spreadsheet,” Pennington said. “But now, it’s even more simple. The dartboards can connect directly to the internet, and using cloud-based technology, a software calculates all the scores.”
The pool and darts leagues help generate income for the equipment as well as for the bar owners, Baugus said.
“We have five dart leagues that meet Sunday through Thursday nights each week, ranging in expertise from beginners to advanced, men’s, women’s and co-ed,” he said. “It’s set up so that the league nights rotate around the different bars, which helps business for both the vending route as well as the bar owners.”
For Pennington, running the leagues was not only beneficial to promoting the company, it also helped her form lifelong friendships with bar owners and players. She often accompanies teams to tournaments as far as Houston and Chicago.
According to Baugus, games such as pool and darts help with hand-eye coordination. One of his daughters, Emily, became the youngest female dart thrower to qualify for the prestigious Women’s A-List at age 14. Following in her father’s military footsteps, Emily currently serves overseas in the U.S. Army as a Blackhawk helicopter pilot — another tip of the cap to hand-eye coordination paying off.
For Pennington, the rewards of working at D&C Amusement are not just financial.
“I’m inspired by all the people I’ve met and bonded with in this line of business,” she said. “When customers come into our store, they see that we have a lot to offer, that we are a trustworthy company, delivering quality services and products, while still maintaining a mom-and-pop-shop feel.”
D&C Amusement Co. is located at 632 E. Corral Ave. in Kingsville. For more information, call (361) 592-6786 or visit dartandbilliardsupplies.com. Find D&C Amusement on Facebook as well to keep up to date on the latest in gaming technology.
