When Harold Hill, that famous “Music Man” of the hit play and movie, warned about trouble in yesteryear’s River City, he meant pool, with a capital P.
Today, pool’s once unsavory image is gone, and the game is a respectable family pastime, played in countless homes, clubs and billiard parlors throughout America with pool cues made in Canada by a firm headquartered in Gurnee: Dufferin Inc.
“The negative image of pool began to change right after World War II, and the home market started growing,” said Henry W. Hayes Jr. of Deerfield, the antithesis to Harold Hill. Hayes is president and CEO of Dufferin Inc. and would be happy to see everybody playing pool, especially with Dufferin cues and accessories.
“When movies like `The Hustler’ and `Color of Money’ came out, the whole industry got a shot in the arm,” said Hayes, explaining how billiards emerged from dingy, smoke-filled, dimly lit pool halls and came into America’s clean, bright family rooms.
Hayes, the 54-year-old dynamo behind the success of the company he founded in 1981 with a now-retired partner, Robert Nixon, estimates that Dufferin Inc. now commands a 20 to 25 percent share of the one-piece pool cue market. “And we’re growing,” he said.
“Most amateur players use the one-piece cue,” Hayes explained. “We also make more elaborate two-piece cues, with bird’s-eye maple, inlaid woods, an ebony butt and a linen material wrap-around grip. These are used by serious amateurs and professional pool players.”
The basic one-piece starter cue retails for $19.95, with other one-piece cues ranging to $40. Two-piece cues start at $50 and top out at $250.
Cues come in 55-, 57-, 58-, and 59-inch lengths and in weights of 18 to 21 ounces. Cues made for the game of snooker, a variation of pool using bigger tables and smaller balls, run from 15 to 18 ounces.
Each cue is precisely balanced, with proper taper, and the all-important cue tip is made of hard leather, usually water buffalo hide.
Dufferin’s pool cues are manufactured in Mississauga near Toronto, mainly from a species of hard rock maple, a tight-grained wood found only in upstate New York, New Hampshire and the contiguous area of Canada.
“We use this wood because of its tendency not to warp,” Hayes said. “We get our ebony from India, Africa and the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa. Other hardwoods we get from Indonesia and South America.”
Hayes is quick to point out that Dufferin observes all local laws, including environmental laws, in obtaining wood for its products.
Dufferin’s cues of selected woods and its high standards of manufacture — cues are milled from a single piece of wood, turned and slow-dried — account for the firm’s excellent reputation among pool players, according to Mike Panozzo, editor and publisher of Billiards Digest in Chicago. The magazine circulates to about 18,000 pool enthusiasts, professional players and people in the billiard industry, such as billiard hall owners, distributors and retailers.
“When Henry (Hayes) started his company, he wanted to distribute only the very best products,” Panozzo said. “He’s done that. Probably 8 out of 10 professional pool players use Dufferin cues. They’re the hardest, straightest cues and less likely to warp because they’re properly dried and turned.”
Behind Hayes’ success and Dufferin’s prominence among pool shooters is a restless, adventurous nature that prompted him to quit a secure job as general sales manager with Brunswick in Lake Forest to start the firm in 1981.
“At that time there were lots of good quality pool tables, but the accessories were less than good quality,” Hayes said. “The cloth, balls and cues were terrible. But I knew there were good quality accessories outside the U.S.”
So billiard accessories was the market niche Hayes and Nixon saw, and they jumped into it. Dufferin also is the exclusive North American marketing agent for Simonis billiard cloth; Simonis is the world’s oldest cloth company for pool tables, founded in 1680 by Iwan Simonis in Belgium. Dufferin also is one of the two North American distributors of Aramith pool balls, the world’s only phenolic (a kind of resin) ball and “the most perfectly round pool ball there is,” Hayes said. The balls are manufactured in Belgium by Saluc.
“Simonis cloth and Aramith balls are the best,” Hayes said. “That’s why I’m marketing these products. I want to be associated with only the best.”
Jim Harp, co-owner of Slate Street Billiards in Vernon Hills, said Hayes was shrewd to align himself with those products, providing an entree for his Dufferin cues. “Simonis has the best cloth in the business — hands down,” he said, adding that it is pricey but the best choice for a home table. Likewise for the Aramith phenolic balls, he explained, because they retain their roundness despite climatic fluctuations.
As for Dufferin cues, he said, “It’s a very high-grade midrange cue,” the high range being custom made. “And in their one-piece cues, they’re probably the best in the business.”
In a quest for the best while working at Brunswick, Hayes discovered the small, obscure Canadian pool cue company with which he eventually became a partner. “I was given the assignment of getting Brunswick back into the accessories business. So I traveled around the world looking at (billiard accessory) companies for acquisition or to create a private label. In Canada, I found a tiny company called Dufferin. It made snooker cues just for the Canadian market and some for England. A husband and wife owned it. The cues had some unique features: they were made from high-quality, hard rock maple. Most cues at the time were inexpensive and came out of the Orient using inferior wood. Dufferin started with a square blank and shaved off 25 percent of the cue one day and let it sit overnight. In the morning the wood had warped somewhat and they’d be back on the lathe again, they’d cut them down again. What I saw was a functionally different product, straight as an arrow, the best (cue) on the market.”
Although Hayes saw the market potential of quality pool cues and accessories, he thought about leaving his Brunswick job for several years before making the move. When he finally announced his intention to quit and start a business, his wife, Shirley, reacted positively.
“She was all for it and encouraged me greatly,” Hayes said. “But I was scared to death. I was an executive, well paid and well treated. I talked myself out of quitting 50 times.”
Shirley, who has been married to Henry 33 years, recalled that she was not worried about her husband’s loss of a regular paycheck and a secure corporate job.
“My reaction was: This is great,” she said. “I was hoping he would do something like that. He’s very goal-oriented, directed and smart. I thought that he’d get his rewards by working for himself instead of for a big company.”
That’s exactly how it turned out. Hayes and Nixon left Brunswick to start Dufferin. “I just wanted to call my own shots and do things my way,” Hayes said. “I knew I was right” about the market potential for a more expensive one-piece cue).
Hayes and Nixon formed their U.S. company and entered a partnership arrangement with Dufferin to market its products internationally.
Within two weeks of starting the company, originally based in a one-room Wheeling office, Hayes snagged the huge Kmart account, and things began rolling. The firm relocated to Gurnee in 1984 and moved into its current 6,800-square-foot building three years ago. The Canadian plant employs 42 people, the Gurnee headquarters and shipping facility has seven full-time and two part-time employees.
Conducting a tour of the Gurnee facility, where the long cardboard boxes of cues to be shipped are stacked in high piles, Hayes said, “We need more room already.” Hayes declined to disclose annual unit sales figures and dollar volume, but said sales have increased by 10 percent a year over each of the last five years.
Two members of the Hayes family also work at the firm’s main office in Gurnee: son David and recently married daughter Christine Wilson. Another son, Peter, 32, is a loan officer at a Wilmington, Del., financial institution.
David, 27, a sales associate with “many other duties,” as he describes it, has worked at Dufferin for almost four years.
“There’s a nice atmosphere here,” he said. “Obviously, there’s going to be conflict on the job. But here, my dad’s the boss. Family issues, of course, are open to debate.”
Although running a business is more than a full-time job for CEO Hayes, who puts in about 60 hours weekly, David said his father is not a workaholic. “When we were growing up, he always found time for the family.”
Christine, 30, office manager, who has worked at Dufferin for the last seven years, described her employer-father as “even-handed and fair and very caring both as a boss and a dad.”
But, as in every job, there’s an occasional conflict, according to Christine. “We’re very much alike,” she said. “So every once in a while, we might butt heads about something. They’re not arguments, though. But he’s my boss and I’m an employee, so it’s a professional situation when we’re here.”
Director of operations Jill Watring of Kenosha, Wis., has been with the firm 12 years and has seen it grow from a single employee — just her in addition to partners Hayes and Nixon — to its current staff of nine. She believes Dufferin’s success, at least in part, may be attributed to Hayes’ knowledge of the business.
“Hank has an unusual grasp of the market and understands the billiard industry,” she said. “He’s an easy guy to work for, and that’s probably why I’ve been here so long. It’s a comfortable environment to work in, and I feel like family.”
Hayes, who often works evenings at his home office after dinner, also insists that he is not a workaholic. “I try not to work on weekends,” he said.
Hayes advises all aspiring entrepreneurs: “Believe in yourself, your product and just do it. Work hard and don’t let anyone tell you it can’t be done.”
Contemplating an earlier-than-65 retirement, Hayes said, “I’d like to spend more time with my family.” For his leisure activities, Hayes prefers tennis; he rarely plays pool. In the summer, the Hayes family spends time at their home in Cape Cod. For long weekend getaways, they drive to Door County, Wis.
But retirement and relaxation for this man who insists he is not a workaholic seems a long way off. Meanwhile, Hayes hints that Dufferin has some interesting growth plans on the drawing board, plans which one way or another probably will materialize on a pool table.
