Incorporated: 2004
NAIC: 339932 Game, Toy, and Children's Vehicle Manufacturing; 551112 Offices of Other Holding Companies
SIC: 3944 Games, Toys & Children's Vehicles; 6719 Holding Companies Nec
Gaming Partners International Corporation (GPI) is a leading manufacturer and supplier of casino table equipment, serving casinos throughout the world. GPI makes dice, playing cards, gaming chips, table layouts, gaming furniture, roulette wheels, chip trays, drop boxes, and dealing shoes. The company operates manufacturing facilities in Las Vegas, Nevada; San Luis, Mexico; and Beaune, France. Through its Las Vegas-based subsidiary, Gaming Partners International USA, GPI sells its products directly to casinos in the United States and Canada. The company's Beaune-based subsidiary, Gaming Partners International SAS, sells its European-manufactured products to casinos in countries outside North America.
A Tale of Three Companies
GPI, the name, first appeared in 2004, but the assets controlled under the new corporate banner had a history dating back to the 1920s. GPI was the sum of its parts, an enterprise comprised of three companies: Etablissements Bourgogne et Grasset S.A. (B&G), The Bud Jones Company, and Paul-Son Gaming Corporation. Each of the companies figured as a pioneer in the gaming supply industry and each company possessed a unique identity. GPI had roots in Nevada and in France, where the chronological story of the company's formation began 80 years before its name first appeared.
B&G: A Focus on Security
In the city of Beaune, in the Burgundy region of France, two inventors were making pioneering discoveries in the use of plastics during the early 1920s. Étienne Bourgogne, a lithographer, and Claudius Grasset, an engineer, became the first to master the art of plastic film printing. Soon, their work turned to developing other uses for plastics. The partners were working on incorporating plastics into hair slides, brooches, and playing cards, when Grasset read an article in Le Figaro in 1925 that focused their work in a single direction. The newspaper article revealed that a counterfeiter had broken the bank at the Monte Carlo casino, using fake chips to bilk the casino of 600,000 francs.
Bourgogne and Grasset immediately began work on applying their knowledge of plastics to the manufacture of casino chips, searching for a way to address the security problem. They produced a batch of chips using a process in which the impression of the chip was protected by a thin plastic film, making it exceedingly hard to copy, and sent their samples to the general manager of the Monte Carlo casino, Monsieur Blanc. When a response came back from Monsieur Blanc, the two partners were in business. Their company, B&G, received its first order for casino chips, marking the birth of a brand recognized for its ability to thwart counterfeiters.
Security was the focus of B&G's second owner, Daniel Senard, who purchased the company in 1945 after spending five years as a prisoner in a Nazi detention camp. Under Senard's leadership, numerous security features were added to B&G's chips, including color stripes, lunettes (see-through windows), white and golden lace, lamé, and invisible prints. The innovations made the company's chips, and their more international counterparts, plaques and jetons, renowned for their uncompromisable authenticity, which fueled B&G's growth. Casinos across Europe turned to B&G for supplies, beginning a period of steady geographic expansion that would see the company's products in use in Macao, the Philippines, Malaysia, Australia, Chile, Argentina, and South Africa. The company expanded its product line as well, launching a line of injection-molded plastic chips in 1990 before diversifying into the manufacture of roulette wheels, gaming tables, and other supplies several years later.
After a half-century of leading the company, Senard decided to sell B&G in 1994. He sold the company to a group of investors led by his son-in-law, Gerard P. Charlier, the executive in charge of GPI when it was formed. Charlier earned graduate degrees in business from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, and in electrical engineering from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, before primarily working as a consultant during the two decades leading up to his purchase of B&G. Under Charlier's charge, the drive to make B&G a more comprehensive competitor in the global gaming industry continued, exemplified by the company's decision in 2000 to acquire a U.S.-based dice, playing card, and gaming supply company named The Bud Jones Company.
Bud Jones, the King of Dice
Like B&G, The Bud Jones Company drew its impetus from a glance at a newspaper. In 1934, a decade after Grasset read about fraud in Le Figaro, Bernard "Bud" Jones scoured through the help-wanted section in a Kansas City, Missouri, newspaper. He was 19 years old when he saw an advertisement for work as a dice maker, a chance introduction that became a lifelong obsession for the young Kansas City native. For the next two decades, Jones learned every aspect of the dice-making business, starting as an employee before becoming a manager and eventually part owner of several casino supply enterprises based in his hometown.
If not for a calamitous event, Jones probably would have remained in Kansas City for the rest of his life. The nation's largest, casino-grade dice manufacturer would never have been formed. During the mid-1950s, a fire destroyed Jones's gaming supply company, prompting him to move his family to Nevada. After settling in Las Vegas, he spent several years adjusting to his new surroundings before taking the risk of starting his own business. In 1965, the 40-year-old Jones established his company, forming a dice manufacturer named The Bud Jones Company.
Jones's business flourished in Las Vegas. The company became the largest producer of casino-quality dice in the United States. It diversified into the production of gaming tables and introduced coin-inlay gaming chips manufactured by surrounding an actual silver coin with molded plastic, a security feature that would have impressed Senard at B&G. The most important of Jones's diversifying moves was his launch of a line of injection-molded plastic gaming chips, the type of "American-style" casino chips that inspired B&G's entry into the niche in 1990. For Bud Jones Co., the success of its injection-molded chips served as its passport to markets throughout the world. By the 1980s, the company's chips ranked as one of the most popular brands of American-style chips in European, Far East Asian, and South African casinos. By the 1990s, Bud Jones Co. counted more than 500 casinos as customers, a roster of clients that operated in 50 countries.
Jones worked every day at the Las Vegas office of his company for 34 years, serving as its guiding figure until he was forced to stop working because of illness at age 84 in 1999. Unwilling to name a successor, he sold the business in October 2000 to B&G, presenting the French company with an ideal opportunity to expand its product line and extend its presence into the United States. Jones passed away a year after the sale, by which time the new owners of his business had their sights set on a company very familiar to Jones, his crosstown rival, Paul-Son Gaming Corp.
Paul-Son Gaming, Becoming a Las Vegas Giant
Paul S. Endy, Jr., was the fourth seminal figure in GPI's history. Born in Monterey Park, California, in 1929, Endy attended college at Long Beach City College and worked as an electrician for Bethlehem Steel before joining his family's business. His father, Paul S. Endy, Sr., owned T.R. King & Company, a gaming supply distributor and dice manufacturer. Paul, Jr., joined the company in the early 1950s and became his father's top salesman, spending his days on the road selling gaming supplies for the legal card rooms prevalent along California's coast. When his father retired in 1963, Paul, Jr., balked at the opportunity to take control of the family business. "I didn't get along with his partner," Paul, Jr., remarked in a December 5, 1994, interview with Forbes.
Endy decided to move to Utah and work on a ranch. While his wife tied up loose ends in California, Endy and his children headed off to Utah, but their journey ended in Las Vegas. For the third time in the history of GPI, the perusal of a newspaper led to the formation of a gaming supply company. While in Las Vegas, Endy saw an advertisement in a local newspaper for a bankruptcy sale. Regulators had seized the assets of a corrupt dice manufacturer and were liquidating the property. Endy leaped at the opportunity, borrowing $40,000 from his father to buy the business. In tribute to his father's financial help, as well as to the contributions of his three sons who joined the business, Endy named the company Paul-Son Gaming Supply.
Bud Jones enjoyed immediate success with his venture, but Endy struggled during his first years. He and his family lived behind the factory in a 16-foot trailer. The trappings were austere, and the company was lucky to get a weekly order for 500 dice. "I showered with a garden hose," Endy recalled in his December 5, 1994, interview with Forbes. Business improved after Endy brought in a partner, Curley Ashworth, to run operations, which gave him time to do what he did best: sales. He loaded all his supplies in a customized two-ton van and hit the road, driving a warehouse on wheels. He spent ten days a month in California, where he converted his father's former customers into Paul-Son Gaming customers.
Once Endy's business found its footing, orders and sales shot upward. The company opened an office in Reno, Nevada, in 1974 and an office in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1978. It diversified beyond cards and dice into gaming chips, gaming tables, and felt layouts. Paul-Son Gaming introduced new technologies, such as chips designed with encoded microfilm, and a proprietary molding system that enabled highly detailed graphics to be applied to chips. Moving manufacturing operations, aside from felt layouts and cards, to San Luis, Mexico, in 1982 proved to be a boon to business, as did the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, which granted Native American tribes the right to regulate gaming on their land. In response to the growing stature of his company, Endy decided to convert to public ownership, taking the first step in December 1993 by forming Paul-Son Gaming Corporation to control all his gaming supply assets. The following March the company completed its initial public offering (IPO) of stock, netting $36 million from the sale.
Paul-Son Gaming entered the 1990s expecting market conditions to remain as they had during the 1980s. Dynamics in the casino industry changed, however, delivering a blow to the company's stalwart position. Gambling was as popular as ever, but casinos were generating the majority of their revenue from slot machines, video poker, and other electronic gaming machines, forms of gambling that left Paul-Son Gaming's sales offices sitting idle. As it entered the late 1990s, the company began to struggle, its lackluster performance exacerbated by the loss of its leader. In October 1998, Endy suffered a stroke while on a fishing trip in Mexico. He passed away the following year at age 70, replaced as Paul-Son Gaming's chief executive officer by his son, Eric P. Endy, who joined the company permanently in 1983 after earning a master's degree in audiology.
Three Companies Coming Together in 2002
While Paul-Son Gaming explored strategic alternatives, hinting at a possible sale of some or all of its assets, B&G watched from the wings, ready to take center stage. A deal was struck between the two companies in 2001, which, after some bickering between the two parties, resulted in a merger between B&G, its subsidiary, The Bud Jones Co., and Paul-Son Gaming. The transaction was completed in September 2002, combining all three businesses under the Paul-Son Gaming corporate banner. Although the resulting entity bore the Paul-Son Gaming name, B&G was the driving force behind the merger. Gerard Charlier, president and chief executive officer of B&G, became president and chief executive officer of the newly constituted Paul-Son Gaming. B&G's chairman, François G. Carette, became Paul-Son Gaming's chairman. In September 2004, the company changed its name to Gaming Partners International, Inc., a company based in Las Vegas that controlled two primary subsidiaries, Gaming Partners International USA, which comprised the operations of Paul-Son Gaming and The Bud Jones Co., and Gaming Partners International SAS, a Beaune-based subsidiary that inherited B&G's operations.
GPI stood as a formidable force in the gaming supply industry during the first decade of the 21st century. Its three parts gave it decades of experience in a broad range of products that belied the novelty of its name. With business relationships in more than 60 countries, the company maintained a preeminent position in the global gaming industry, a position secured thanks to the contributions of Étienne Bourgogne, Claudius Grasset, Bernard Jones, and Paul S. Endy, Jr. Financially, the company performed impressively after the merger, increasing its revenues from $36.1 million in 2003 to $73.9 million in 2006. Its net income during the period swelled from $1.2 million to $5.1 million. In the years ahead, Charlier intended to honor the company's past by using the business relationships cultivated by his predecessors to build a lasting future.
Principal Subsidiaries
Gaming Partners International USA; Gaming Partners International SAS (France).
Principal Competitors
JOM Inc.; The United States Playing Card Company; Midwest Game Supply Co.; Gemaco Playing Card Co.
Further Reading
Fitch, Stephanie, "The Chips Are Down," Forbes, April 9, 2007, p. 106.
"Gaming Consolidation May Place Paul-Son on Hold," Mergers & Acquisitions Report, December 22, 1997.
"Gaming Partners International Corporation Announces Name and Trading Symbol Change," Business Wire, September 1, 2004.
Meeks, Fleming, "Let the Big Guys Come," Forbes, December 5, 1994, p. 72.
"Paul S. Endy, Founder of Paul-Son Gaming, Dies," Business Wire, April 12, 1999, p. 1541.
"Paul-Son Gaming Appoints Eric P. Endy Chairman, CEO," Business Wire, November 25, 1998, p. 1244.
"Paul-Son Gaming Corp. Announces Demand for Termination Fee from Bourgogne et Grasset and The Bud Jones Co.," Business Wire, April 30, 2001, p. 0640.
"Paul-Son Gaming Corporation, Bourgogne et Grasset and The Bud Jones Company to Combine," Business Wire, April 1, 2002, p. 0359.
"Paul-Son Set to Merge with French Company," Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 19, 2002, p. 2D.
"Paul-Son to Review Strategic Alternatives," Business Wire, October 6, 1997, p. 10061047.
— Jeffrey L. Covell
