This is Peggy Mallen and Peggy Mallen is with G-Cue Billiards. And you sell – in fact you make – Balabuska.
Well that’s my other company. Yeah.
You sell them here, though.
I sell them through my store, G-Cue Billiards Store in Tempe.
Now, do you have a pool hall, too?
No, I do not own a pool hall, thank goodness.
Are you an Arizona native?
Well no, I’m not. I’m originally from North and South Dakota. Moved down here 31 years ago. Met my husband after I moved down here and we were married for 28 years and we worked several jobs before we got in the billiard business. But he passed away about a year and a half ago and
now I’m on my own with my Sales Manager sidekick, and we’re running the show.
Okay. So what brought you to Arizona from South Dakota?
I bet you can’t imagine why.
Well, so it WAS the weather.
Absolutely. That one winter when the windchill was 99 below and the only reason it wasn’t worse than that was because they only track it to 99 below.
Yeah well so now if I recall the conversation we had before, your husband was a restaurant owner. He had worked for many restaurants over the years and we met at Arizona Biltmore, one of the restaurants there and then we were married for a few years and one day we decided to go down to this place on Elliot decreased and just have a beer and bang some balls around and we didn’t know how to play pool we hardly I had done it before and somebody came up to us and said hey do you want to put a team together and join a league at the great fun so we got our friends together and we played in this league and we loved it and enjoyed it so much and then my husband needed to buy a new car he needed a car payment so he asked the owner if he made it some help. And the owner said yeah so my husband who was a really good recruiter grew his league by a hundred teams. So, we went ahead and bought our own league. and we brought the technique to Arizona, and we grew it almost 200 teams. My husband said hey these people need product and we started selling pool cues out of our home and pretty soon I had pool cues in my bathtub and cases in my closet and my laundry room was full of product and I said hey we’ve got all open a store so that’s how G-Cue Billiards came about.
I had asked you if you had ever seen The Color Of Money.
Right.
And, we had a conversation about Tom Cruise’s character but I want you to say the line.
Well Tom Cruise didn’t have his pool cue with him. and the guy behind the bar said “Here. I want you to play with my Balabushka” and handed the cue over to Tom Cruise and so that name all of a sudden became like everybody wanted to have; a Balabushka cue. George Balabushka was a cue maker in the 50s and an excellent cue maker. He was out of New York. He made excellent product and that’s how his name became synonymous with billiards.
My husband and I we purchased the trademark rights to George Balabushka.
What are your plans for moving forward?
Well I have plans on growing my business and moving it to an internet-based business only because the retail side of it brick-and-mortar store is very difficult right now. So we’re going to slowly move into that venue. However, we still want to be a place where you can get education as well as just products.
More and more people although they’re shopping online, they want to buy local.
Yeah.
They want to try on the clothes. They want to feel the fabric.
Absolutely. I feel the same way you do. I don’t know why anyone would buy a pool cue over the internet without actually feeling and touching it using it, trying it. It baffles me but people do it.
People are buying cars, now, which really baffles me as well. Because don’t you want to drive it and feel it test it.
So, it’s been great talking to you. Give everybody your website.
My website is Gee See You Ee (like pool cue) billiards dot-com and We’re on the northeast corner of Warner and Priest in Tempe, Arizona. Our phone number is 602 961-4000 and we are open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:30 a.m.
It’s been great having you here.
Thank you. So, remember folks, it’s G Cue Billiards… With
a C-U-E, not the letter Q… Don’t make the mistake I did when she first told me the name, and think we got a guy playing pool in a suit. It’s not GQ it’s GCUE g cuestick.
Right.
OK.
Dot com.
Just one other point. I have over 300 cues in stock at my store and a table that people can come in try just about every manufacturer out there. If we don’t have the cue that you would like we can order it bring it in and you can try it before you buy.
Got that folks? You can actually test drive
your cue stick. How many places let you do that? Especially on the way you can test drive your cue stick G-Cue Billiards. Not dot com. You can buy it dot com, but you can’t test drive it at dot com. G-Cue Billiards. Once again the address.
All right it’s 1342 West Warner, in Tempe, Arizona. And that’s on the northeast corner of Warner and Priest.
Perfect. Peggy. Thanks for being on.
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