Inside Pool Billiards Superstore Matthews NC

Inside Pool Billiards Superstore Matthews NC

Alternate Names

• InsidePOOL.com
• Inside Pool
• InsidePOOL Mall
• InsidePool Billiard Store

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Inside Pool Billiards Superstore Matthews - Store Info

Sterling Gaming and Early Involvement with Inside Pool Magazine

Below are some excerpts from Scott Taylor, President of Sterling Gaming in 2005 when rumors surfaced about the nature of Sterling's involvement in JR Calvert's Inside Pool Magazine.

My name is Scott Taylor. I am the President of Sterling Gaming, Inc. We are a manufacturing distributor of billiards supplies. We currently supply, in addition to "traditional" brick and mortar establishments, many online stores. Generally, a customer of ours (such as InsidePOOL.com) will promote our products, take an order from a customer, then send that order to us for fulfillment. Most items ordered this way from most of our customers ship out the same day, then we bill our customers (the reseller) weekly. Each day we ship hundreds of orders to hundreds of players on behalf of dozens of online suppliers.

[...]

Neither Sterling Gaming, Inc. nor Fury Cues have ANYTHING to do with InsidePOOL or InsidePOOL.com, except for being an advertiser in the magazine, and being a supplier for the website. We have NEVER had any equity position in InsidePOOL, despite rumors that were floating around a few years ago, and ones that have recently surfaced.

It is true that in InsidePOOL's early days, JR Calvert moved to Charlotte where we could help consult him on certain aspects of business in general (I personally helped him set up his subscriber database, while my wife Heidi - of "Slippy Powder" fame - helped him with his accounting.) JR introduced us to a lot of his previous dealers from when he was a distributor for Falcom, and helped us out in other similar ways. After spending several months together, helping each other to grow, JR moved back to Pennsylvania, and we were both better off for having had the experience together. Note that this "I scratch your back" thing simply WAS NOT financially related! JR has made for himself the best billiards magazine in the industry in my opinion, but he did that without any financial backing from us. He deserves all the credit for that.

Now, currently, I do believe from what I see that InsidePOOL may be having, at a minimum, some growing pains. It should be made quite clear that JR himself is again fully responsible for the situation he is in.

I believe that there will continue to be speculation on [the Billiards Digest forums] about the future of InsidePOOL, but those of you who have been around since its inception in (I think) January of 2001 know that there has ALWAYS been such talk. Time and time again, the magazine ships each month. Most of you will agree that it is a great magazine, and worth the wait. JR is a good friend of mine, yet I do not always agree with some of the decisions he makes. However, I have grown to know that you can never count him out! There once was a time, back around June of 2002, when I'd have placed a bet against the magazine surviving through the rest of the year. That was a bet I would have lost, and I'm not so foolish to ever place a similar bet. When you have the best product on the market, it is hard to fail.

[...]

Sterling Gaming Buys Inside Pool Website

Below is a press release from 2005-04-16 from Sterling Gaming, Inc. announcing that Sterling Gaming, Inc. has acquired the InsidePOOL.com website from Spheragon Publishing (parent company behind the InsidePOOL Magazine).

Matthews, NC - April 16, 2005

Sterling Gaming, Inc. Acquires InsidePOOL.com from Spheragon Publishing

Sterling Gaming, Inc. has concluded the acquisition of the most-trafficked website in the billiards industry, InsidePOOL.com. The agreement transfers all rights and interest in the United States and in all foreign countries in the InsidePOOL.com domain from Spheragon Publishing to Sterling Gaming, Inc. Founded by the inventor of the laser-sighted pool cue, Sterling intends to gain exposure for their products as a result of the acquisition.

Sterling Gaming, Inc. was founded in 1999 by Scott Taylor, a then-newcomer to the billiards industry. Sterling is a wholesale distributor of high-quality billiards products and currently supplies a large number of traditional billiard supply retailers, billiard parlors, and online retailers. "InsidePOOL.com is the best-known and most-visited billiards site on the net," said Scott. "This purchase will allow us to reach more players with our products, thereby increasing the demand for our brands to our dealers."

JR Calvert, owner of Spheragon Publishing and the publisher of InsidePOOL Magazine, created InsidePOOL.com in 2001. "After putting my heart into our magazine and then continuing with the creation of its online component, it's a wonderful feeling to know that I can leverage this sale to take the magazine to the next level," said JR. "With the proceeds of the sale, we will be able to drastically expand our circulation, which has been a large goal of ours since the beginning. The millions of pool players in the United States simply weren't being served by the pre-existing magazines."

Sterling and Spheragon had been discussing the advantages of the proposed transfer of the online asset for over six months. "It was hard to make the decision to grow the magazine at the expense of the site; however, after reflecting on the opportunity, it was definitely the best route to take to keep with my original mission," JR replied when asked about his motives.

Fellow industry members not related to either party have been very supportive of the purchase. Employees of both companies as well as customers and suppliers are happy that Sterling is the new owner of InsidePOOL.com. Matt Carter, general manager for Sterling Gaming, has been very involved with the Internet marketing arm of the company. He said, "I'm incredibly excited to be involved in a process that will allow us to continue to be an innovator in this industry. Never before has a distributor worked with a publisher to bring forth a combination of content and product that stand to grow the overall exposure of the game of pool."

The new official website for InsidePOOL Magazine will reside at www.insidepoolmag.com (http://www.insidepoolmag.com) and will be launched in late April 2005.

About Sterling Gaming, Inc.

Although a relatively new company, Sterling Gaming, Inc., has grown to become one of the largest distributors in the world of billiards supplies. Sterling is the North American distributor of Fury Cues, voted the favorite pool cue of players on a recent Internet poll. Sterling increases the public awareness of their products by sponsoring professional players, professional tournaments, and amateur tours. They are the supplier of over 1,500 poolrooms and billiard supply stores and more than 50 online retailers.

About Spheragon Publishing

InsidePOOL Magazine is recognized as the billiards magazine preferred by pool players. Since their first issue in December 2001, it has gained a large fan base resulting from their excellent coverage of professional and amateur events, instructional columns by top-ranked players Allison Fisher and Johnny Archer, and a groundbreaking format.

Making it Right for InsidePool.com Customers

Apparently, before the acquisition, Inside Pool customers were served very poorly and complained publically on billiard forums around the internet. To assist these customers, Sterling Gaming presidet Scott Taylor sent this letter at the same time as the above press release went out.

Our Committment to Serve InsidePOOL.com Customers

As you may have experienced, and numerous others as of late, InsidePOOL.com's customer service has been, frankly, horrible. I do not believe anyone will take issue with that statement. Now, some of this is due to the telephone problems that occurred at their office (I can attest to the most unfortunate situation that arose), yet primarily the reasons for the poor service were:

1. Sudden key employee turnover
2. A lack of efficient order processing systems
3. A very sudden explosion in the amount of orders being handled

The problems were compounded as a result of little employee cross-training and the fact that handling the sales of products was not the primary focus of the company. Remember, this is the company that produces what many believe to be the best magazine in the billiards industry. Ensuring that events were covered and the magazine was produced was first on the mind of the ownership, and as a result, not enough time was dedicated to putting "failsafe" systems in place.

From reading the message boards, one might think that the problems at InsidePOOL were a whole lot worse than they really were. Don't get me wrong, there are a large number of orders that have been misplaced, mis-shipped, or mishandled, but this is actually a fairly small percentage. However, based on the large volume of orders the site has recently taken, there are several disgruntled customers. Who can blame these people who, in good faith, placed an order and never received it? They tried calling, but were unable to reach anyone due to the telephone problems. They then emailed a customer service representative, but before they could get an answer, that employee had left, replaced by someone who had no knowledge of the order or the situation... I'd be quite upset if this happened to me!

Here is the current situation:

As we speak, six people, including two former employees recruited to help sort through the paper-based order system, are doing their best to identify all orders that may have slipped through the cracks. We are hoping to have the bulk of these discovered by the end of the day.

Next, we will be conducting a thorough audit of all past orders to determine their status. We will be pairing up shipping records with the original orders to determine which orders are "in the clear".

Then, we will identify all the orders where the customer charged back their credit card, and remove these from the system. After this is done, we will make contact with every past customer to make sure they have been satisfied. When we find a customer who has been poorly treated regarding customer service, we will make all attempts to rectify the situation.

I, and our General Manager, Matt Carter, have been on-site at the InsidePOOL offices to manage the transfer of information. As a result of the cooperation between current and past employees, we should be able to make sense of the order records, ensuring that no customer will be "left behind", if you will.

Here is our timetable:

1. Initial discovery of misplaced orders should be completed by the end of today.
2. Orders that are identified as unshipped through this discovery will ship, where possible, beginning Monday morning.
3. Today, I will be sending an email to all past customers who ordered online explaining to them the current transition, and humbly requesting a week's worth of patience while we complete our audit of the orders.
4. Our auditing of shipping records will commence on Monday as well, but we will be depending on past InsidePOOL.com suppliers to provide us with many orders' shipping details. Assuming prompt response and full cooperation from these businesses, this phase should be completed by Wednesday.
5. All orders that we find as unshipped or mis-shipped will be re-sent throughout this week. In the unfortunate event that we cannot fulfill an order due to items being out-of-stock, we will immediately contact that customer to explain the situation, and determine how the order should then be processed.
6. Once we have processed all the orders we have found problems with, we will send out a follow-up email to all past customers in an attempt to find any unshipped orders that we, ourselves, were unable to find. In this email will be detailed instructions on how any underserved customer should bring their unfortunate case to our attention.
7. We will do our best to promptly satisfy these customers in the second week at the latest.
8. If your order number is 11566 or higher, you can expect to have your order shipped this week, beginning tomorrow.
9. All newly-placed orders will generally ship within 24 hours, yet most placed before 3:00pm Eastern Time will ship the day they are placed.
10. As orders are shipped, customers will be immediately emailed with the tracking number of their order.

It is important to note that we have a large and experienced customer service staff, and will be bringing all resources of our company to bear in an attempt to minimize the time it will take to satisfy past InsidePOOL.com customers. The sheer volume of orders to audit makes this a near-Hurculean task, but we will do the very best we can to take care of the nice customers that were kind enough to honor InsidePOOL.com with their business.

If you personally have a question regarding your order, I'd like to ask that you please allow us to work our process as outlined above. It would be very helpful and more efficient if you give us the opportunity to show you just how effective our customer service is, by allowing us to identify and then resolve orders that are currently pending.

Thanks in advance for your assistance, and thanks on behalf of both previous and current management of InsidePOOL.com for your business.

Sincerely,

S. Scott Taylor, President
Sterling Gaming, Inc.

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• Tertiary Administrative Area: Inside Pool Billiards Superstore in Vance