Made in Missouri

The Chips are Up

Posted at October 28, 2006 11:00

MARIONVILLE’S TRINITY TABLES CASHES IN ON THE POKER CRAZE

By Dawn Klingensmith

Like any entrepreneur, Jerold Hulsizer took a gamble nine years ago when he started his own business. Fortunately, Lady Luck seems to have taken a liking to Jerold. Business is booming, and Jerold’s Trinity Tables is raking in the chips.

Jerold crafts convertible tables with solid cherry or oak tops that slide off to reveal professional-quality poker tables. The tables are square or octagonal and are covered in durable billiard felt. The traditional Tournament Green, along with wine and black, lead in popularity among the thirty felt colors available. Jerold, a selfdescribed perfectionist with an eye for detail, also incorporated recessed chip wells and stainless steel, brass, or black cup holders into his design.

With the recent explosion in poker’s popularity, Jerold’s Marionville-based company has grown considerably since its inception as a part-time side job in 1996. That was the year Jerold, a cabinetmaker, designed his first poker table. His father, Doug, was so impressed with the elegance and functionality of the design that he put up the money to start the business.

A number of design features set Trinity tables apart from others on the market, Jerold says. Most other convertible gaming tables have single-unit tops that unscrew and flip over, but his design features a slide-off top that requires minimal effort and no tools to convert.

In addition, his large octagonal tables measure sixty inches across and accommodate eight armchairs more comfortably than standardsize poker tables. On a standard casino-type table, “each sitting space is nineteen inches wide,” Jerold says. “Unless you’re really good buddies with the people next to you, that’s pretty tight. Our large tables have twenty-five-inch sitting spaces, so there’s plenty of elbow room.”

Although Jerold and Doug believed they had a superior, saleable design, for the first five years, neither partner gave up his day job. When a friend of the family designed a web site for free, business gradually started to pick up as people discovered Trinity Tables on the Internet. Then, television coverage of the World Series of Poker, along with televised celebrity showdowns, caused poker’s popularity to skyrocket. In its fourth year of operation, Trinity Tables saw a 113 percent surge in sales.

In poker parlance, Jerold and Doug decided to “go all in” in 2001 and turn Trinity Tables into their full-time occupation. It was a smart bet: The company’s gross earnings have grown an average of sixty percent every year since.

Relying solely on Internet sales, Trinity Tables has shipped tables as far away as Puerto Rico, Korea, London, and Australia. Most domestic orders pour in from the Chicago area, as well as the East and West coasts. The tables were designed with home use in mind, but their quality is so high that country clubs, hotels, and other swank establishments often place orders, Jerold says.

To keep up with increasing demand, Jerold — now the sole owner following Doug’s retirement — hired three employees. No shortcuts are taken to save time or cost; Jerold says it takes fifteen hundred steps to complete each table — he’s counted. Even with several components cut ahead of time, it takes three or four workers three full days to make one table.

Jerold has added a ten-seater Texas Hold ’Em table to his online catalog, which also features square and standard- and largesize octagonal tables with optional matching faux-leather chairs. Customizable tables start at $1,395 for a square four-seater.

Despite the company’s phenomenal growth, for the time being Jerold continues to operate Trinity Tables out of a small shop in back of his parents’ home. The house sits across the street from Queen of Heaven Solitude, a Catholic retreat center. Jerold says that’s how the business got its name: from Catholicism’s Holy Trinity.

And he’s not so sure that Lady Luck is solely responsible for his success. In their first few years in business, for every table sold, he and Doug donated one hundred dollars to the neighboring sanctuary. So, Lady Madonna might have played the bigger part, Jerold says.

“It never hurts to have God on your side,” he says.

For more information, call 417-744-4167 or visit www.trinitytables.com.

December 2005

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