Content area
Full Text
When Dick Jones and Greg Theisen, next-door neighbors on Sugarloaf Mountain, first started talking about the games' business in December 1986, they had no idea that one year later they would be, not only in business -- big business -- together, but also negotiating a joint venture with the China National Arts & Crafts Import & Export Corp. in Beijing.
Jones is a former IBM'er (mechanical engineering and personnel management) turned entrepreneur. He moved to Boulder in the '70s and, with partner Basil Nicolaidis, "recognized the opportunity in Boulder that related to importing auto parts," opening Foreign Auto Parts on Valmont Road. After selling off his share to Nicolaidis, Jones got involved in other timely ventures, like ZDC, a company that manufactured automated energy-management equipment, marketing it to public-utility companies and real-estate complexes in the early '80s. When that company was acquired by Synergetics in 1983, Jones got antsy again: "I figured if I was moving from a neat little company of 10 employees to a company of 70, it was the same thing as being at IBM again, so I left," he comments.
Theisen was building a 600-machine games operation in Minneapolis during these years, until he decided to make a vacation home in the Foothills of the Rockies his permanent residence.
In January 1987 the two decided to place a few crane machines in strategic locations -- mostly bars -- in the metro Denver area and see what happened. They had called operators around the country...