Former Paul-Son exec launches supply firm

By Liz Benston (contact)

Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2003 | 10:42 a.m.

A dice and casino supply manager in Las Vegas has formed a company that expects to face off against his former employer.

Michael Detommaso, former senior vice president of sales with Paul-Son Gaming Corp., has joined Las Vegas attorneys Robert and Tracy Eglet to form Paisano Gaming Supplies Inc.

Paisano is now focused on manufacturing dice but will begin making felt layouts for table games such as blackjack and poker. The company also will distribute chips, furniture and cards.

Company President Detommaso formed the company after resigning from Paul-Son last September. That month, Paul-Son engineered a reverse merger with a French casino supply company, Etablissements Bourgogne et Grasset.

"I wasn't wanting to participate in the avenues they were going after," he said of the merger.

His position at Paul-Son also was fairly uncertain at the time of the deal, which eventually led to the installation of Bourgogne et Grasset Chief Executive Gerard Charlier as CEO of Paul-Son, he said.

Paisano Chairman Robert Eglet is a friend of Detommaso. Tracy Eglet will serve as chief executive and the company's majority shareholder.

Detommaso said he came up with the name "paisano," which means "good neighbor" or "friend" in Italian, in a nod to his Italian heritage.

Paisano began operations this month with a dice-making plant led by manager Clyde Teer, a former manager with Paul-Son dice subsidiary The Bud Jones Co. Paisano expects to introduce a new kind of fabric for game layouts and will have a 24-hour service department for casino customers.

The plant is at 5030 W. Oquendo Road in southwest Las Vegas.

"With our on-site dice and layout manufacturing plant, we will provide our customers with fast and efficient service," Detommaso said.

The competition will be daunting, as Paul-Son dominates the dice, chip and casino supply market nationwide, he said.

Corporate mergers have left Paul-Son and a smaller competitor, Missouri-based Midwest Gaming, to compete in the dice market.

"They left it wide open for someone to come in and take a shot," Detommaso said.

Major casinos generally prefer using two dice suppliers for security reasons, he said. Pit bosses may periodically change out dice to ensure that a game is fair, he added.

Even so, the dice market isn't a particularly strong growth segment, as many new tribal casinos don't offer dice games and other casinos don't change dice often enough, he said.

Paisano -- which says it will distribute 20,000 pair of dice to Nevada casinos starting next month -- expects to capture a third of the existing dice market over the next couple of years, he said.

The company will also begin obtaining regulatory approvals to make and distribute casino supplies in other states. Nevada doesn't require such approvals for game supplies.