If you’re designing a slot floor, ready for a renovation, or looking to increase time-on-device, you probably consider PAR percentages and appeal first. The last thing on your mind is “What’re these things going to sit on?” But it might be time to bump bases a bit higher on your list. The Great American Base Company (GABCO), thanks to its commitment to provide above-and-beyond products and service, has become the go-to company for casinos looking to take advantage of the increased player comfort and decreased downtime that a well-crafted base can bring to the slot floor.
Never content to stick with plain black boxes, GABCO’s bases range from the stately EPEC to the heavy-duty SB2000 to the sleek GABCO Budget Buster. (Of course, if you really want a plain black platform, GABCO can do that, too.) The company is even ready to help you retain a key player base. “We’re very up-and-coming for the Baby Boomers,” GABCO President William Knoll explained. “We have a complete line of handicap-accessible bases coming out this year. A lot of Boomers, unfortunately, are starting to feel knee pains and are starting to use wheelchairs and scooters. [Handicap-accessible bases] are very important these days for player retention.”
This proactive, customer-concerned attitude is typical for GABCO and has been one of the driving forces behind its growth. Founded in 2000 by Knoll and his wife, Vice President Janice Knoll, the company started small. “At one time, we’d take an order for five bases and think we did pretty well,” Knoll said. “The next year, it was 50. The next year, it was 500. Now it’s a full casino. But we still value every order and treat each customer with the same respect, service and product that helped us get to where we are today.”
The company’s impeccable reputation for quality, which continues to spread with each new order, certainly helped, too. “Anybody who has used our bases will recommend us,” Knoll said. “We’ve never had anybody give us a bad reference. Probably 95 percent of our business comes from referrals.”
A big part of establishing this reputation was guaranteeing the materials and workmanship on all GABCO bases. It’s the only company in the business with a five-year warranty, or at least that Knoll is aware of. He says the decision to offer an assurance of quality was simple. “I’ve been in the millwork business for nearly 30 years,” he said. “Coming out of that type of business, I couldn’t understand why no one offered any type of warranty on their products at all.”
Although a warranty may give GABCO customers peace-of-mind, it’s the care that the company puts into craftsmanship that really makes its bases stand out. Knoll says that in the last five years, only a handful of warranty repairs or replacements have been needed, and that’s out of tens of thousands of bases. This is vital to an industry dependent on having machines available for play, and Knolls knows it. “No casino wants down time,” he explained. “If I can offer a product that I stand behind, and they know that for the next five years, other than the slot machine itself breaking, the base is not going to fail, it makes them pretty happy with our product.”
And those products continue to increase the advantages a slot base can offer. Knoll says he’s looking forward to keeping GABCO’s developments on the cutting edge. “Nick [Stoia, General Manager] and I keep looking at the industry to figure out how to stay one step ahead,” Knoll said. “We’ve got a couple things on the board.”
One thing is for sure: Those bases will be made to last. Guaranteed.
Mary Huyck is the Senior Associate Editor at Casino Enterprise Management. She can be reached at editor5@aceme.org.
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