Please be seated

When Bob Yabroff, president of casino seating maker Gary Platt Manufacturing, moved his company from Southern California to Reno in 1999, he decided to rename the company.

Yabroff felt his own name wouldn't work, so he branded it after one of his top salesman, Gary Platt, who still is with the company in the Los Angeles area.

"Bob Yabroff? That's lousy, he says. "Gary Platt is a better name. I fought Gary on it, but I finally just sent him the papers and said, 'Sign them already.'"

The newly named company took about 40,000 square feet at 4643 Air Center Drive, and five years ago expanded to take the whole building of about 90,000 square feet to handle orders from Indian gaming. The company employs 50, 40 of them in the manufacturing end. Gary Platt is down about six employees since

September.

Although the global economic slowdown curtails sales of gaming machines from the company's major clients among slot manufacturers IGT, Bally Technologies Inc. Aristocrat Technologies and WMS (Williams Gaming Slot Machines) Gary Platt Manufacturing is positioned for growth due to a push for international sales.

Gary Platt has pursued North American business in Mexico and Canada the past few years. It recently hired a salesman for Eastern Europe. And received its first overseas international order for some chairs headed to Slovenia. Still, Yabroff, who has been in the chair-making business for more than 40 years, expects overall sales to dip in 2009.

Yabroff says that because of IGT and its mega-jackpot games, such as Wheel of Fortune, the company probably has a chair in every casino in the United States and maybe even the world. Mega-jackpot games are sold with an accompanying seat provided by Gary Platt.

"We don't know where they go, but if IGT has a machine, we have an accompanying seat with it," he says.

Along with major slot manufacturers, Indian casinos make up the bread and butter of the company's sales, Yabroff says. When Gary Platt Manufacturing moved to Reno, it focused on gaming sales and dropped its line of hospitality furniture.

"They (Indian gaming) are doing much better than corporate America Las Vegas and Atlantic City,' Yabroff says. "Their businesses are still holding their own very well. Hopefully when the banks start lending and the construction starts again in Las Vegas, our business picks up in that area."

There also is a push to increase sales on the homefront: Currently northern Nevada casinos account for just 5 percent of total sales. Gary Platt has provided all the seating for the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa, Terrible Rail City Casino, and Tamarack Junction Casino and Restaurant, as well as a small recent order to Hobey's Resaurant and Casino in Sun Valley.

"We are here, and we should be in all casinos in northern and southern Nevada," Yabroff says.

Gary Platt used to manufacture all of the components of its casino seating parts at the Reno facility, but it now outsources foam molding and wooden chair backs and seats. Workers produce vinyl or other fabric pattern blanks on a recently purchased computer numeric controlled pattern cutter blanks formerly were cut by hand and a team of sewers stitch patterns together.

Chair back and seats are then upholstered, assembled and shipped to casinos across the nation. Gary Platt Manufacturing turns out about 50,000 chairs per year. Yabroff says workers used to cut and shape foam seat padding. The company was a pioneer in the use of molded foam poured from a liquid in its X-Tended

Play seating line.

"It is much more comfortable than anything we have had before," he says. "When we started introducing that our market share increased tremendously."

Gary Platt has about six major competitors, all private companies, some whom place their products in the largest northern Nevada casinos. Yabroff says Gary Platt is either the No. 1 or No. 2 casino seating supplier in the U.S.

"We have got very, very loyal customers. Once somebody starts with us we usually get their repeat business."

Gary Platt also has loyal employees. Manufacturing turnover at the company is about 1 percent due in part to an employee profit-sharing plan.

"Once somebody comes to us they usually stay," Yabroff says. "We treat our employees very well and they feel like they are a part of the company. As the company does well they will do well, and they have an incentive to put out a good product."