Bingo players who enjoy smoking during the games reacted angrily to the Allegheny County Health Department’s decision to fine a South Side social club for allowing them to light up.
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Looking beyond big bingo bucks
September 9, 2007
By CRISSA SHOEMAKER DEBREE
By CRISSA SHOEMAKER DEBREE
Bingo is big business.
Just ask the people at Clarence J. Venne LLC in Bristol Township. The 45-year-old company is the world’s largest supplier of bingo dabbers, those sponge-tipped plastic tubes of colorful paint that players use to mark their bingo cards.
The company’s namesake founded it in 1962, after noticing players at the bingo game he ran for his church were using bottles filled with water and food coloring to mark disposable bingo cards. He knew there was a better solution than the leaky, messy bottles.
The secret to Venne’s dabbers, sold under the Dab-O-Ink and Primo names, is a patented spring mechanism that keeps the bottle’s sponge tip from leaking or drying out. Its contents will be released only when the sponge is pressed against something.
The applicator technology has been applied to other products. Venne has a line of children’s art supplies, ranging from bathtub and poster paint to glue sticks. The company has even developed a “Counterfeit Detector,” which contains a liquid that will remove ink from counterfeit bills.
It’s those products — not bingo dabbers — that will keep Venne going in the future, said CEO Jeffrey Fischer.
“The bingo industry is a mature industry,” Fischer said. “The growth has flat-lined. We’re looking for ways to grow the business.”
These days, the game is most often played in a bingo hall, where proceeds benefit nonprofit organizations like churches and veterans groups. There are an estimated 60 million bingo players worldwide, who wager $10 billion annually, industry watchers say.
In Pennsylvania, bingo games are considered small games of chance and are registered by county treasurers. Bucks County licensed 84 organizations — all must be nonprofits — for bingo in 2006. In 2007, 58 organizations have applied to run bingo games. Licenses are good for one year from the application date.
Players are aging and the industry has been hurt by casinos and anti-smoking laws, because most bingo players are smokers, said Mary Ann Alexander, the company’s vice president of sales.
“I’m a baby boomer,” she said. “I guarantee, when I retire, I’m not going to play bingo. We’re more active.”
So, while sales of bingo dabbers have remained steady, sales of the crafts line have doubled every year since they were introduced in 2001, Fischer said. Eventually, he expects them to outsell bingo dabbers.
Venne sells its products to distributors, who in turn sell the dabbers to bingo halls and bingo hall suppliers around the world. The company also designs holiday labels and custom labels for halls that want their own name on the paint.
Asked to quantify the company’s business, Fischer would only say the company sells “millions” of dabbers each year. To get a better idea of sales, consider this: In the spring, the company sold specially designed “Dab Out Breast Cancer” dabbers. For each tube it sold, Venne donated 25 cents to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. After 10 weeks, the company collected $28,170.25 for the charity — representing the sale of more than 112,000 bottles, or 11,200 bottles a week.
Its craft supplies, available at stores such as Michaels and Staples, account for 20 percent of the company’s business. International sales account for more than 10 percent of the business.
All of the company’s work is done at its Bristol Township plant, where 45 employees keep the machines running for two shifts, six days a week. Fischer is proud to have kept all manufacturing in the United States.
“I want to protect the people we have here,” Fischer said. “I want to protect our workers.”
But, like many small manufacturers, Venne struggles with the push for cheaper labor elsewhere. Fischer fears that, at some point, at least some of the work may be outsourced for the company to survive. He said he believes the higher cost is part of the reason the company’s been unable to sell its products to Wal-Mart, which at one time carried its line of craft paints.
Fischer came to the company 18 years ago to sell the break-open lottery tickets that had just been legalized by the state. Clarence Venne saw the tiny cardboard tickets as another money-making tool. But after only a few months, Fischer said he knew the tickets were a waste. When the company stopped selling them, he became assistant to Venne’s son, Richard.
When Clarence Venne sold the company in 2001 to a Chicago investment group, Fischer became president. Venne died in January at the age of 87.
The future of the bingo industry is uncertain, although Alexander said the company has seen a resurgence of the game on college campuses. “National Bingo Night,” a primetime game show on ABC, also has sparked renewed interest in the game.
“It’s a social event,” Fischer said. “Bingo is not just gambling.”
Crissa Shoemaker DeBree can be reached at 215-949-4192 or cshoemaker@phillyBurbs.com.
County dings S. Side bingo hall for $16K over smoking
March 29, 2007
By Bonnie Pfister TRIBUNE-REVIEW
By Bonnie Pfister TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Bingo players who enjoy smoking during the games reacted angrily to the Allegheny County Health Department’s decision to fine a South Side social club for allowing them to light up.
“I’m thinking of leaving if I can’t smoke,” said Mary Capozolli, 55, of the South Side, while waiting for the games to begin Wednesday night at the Lithuanian Citizens’ Society of Western Pennsylvania hall on Jane Street.
“My rights are being taken away from me,” said Capozolli, who has been going to the games for 30 years.
The club, which plans to stop the games for smoking breaks, said it will appeal the $16,250 fine, the first in the county since a smoking ban took effect this year.
The organization was fined because it allowed 64 people to smoke during bingo games on March 21, the health department said. The fine was $250 for each violation — totaling $16,000 — plus a $250 fine for failing to have a workplace smoking policy.
Club officials said they believed that, as a social club selling liquor and food, they were exempt until May 1, as are bars and restaurants.
“We were not trying to defy the order,” said club financial secretary Frank Ziaukas. “We honestly thought that we were exempt.”
Donna Baker, of Carnegie, agreed with Capozolli that smokers will stop patronizing the club’s bingo games.
“If they aren’t allowed to smoke, people aren’t going to come,” she said.
Deborah O’Rear, 58, a South Side realtor, said she believes the fine “is totally unjust because all the other bingo halls are allowed to have smokers.”
O’Rear said it is more dangerous to walk along East Carson Street after midnight on weekends than it is to sit in a bingo hall with smokers.
But Vonda Little, 40, of the South Side, who has been going to the club’s games for five years, said she is happy the smoking ban is being enforced.
“It’s about time. Everybody is always blowing smoke in your face,” said Little, adding that her mother died of cancer.
Allegheny County Council voted 14-1 to prohibit smoking in nearly all workplaces, including bars, restaurants and casinos. Only tobacco retailers and volunteer-staffed events were exempted.
County Chief Executive Dan Onorato threatened a veto, and amendments ensued, including one stating that taverns with fewer than 10 employees that earn less than 10 percent of their revenue from food sales would be exempt for the first two years of the ban.
Two Downtown businesses sued and Common Pleas Judge Michael A. Della Vecchia issued an injunction until May 1 on implementing the ban “on behalf of Plaintiff’s establishments and other similar establishments.”
At issue is what Della Vecchia meant by “similar establishments.” Health department spokesman Guillermo Cole said yesterday that nothing in the ordinance exempts social clubs, and a Feb. 23 letter to the Lithuanian Citizens’ Society warned that penalties could be forthcoming.
Cole said the only exemption that might have applied to the club would be one that allows smoking at public charitable events staffed by volunteers, as long as no minors are present.
But Ziaukas said no volunteer exemption was sought because the club hires 17 workers — not volunteers — to staff its Wednesday and Sunday night bingos.
Club president John Baltrus said the health department canceled and never rescheduled a December information session for social clubs that was to have spelled out what the law meant for them.
In addition, Baltrus said, a week after Della Vecchia’s ruling, a list of “Frequently Asked Questions” on the department’s Web site noted that social clubs, like taverns, were exempt until May 1.
Baltrus said he spoke to the health department inspector during the March 21 bingo. He said he anticipated clarification as to whether social clubs were exempt — not a fine.
“I told him last Wednesday whatever is determined we’ll abide by it,” he said. “We were trying to cooperate, but obviously there’s a lack of communication somewhere.”
Bonnie Pfister can be reached at bpfister@tribweb.com or 412-320-7886.
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