Profile: Michael Lansing, Businessman likes the games people play

Public Record, The, Nov 23, 2004 by Kleinschmidt, Janice

When Michael Lansing was a boy growing up on a dairy farm in Iowa, a hired hand took him to town and taught him to play a pinball machine. As a grown man, Lansing spends almost every day with pinball machines - and he's making money doing it.

Lansing opened Gameroom Gallery on Sept. 1 in Thousand Palms Business Park, but he's been in the amusement game business since 1979. Through Michael Lansing Amusements, he has been supplying pinball machines, video games, foosball and air hockey tables, jukeboxes, pool tables and related items to bowling alleys, pizza parlors, sports bars, family restaurants and arcades. It is still his core business, but people began asking for machines for their homes, so he opened a showroom to sell to individuals "fun things you can bring into the house."

A cruise through the 2,000-square-foot showroom on North Shore Street reveals a 1959 Stereophonic juke box; 1949 Dr. Pepper and Coca-Cola vending machines; a 1976 Elton John Captain Fantastic pinball machine; classic table games (Space Invaders, Ms. Pac Man, etc.); a Pachinko "slot machine" from Japan; and the justreleased, first sanctioned Elvis Presley pinball machine in which The King dances and sings.

Logos - beers, sports teams, Jack Daniels and Harley-Davidson - abound on mirrors, neon signs (including a 19th hole Michelob sign in the shape of a golf bag bearing the PGA Tour logo), pub tables and stools, ice chests, and a display case resembling an old-style gas pump.

Logos also decorate billiard balls and cue sticks. Football and baseball fans can pit their favorites teams on the felt; instead of solids and stripes, players rack up Angels and Dodgers. Lansing particularly appreciates the cue ball with painted on "stitching" to resemble a baseball. "You can get custom balls for whatever teams you like," he says. As for a place to shoot, Gameroom Gallery carries pool tables from the world's No. 1 manufacturer, Olhausen, as well as the Renaissance line for the budget-conscious.

Poker tables include an ornately carved table with a top that removes to reveal a checkerboard, which flips to a backgammon board; the top also flips to create a solid wood dining room table. "You don't have to have a dedicated room for [poker]," Lansing says. "It can go where you go." The piece de resistance comes in the form of the adjustable-height chairs.

For those who do have a dedicated game room or bar, Lansing offers the appropriate artwork: images and gold records of such icons as Presley, Frank Sinatra, and the Rat Pack.

He uses another 2,000 square feet behind the showroom for restoration (all used games are fully reconditioned), repair and storage. "The front part of the room doesn't work unless we can back it up," Lansing says. "[The head of the technical department] is solely in charge of making sure that the customer who has a machine in their home can keep it working right." Lansing himself went to school to learn how to replace power supplies, joy sticks and buttons; adjust voltages; and perform other maintenance. It took six weeks just to cover the basics.

Lansing's career started in radio in Minneapolis, Minn. But after helping a girlfriend move to California, "she persuaded me to stay on," he says. A month earlier, a chief engineer at a Los Angeles radio station visiting family in Minneapolis saw Lansing in a shopping mall where the local radio station broadcast from the concourse. "We chatted and he said, 'If you are ever in L.A., look me up."'

That's precisely what Lansing did. Thanks to a strike at the station, he immediately landed a job as radio engineer at KLAC. He worked a midnight-to-6-a.m. shift there and a 9-to-5 shift across the street scheduling commercials at KFAC.

Lansing's big leap came when he got a job as recording engineer and producer for Mel Blanc (of cartoon-voice fame). He worked for Blanc from 1973 to 1976, when he was offered a job doing audio work for The Carpenters on tour. Within the year, he took over all the duties of the tour manager. "It was amazing," Lansing says. "It was just a few short years from the time I was milking cows and baling hay to riding on Leer jets with The Carpenters."

From 1977 to 1979, Lansing was the tour manager for Leo Sayer. Then he began working with a number of musical artists, including working as tour manager for Melissa Manchester. When the artists weren't touring, Lansing got involved in office operations at the personal management company. When he had time, he helped his brother-in-law get started in the amusement games business. "It was lucrative," Lansing says. "It just fascinated me, and I started my own [company]." While his brother-in-law concentrated on Los Angeles, Lansing worked the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys.

In 1983, Lansing moved his business to the Coachella Valley. "I thought it would be best to focus on my career instead of everybody else's," he says. "You are only as good as your client's last album; and if you miss the market, you could have two or three years of really bad times before you get back on the market - if you're lucky. Whatever effort I put into my own business, I could see that I was getting immediate results."