When Charles Bailey established his Tipton, Missouri law practice in 1963, few could have predicted that his legal practice would lead to a career in building pool tables.

“One of my clients was Ewald Fischer, a businessman that owned Fischer Manufacturing, a pool table manufacturer. When Mr. Fischer started experiencing health problems, my legal services began to include day-to-day management responsibilities. In 1968, Mr. Fischer decided to sell the company to Spaulding Sporting Goods, and I handled the sale. Spaulding asked me to stay and run the company. Later we became the largest pool table manufacturer in the world.”

Charles Bailey started his own pool table manufacturing company, Play Master, in 1973. Play Master then acquired Renaissance, a high-end custom pool table manufacturer, and the company became known as Play Master-Renaissance.

His son Chuck, who grew up working in the factory, joined the company full time after graduating from college in 1988.

“Play Master was one of the largest domestic pool table manufacturers in 1993, when AMF Bowling approached us about buying the company. I took them up on their offer, and decided to give retirement a try. Retirement was tough. I was used to working long hours, and suddenly I had all of this free time on my hands.”

By 1998, both father and son realized they missed owning their own pool table manufacturing company, and founded The C.L. Bailey Co. They purchased an 80,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility in Marionville, Missouri, and began manufacturing pool tables in late 1999.

“As a new company, we started out with a clean sheet of paper, and engineered our pool tables around the capabilities of the latest computerized woodworking technologies. This has enabled us to offer innovative features – like metal-to-metal construction and computer-milled, interlocking support beams – throughout our product line. Our pool tables are truly built to last for generations.”

In 2001, after experiencing great success in manufacturing pool tables, the Bailey’s convinced another father-son team to join them in starting an imported billiards products division. Jackson and Shine Lee were originally from Taiwan, and had a superb knowledge of the billiards industry in Asia. The new division, called The Level Best, quickly became one of the billiard industry’s fastest growing import distribution companies, due to the Lees’ ability to source quality billiard products out of Asia at competitive prices.