The Foland Focus (RePlay Magazine – Dec. `09)

This year, Dennis Foland, founder of The
Foland Group including Sureshot
Redemption, celebrated three decades in
the amusement business over which he
helped substantially grow the FEC culture
and the appeal of redemption.
Dennis Foland’s
Thirty-Year Tenure
Driven by FEC
Success
F
ew careers in prize supply hold a candle to that
of Dennis Foland, who
celebrated his 30th year in the
trade this year. The head of
The Foland Group, comprising Sureshot Redemption,
Charm Company, Novelty
Specialties and Prize Proz, has
not just catered to numerous
amusement centers and theme
parks but helped develop and
grow the FEC industry.
“We’ve tried to give customers whatever they want,”
Foland said, “and with the experienced people we have
we’ve been able to service
them in a lot of ways. My
method of doing business is to
do as much as possible with a
single customer, from helping
them merchandize and set up
assortments to whatever is
necessary. Of course, the computer business is a very important part of that today, and
we’re equipped to help them
in most any area they would
like to grow technologically.”
When he started Dennis
Foland Inc. in 1979, Foland
was already a veteran of merchandising. He spent 10 years
with J.C. Penny and five with
Disneyland as assistant merchandise manager and later
VP of merchandise and games
for several of Marriott’s Great
America Parks.
“I had a lot of people asking me to go into my own business,” he said. “Because I had
worked with Warner and
Disney characters, Nolan
Bushnell wanted me to help
him develop Chuck E.
Cheese’s. I helped him develop the characters for their one
location at the time.” Less
than a decade later, Foland
was the preferred supplier for
two other titans, David Corriveau and James “Buster”
Corley, founders of Dave &
Buster’s for which he developed character and speciality
merchandise.
Meanwhile, Foland partnered with Ron Mayers to
supply World’s Fairs with
souvenirs, a business he kept
up into the ’90s while acquiring other firms like Charm
Company, a high-end toy supplier for customers like Neiman Marcus, and Novelty
Specialties, a candy-based
novelty company. The founding in 1997 of Sureshot Redemption, the largest division
of The Foland Group by far,
grew out of large customers
increasingly sourcing direct
and the historic rise of redemption.
When asked if he anticipated the future scale of Sureshot’s business and prominence in the amusement industry, Foland matter-of-factly
said yes, explaining, “I hired
Mike Lynch (VP) and Rorie
Keller (national sales manager), and they’ve been very instrumental in helping to grow
the business. I was doing business on a major scale with
Chuck E. Cheese’s and Dave
& Buster’s, and we’ve basically done the same with the
majors.”
In 2000, Foland moved
The Foland Group from its
Northern California headquarters to Ontario, Calif., in
Southern California, where
rents were comparatively
cheaper than those inflated
by the dot-com bubble. Astoundingly, the relocation required 300 40’ trailers to
move the inventory in what
Foland called “a major stepping stone.”
Today, the company comprises about 125 staffers, and
their inventory covers 250,000
December 2009 • RePlay Magazine • Page 81
The Foland Focus
The Foland Group headquarters in Ontario,
Calif., is supported by additional SoCal warehouses adding up to 250,000 sq. ft. housing
largely Sureshot Redemption's inventory.
By comparison, Foland's first office resided in this charming
humble home in Northern California.
sq. ft. across three warehouses, though still more room is
needed. Foland plans to move
the group to a larger facility at
the end of 2010 and — what
else? — continue to expand.
“I think the redemption
business is still the growing
part of the FEC business, and
we will increase more in that
area,” Foland noted. “We’ve
accomplished a lot of our
goals and still have a lot to
go.”
One area that’s likely to
happen is in the firm’s already
impressive presence overseas.
Through a Hong Kong office
called Charm Toy Trading,
they have marketed to amusement parks across Europe, notably Walibi parks and Parc
Asterix, which have taken advantage of Sureshot’s customized prizes. “Even though
we’re really big in the redemption business, one of our
fortes is the development of
character and logo type merchandise that we do through
Sureshot,” said Foland. “We
do special designs on t-shirts,
Page 82 • RePlay Magazine • December 2009
for instance.”
Foland’s experience shows
that toy supply, often seen as a
hotly competitive world bent
on moving the latest and
greatest to the end consumer,
is actually a fairly level and
predictable business in terms
of product demand. The ways
that product is demanded,
however, is a different story.
“Probably the biggest
changes are technological, the
same thing that has affected
other businesses,” Foland reflected. “The merchandise is
quite similar. Some of the
items big 30 years ago are still
big today. The merchandise
has not changed a lot except in
the high-end items like iPods.”
In taking the long view,
Foland also suggested that this
sour economic moment, while
noteworthy, is par for the
course.
“From World’s Fairs to
major amusement parks to
FECs to multiple and singleoperator locations, we’ve run
into about every challenge
that you can and overcame
them,” he stated. “This is a recession we’re in now, and
about every 10 years we seem
to go through one. We’ve
weathered those storms quite
easily, though this one’s a little harder.
“What has made us successful through it all is people,” he continued. “Not only
do our customers stay with us,
but our people do as well. It’s
rare to have a customer for
over 30 years. You have to be
doing something right.”
A golfer, horseback rider
and sometime sailor, Foland’s
personal source of fun is his
family, several of whom are
on staff. Son Darren serves
VP of operations and his wife
Jennifer works as the Folands’
executive assistant and handles payroll. Middle son
Randy heads up Novelty
Specialties while wife Lonnie
develops all the logo merchandise for Dave & Buster’s and
handles European accounts.
Through them — and another
son, Doug, who lives in Charlotte — Foland has five grandchildren.
“And that’s really why we
call it The Foland Group,” he
said.
Find out more at http://
folandgroup.com and www.
sureshotredemption.com.
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