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Demand rises for designer pool tables

Ed Mitchell's 25-year-old company makes custom creations that range from $3,200 to $20,000 or more.

LARGO - Actor Eddie Murphy has one. Baseball player Sammy Sosa has one. So does rap singer Missy Elliott.

What they have in common is pool tables designed and made to order here in Largo by Mitchell Custom Tables.

Ed Mitchell has worked in the business since 1952, when he was a teenager just out of high school in Washington, D.C. He worked 25 years for other companies repairing, rebuilding and restoring pool tables.

When he and his family moved here in 1977, he established his own company specializing solely in designing and hand building custom pool tables.

"We made 30 tables a year when we started," Mitchell said.

The tables then were mainly made of maple, cherry or mahogany, some with ornate, hand carved designs that took as long as three months to complete.

The tables have become more contemporary in recent years.

Showroom tables now include sleek, high-tech looking models of stainless steel and glass and steel combined with wood, polished metals, faux finishes and colored lacquers. Overhead lighting also has changed. It now can be anything from traditional designs of stained glass and brass to halogen lights with shades of chrome or colorful hand blown glass.

"We sell mostly contemporary tables," Mitchell said. "They are at least 80 percent of what we do."

Today, the business turns out 100 tables a year and sales totaled $600,000 last year.

Mitchell and his son, Joe, work together on the design and construction of the tables. "We work on designs constantly," Mitchell said. "Designing is the biggest part."

The hand-carved wood and metal forming is done by artisans and specialists in those trades, Mitchell said. Finished tables can range in price from $3,200 to more than $20,000.

When complete, each table is delivered, installed and fully equipped with everything from lights to cues.

John Caton, who has worked 18 years for the company, has flown all over the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean to deliver and install the Mitchell tables.

The company's tables have been shipped to countries as far away as Japan and Kuwait, said Mitchell's daughter, Tracy, who handles the company's sales and marketing. The owners are responsible for installation in those faraway places.

Mitchell likes to tell about the Saudi Arabian who, when his custom table was finished, came to the United States, bought a van, packed the table in it and put the van on a ship bound for his home.

The company does a fair amount of business out of the showroom at 6160 Ulmerton Road, but national advertising and the Web site at www.mitchell-custom.com brings in the majority of the business.

So what makes Mitchell's tables so special?

"We can make whatever you want," Mitchell said.

"You don't have a lot of choices when tables are mass-produced," Tracy Mitchell added.

"You have better quality with hand-built tables," Mitchell said. "These tables last a lifetime."

In the 19th century, a "poolroom" meant a betting parlor for horse racing, with pool tables where patrons could pass the time between races. In the next century, it came to be linked most often with noisy, smoke-filled bars and game rooms. Today, however, pool tables have a special place in many private homes, where they are as important to the decor as to family recreation.