CORRECTS SURNAME TO BALL NOT BELL From left, Melissa Ball, her daughter Sarah Ball and husband Jonathan Ball stand with William D. "Bill" Selden V and Donna Selden at C.P. Dean in Richmond, Va., Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. The Ball family bought the business after it had been in the Selden family for three generations. The items on the table were once sold by C.P. Dean. (Alexa Welch Edlund/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP)

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The Selden family has owned C.P. Dean Co. since 1903.

But the company, which has been a fixture in the Richmond business community since 1886 selling billiards tables, game room equipment and making and engraving a wide range of trophies and awards, is under new ownership.

The Ball family of Ball Office Products, a Henrico County-based regional office supply and furniture business, acquired C.P. Dean.

Terms of the sale, effective Wednesday, were not disclosed.

William D. “Bill” Selden V, who started working in the family business 50 years ago and took over running it in 1994, said the sale is bittersweet. Selden, 74, said he will continue working for the business for at least the next two years.

“To me, it’s sort of the best of both worlds,” he said of the sale. “I just think it’s time that somebody else comes in and takes the interest in it and works with me until we both feel they want me out of here, but I don’t think they really want me out of here. I thought they (the Ball family) are a perfect match with us being a family business. I’m really happy and excited about it.”

Selden didn’t have anyone in the family to follow him in the business.

“I didn’t really want to retire. I love doing this and that’s why I’m still doing it at age 74,” he said. “So I was looking for somebody who would allow me to stay and be a part of the business, at least on the sales side of it because that’s what I enjoy the most. And it (the deal) lets me off of all the administrative part, which is the part that I hated the most.”

Selden believes his father and grandfather, William Selden III, who bought the company in 1903 after the death of Charles Preston Dean, who founded the business, would agree with his decision to sell the business.

“I’m a pretty religious guy and I put a lot of prayer into it and I know that they would want me to do this because the business is more important than the family. Growing up, everything centered around the business,” said Selden, who was the recipient in 2010 of the Distinguished Retailer of the Year award given by the local Retail Merchants group.

“I finally realized that the best thing I could do to honor my father and grandfather is find someone who’s going to carry this business forward into the future, and hopefully make it better than it has been,” he said “And I think that’s the greatest thing I could do for them.”

Selden sold the business to the Ball family. Melissa Ball, the CEO of Ball Office Products, founded the business with her husband, Jonathan, in 2000. Their daughter, Sarah Ball, was named president of C.P. Dean.

Ball Office Products shares a parking lot with C.P. Dean, which has been at its current location since 2000. That’s when C.P. Dean moved its headquarters from where it had been for 45 years.

Earlier this summer, Selden and Jonathan Ball were having a casual conversation in the parking lot when Selden mentioned that he was thinking about cutting back. Selden said he hasn’t had a vacation in more than 12 years.

That conversation led to another and eventually to the Ball family offering to buy C.P. Dean. They signed a deal earlier in August to acquire the business.

Sarah Ball, 22, said buying C.P. Dean will be a fun business opportunity for the family.

“I personally find pool tables to be more fun than staplers. I saw it to be exciting and different,” she said. Her parents “see it as such a legacy in the Richmond community that they want to see it continue.”

She doesn’t expect any big changes to the business. But she does plan to use more social media and do online marketing. For instance, she created a Twitter account for the store on Wednesday.

She wants to look into possibly expanding its offerings by selling croquet sets and other summertime games. C.P. Dean sells a variety of game room tables, including air hockey tables, table tennis and shuffleboard tables.

Being president of a legacy Richmond company is “a little nerve-wracking, but I think it is kind of exciting at the same time,” she said. “I’m really glad Bill is sticking around. I wouldn’t see doing it otherwise. I think Bill and I, together as a team, are going to be able to create a lot of success.”

Selling pool tables has been a constant product since C.P. Dean’s inception.

The billiards industry took a hit in 2008 during the recession and the decline in the housing industry, Selden said. The company muddled along for a couple of years after that recession and had been generating strong sales and profitability in the five years leading up to the pandemic.

“When the pandemic hit, the phone was ringing off the hook,” Selden said. “All of these families who were stuck at home with their kids needed something for them to do. We sold more pool tables, pingpong tables, air hockey tables — everything that we sell. We were just busy as we could be and we still are.”

Now the problem is supply chain issues, he said. C.P. Dean has nearly 50 pool tables that have been sold to customers but the company hasn’t received them yet. Some of those orders were placed as long ago as March.

Another reason for selling the business is that C.P. Dean has been the strongest financially in years, he said.

“We’re right at our peak,” he said.

Overall sales rose about 5% last year compared with 2019.

Game room sales, which is the largest part of the company’s business, rose about 15% in 2020 compared with the prior year. But the other side of C.P. Dean’s operations — its trophies, plaques and engraving division, which it began in the 1950s — saw sales drop about 50% year over year, he said.