Card Maker Plays a Trump : Chief’s Strategy Turns Around World’s Biggest Firm in Its Industry
Ronald C. Rule held a royal flush in spades. In front of him on his desk were decks of cards--Bee, Bicycle, Aviator, Tally Ho, Steamboat, Aarco, Vitoria from Spain and two made especially for Air Force One, the President’s airplane.
Rule, 58, was at work, not play. And, no, he was not dealt the perfect hand. He had pulled it from a new deck. Rule is president and chief executive of United States Playing Card Co., the largest card company in the world. The cards in front of him represented the various brands made by the firm.
USPC produces 280,000 decks of cards a day at its main plant here in Cincinnati, which has 550 employees, and at plants in Windsor, Canada, and Vitoria, Spain.
“We manufacture 70% of the cards made and sold in America, 80% of the cards sold to the casinos in Atlantic City and Nevada and ship cards to 75 nations throughout the world,” Rule said. “We’re good for the balance of trade.”
Card playing is one of the oldest and most enduring forms of entertainment on Earth, probably having originated in China or India as early as the 7th Century. Marco Polo is credited with introducing cards to Europe, and Columbus brought them to America.
In the 15th Century, the French came up with the 52-card deck that we know today. Images on the early cards represented historic figures--Charlemagne, king of hearts; Julius Caesar, king of diamonds; King David, king of spades; Alexander the Great, king of clubs.
USPC’s predecessor, the United States Printing Co., with roots dating back to 1832, started making playing cards in 1880. Ten years later it acquired New York’s Consolidated Card Co. and the National Card Co. of Indianapolis and in 1894 changed its name to United States Playing Card Co.
When Rule became president of the company in 1986, the hand he was dealt was far from a winner. The company had lost $13 million during the previous five years. Its debt--to finance a 1982 leveraged buyout by Wall Street’s Jessup & Lamont from Diamond International--was six times greater than equity.
“Diamond International used USPC as a cash cow, siphoning money to other areas and not putting it back,” Rule said. “This place was in shambles. Management didn’t talk to one another. There was no teamwork, no staff meetings . . . . Costs were way out of line.”
In November, 1986, seven months after he came aboard, members of the company’s largest union walked off their jobs at the main plant. The bitter strike lasted six months before some of the workers returned without a contract. New employees were hired to replace those who never came back.
Under Rule’s leadership, the card company has made a dramatic turnaround by reducing labor expenses, upgrading equipment and restructuring debt. Annual sales, which were $40 million in 1982, have more than doubled--to $83 million last year. Operating profit for 1988 was reported at $8.3 million.
USPC has spent $16 million to automate its production lines, with laser scanners used to detect defects. A new $4.7-million printing press is planned for installation next year.
In 1986, USPC bought a majority interest in H. Fournier of Vitoria, Spain, the largest card company in Europe, and second in size in the world only to USPC. The following year, it acquired Aarco Card Co. of Chicago, third-largest in the United States. Two years ago, USPC entered the game market, which now accounts for 5% of its sales.
Bee Cards, USPC’s highest-quality brand, have been made since 1895 under that name. The Bicycle line, the largest-selling brand in the world, dates back to 1885, and Congress, a brand designed for bridge players, to 1881. USPC also makes a number of regional brands: Tally Ho for the New York area, Steamboat for the South, Mohawk for the Northwest.
During the Vietnam War, USPC shipped millions of aces of spades to American troops. The servicemen left them as calling cards for superstitious enemy forces, who considered the ace an omen of death.
That was not the first use of playing cards in war. During World War II, decks of Bicycle cards with German and French maps laminated in secrecy within them were sent to prisoners in Nazi POW camps to aid in their escape. The cartographic cards reportedly were never discovered by the Germans.
Rule is a Southern California product, having been born and brought up in Long Beach. He served in the Air Force during the Korean War and graduated from UCLA in 1956.
He said he has never been dealt a royal flush like the one he held at his desk here, but with USPC’s growing success, he’s starting to know what it feels like to be a winner.
