Having been established just three years ago in Hamburg, Germany, Nordic CC is a relative newcomer to the coin-op industry. Helen Fletcher spoke to company owner Reinhard Schloh to find out how the company has fared in its first years and its plans for the future...

After working in the coin-op industry for the past nine years and the vending machine industry for even longer, Reinhard Schloh’s career is an impressive one, working at companies including Nova, Stella International and Mexim, where a specific focus of Schloh’s has been on Scandinavia and eastern European countries.

Branching out

In January 2005, Schloh decided to branch out on his own and establish a small but fast-moving business, which he could give his full attention and devote his ideas to.

A self-proclaimed amusement maniac, Schloh enjoys the challenge the amusement sector of the industry brings.

With a strong focus on sports games, Nordic CC is still a very small company and has a core team of just five people.

It does however employ external suppliers who work on a freelance basis.

When the company first started, it partly focused on the second hand market but the past year has seen some major changes.

It was decided that Nordic CC would move out of the second hand market and focus on two major sectors: re-designing and improving existing brands and establishing its own product line, Versus Concept Line, the concept behind the range being that an emotional character is attached to each of the two players.

The company is currently in the transitional period but continues to provide an amusement with prizes consultancy service.

Market presence growing


Due to Schloh’s previous connections and experience within Scandinavia, Nordic CC’s presence in the region is now very strong.

It has also got a very strong presence in Switzerland and has become one of the market leaders in its sector, in both territories.

In eastern Europe the company’s presence is growing all the time and, according to Schloh, there are also plans to increase its presence in the company’s domestic market, Germany, as well as Greece.

Schloh said: “There is the demand in Germany for high-quality sports games and there is a vacuum of affordable amusement games with good cash box results.  We also believe that family entertainment centres have a brilliant future and numbers will increase.

“We currently supply our products to operators in the northern part of Germany but are looking for a strong distributor in the south of the country. As for Greece, we see great potential for our sports games due to the prohibition of almost all games in the country.”

New products

For 2008, the coin-op industry will see three new products from the company’s Versus range of air hockey power game products.

Commenting on the company’s line of Versus air-hockey tables, Schloh said: “The Versus concept of air hockey games emphasises the fight attribute of a game by giving both players an emotional character they play for and can identify with. The games also come with special light effects, which enables the player to react quickly.”

“The second game of the Versus concept is more masculine, demanding in strength and powerful but still entertaining.”

Features of the product include a newly arranged blacklight lamp, placed sideways instead of shining from above as used on previous models.

Also, for the first time, the pucks and goals are fluorescent and a protector cap has been introduced into the middle to prevent the pucks dropping out when in play.

The protector cap has an additional feature in that it can be used to house advertising.

For the coming year then it would seem Nordic CC has a lot to offer as well as a lot more growing to do and is certainly an ambitious company, so where does Schloh see it all going?

“In the next five to 10 years I see that we will be one of the top manufacturers in classic sport games,” he said.

“I also hope that we will increase our AWP consultancy service and strengthen our business relationships.”