Editing Pente (section)

=== Pente Games Inc. ===
While successful, by the second half of 1979, Gabrel was worried that he would not be able to secure the [[financing]] needed to take advantage of the growth opportunities that Pente's popularity was making possible.

He decided to incorporate his Pente business as Pente Games Inc.<ref name=":12">{{Cite journal|last=Braunlich|first=Tom|date=Summer 1983|title=Pente Sold to Parker Bros. Game Co.|url=http://www.playpente.com/newsletters/summer_83.pdf|journal=Pente Newsletter|volume= |pages=11–12|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040613100617/http://www.playpente.com/newsletters/summer_83.pdf|archive-date=2004-06-13|via=}}</ref> and secured financing from Dr. Lee Centraccos and his wife, Cookie Centraccos, both of whom had previous experience in the [[restaurant]] industry and [[cable television]], and agreed to give Gabrel cash and a $100,000 line of credit in return for twenty percent of the equity in Pente games, a share of the profit, and a position on the company's [[board of directors]].<ref name=":18" />

With funding secured, Pente Games Inc. and Gabrel pursued what they called "the [[backgammon]] example",<ref name=":18" /> which involved promoting Pente as a fashionable and prestigious game and selling it for seventeen dollars to support its [[luxury good |upscale]] image. Their target demographic was eighteen- to thirty-five–year-old young professionals who were "upscale and fashion conscious."<ref name=":18" /> They avoided [[mass merchandiser]]s to avoid both the complexities of going through buyers in different parts of the country and competing with [[Monopoly (game)|Monopoly]] and [[Risk (game)|Risk]] on the shelves, targeting local and regional gift and [[department store]]s instead.<ref name=":18" />

To save money, Gabrel packaged Pente in roll-up [[Polyvinyl chloride|vinyl]] tubes instead of boxes, which made stocking the games on standard shelving more difficult for stores but also stood out visually and distinguished the game from other products on the market.<ref name=":18" />

In the fall of 1979, Pente was picked up by John A. Brown, an Oklahoma department store, and sold twenty thousand sets during the Christmas season. In its first full year in business, Pente Games Inc. sold one hundred thousand sets, and by the end of the second year had sold three hundred thousand.<ref name=":18" />

By 1983, Pente had become popular enough that it was being called "the backgammon of the '80s"<ref name=":18" /> and President [[Ronald Reagan]] and [[Hugh Hefner]] were both said to own sets.<ref name=":18" />