By: Emery Lay
Homer Brown, 74, bustles around a back corner of the Galleria Mall in Birmingham, Alabama, joyfully attending to customers at any of his three table tennis stores. The three locations sit in a semi-circle behind the escalator – a place no business has ever made it before.
Pinball machines and arcade games spill out of the doorways and into the space between stores. One functions as a game room for kids, another as a game room for adults and a third as a sales station and table tennis center for league games.
“The sport’s been good to me,” Brown said. “Even though running a business doesn't give me the chance to really go to tournaments, I think that the everyday challenge of staying in business excites me.”
Today, that whole bottom corner of the mall belongs to his lovechild, BumperNets, and people from states away drive to get a taste. But it wasn’t always like this.
It all started back in the early 1960s when Brown was in high school, playing at Kirkwood High in Missouri and recreationally with his dad.
“I saw it as a sport that I could play for a lifetime,” Brown said.
Eventually, it came time for Brown to fly the coop. He decided to pursue a degree in psychology at Covenant College in 1967, all while working in the transportation department on campus. Meanwhile, his passion for table tennis grew – playing with a professor during summer school and, at his behest, setting up the first Covenant table tennis team in 1968.
That fall, Brown brought Dal Joon Lee, the number one men’s table tennis player in the nation at the time, to Covenant for an exhibition, following a summer intensive where Lee “worked [him] to death.” His senior year, in 1970, Brown one-upped himself by bringing in Dell Swerris, the second top men’s table tennis player in the nation at the time, and his wife, Connie, the number one women’s tennis player in the nation.
“I was just finding out that I love to play tournaments,” Brown said. “I got to travel. I got to eat out and I was keeping in shape.”
Back in 1969, Brown began his professional career with his first match at the U.S. Open for Table Tennis – a streak he has kept for 52 years, a world record. Brown recalls driving himself all the way out to San Francisco, California, just to have a chance to play.
“I made my commitment back then that I love the sport so much, [and] if I'm going to keep playing … I'm going to go to every U.S. Open from here on out,” he said.
Yet, none of this would have been possible without support – and that is where the oil comes in.
“My last year of college I met a guy that was running a Shell service station below Lookout Mountain,” Brown said. “I needed a part time job to make a little extra money to go to tournaments. So, I said, ‘I'll come to work for you if you'll sponsor me … and I'll work hard for it.’”
James Gamble, the manager, agreed. Then and there, a lifetime of superior customer service and dedication to table tennis began, starting at 35 hours a week.
“He was very customer-oriented,” Brown said of Gamble, a trait that Brown himself would champion during his own career.
After graduating, Brown continued to work for Gamble, saying that the movements of getting down to check the tires and standing to clean windows mimicked the movements he used in table tennis. All the while, he was working toward owning a Shell dealership himself.
“They said I was too young, because I was just 20,” Brown said. “[So,] I took a Gulf Oil dealership … below Lookout Mountain. I said, ‘Here's my opportunity.’”
Day by day, Brown managed to set himself apart with coffee and hot chocolate runs, top tier car service and a warm welcome.
“I started out real slow,” he said. “But I got better and better and better. And I turned it into one of the higher volume stations [in the area].”
From there, Brown received a job offer to become a retail trainer for Gulf Oil and purchased his own station in February of 1971. Later, he would move around with the company – to Atlanta in 1972, to Kentucky where he met his wife in 1975 and then to Knoxville, Tenn., in 1977.
In 1980, he ran Belle Meade Gulf in Nashville, Tennessee, and five years later moved to Cleveland, Ohio, to become Gulf Oil’s manager of retail training for the entire country.
During this time, Brown had two table tennis business ventures that he was forced to leave behind: the “Louisville Ping Pong Parlor” in Kentucky, 1975, and “Table Tennis of New England,” after 24 years of service in the oil industry, in 1996.
Tables turned quickly, though, when Brown was confirmed as Vulcan Oil’s Chief Operating Officer that August. He signed for a three-year contract and moved to Birmingham immediately.
“[That 3-year contract] gave me the opportunity to be thinking about what I might want to do after that time period was up,” Brown said. “I started thinking about a dream that I always had: to open up America's first table tennis store.”
After completing his term with Vulcan Oil in 1999, Brown went after that dream. In August, Brown opened America’s first table tennis store in Birmingham, Alabama: BumperNets.
“I've been saving the name BumperNets for a long time,” Brown said. “So, I went ahead and went for it and didn't look back.”
From a food court of Brookwood Village Mall to a three-pronged store in the “BumperNets wing” of the Riverchase Galleria, the business has maintained an upward trajectory.
“The reason I started BumperNets was because [of] my oil career,” Brown said. “My bottom-line goal was to get people playing table tennis, which is a sport I've always believed in.”
Brown worked hard to make his dream come true – with a central location, a memorable name, an eye-catching logo and a strong dose of undoubtedly warm customer service.
“Building something from scratch has been a real challenge every day at work,” Brown said. “You have to have the passion to hang in there day after day like I have.”
Since starting his dream company, Brown recruited tennis legend Duke Stogner, National Senior Gold Medalist and now BumperNets’ operations manager. Stogner himself started playing recreationally at the age of 10 and entered the competition scene 17 years down the road. Since then, he has been to more than 10 U.S. Opens, which is where, of course, he met Brown in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1974.
“You get to meet a lot of cool people [from] all over,” Stogner said. “I like the one-on-one competition. I like the fast pace of the sport. And I like to think you win and lose on your own merits.”
Stogner started helping Brown in 1999 and transferred to Birmingham in 2002 to work full time. Now, he runs BumperNets’ table tennis leagues – three leagues every year – and organizes Friday night tournaments. Stogner, 79, said he loves the sport because it is a great family activity and a sport where age is not a factor.
“It’s just a great lifetime sport,” he said. “It’s unlike any [other] contact sport.”
Another employee, sales associate Christopher Adams, also has a longstanding history with BumperNets and its pinball machines.
“I used to actually come here with my father when I was younger,” Adams said. “I really enjoyed the type of gaming pinball was [but] it was also a bonding experience with my father.”
Adams, 20, recalls travelling a lot when he was younger with his father, a collector, just to pick up rare machines for a good price. As of May 2022, Adams will have been with BumperNets for three years. After his time there, he hopes to pursue a job in professional videogaming; In the meantime, he is focused on serving the customers at BumperNets and playing the Godzilla pinball machine in his free time.
Not only is Brown’s work ethic imitated by his employees, but it is admired statewide. In 2009, Brown was invited to the University of Alabama to impart his table tennis knowledge to the football team.
Since then, graduate assistant Joshua White invited Brown to talk to his class, as well as encouraged his students to do a case study on the BumperNets business. In fact, White, 31, has been a long-time customer of BumperNets.
“The first time I went to BumperNets was probably 20 years ago,” White said. “When I was a kid, we used to go in there, and I actually took some table tennis lessons with Duke.”
Now, White is revisiting his childhood memories. A few years ago, White took his daughter in on a whim to play games – but it was White who left with a new passion ignited for pinball machines. The next day he returned to buy one and now he is host to two pinball machines – Munsters and Ghostbusters themed – at his house.
Since that visit, White is a new regular at BumperNets – a perfect middle-of-the-line stopping point between his work in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and his home in Trussville, Alabama. In fact, White came by so much that Brown recruited him for their table tennis league.
“There's a lot of interesting people from different walks of life that play,” White said. “[Brown’s] always energetic and excited to plug in and help. He wants people to have fun in the store and have fun with table tennis. It really permeates to the store as a whole.”
Brown’s response? We are “all still big kids at heart.”
Today, BumperNets is still growing. The business continues to work with time-tested brands such as Butterfly, Brunswick and Valley Dynamo, all of which can be found in store or online through BumperNet’s website, eBay or Amazon page.
“[We] try to do a bit do a little bit of everything,” Brown said. “We do table service. We do pinball repairs. You can get a lesson with a Pro. You can come in and rent a table, or you can play games.”
Unlike most table tennis stores, BumperNets encourages a hands-on environment. That’s because Brown wants his customers to fall in love with these sports for themselves, just like he did.
Comments