Loves Park dartboard maker celebrates 50 years in business

LOVES PARK, Ill. (WTVO) — You’ve probably seen soft-tip dartboards in your local bar or restaurant. Many of those popular games are made in the Stateline.

Sam Zammuto knows a thing or two about soft-tip darts. He knows the machines in and out.

“47 years,” Zammuto said about how long he’s been working at Arachnid 360. “I love it. I love promoting, I love the excitement. We sell fun. This dart game here was the very first dart game back in 1975. It was hand-drilled.”

Arachnid 360 is celebrating 50 years in 2025, something Zammuto says is quite amazing.

He is in Arachnid’s hall of fame, and he showed us the hall of fame of machines at the company’s facility in Loves Park.

Games from the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and onward.

“We’re the number one manufacturer of soft-tip dart machines throughout the whole world,” Zammuto said. “Our sales are tremendous.”

Bill Redig is Arachnid’s VP of dart operations. He gave us a first-hand look at how the dart boards are made.

“We are in the inventory area where all our parts start to flow in,” Redig said. “This is where everything starts. We work with 100 different vendors across the country, across the world. The vast majority of them are also U.S.-based companies.”

“The first stage is our sub-assembly area where all the components come together, and we start the pre-assembly to build our dart boards. We assemble over three million dart tips per year, all in the Stateline.”

Every component is meticulously assembled. Every piece is essential to making the boards work smoothly.

“This is one of our components here,” Redig explained. “This is the gear that goes on the back of the dartboard. The dart board has two sides, heads, one 15-inch and one 13-inch. This is the gear that helps make the board rotate.”

“This is our cabinet prep area,” he continued. “Our cabinets are made in southern Wisconsin. Hundreds of cabinets flow in on a weekly basis. We prep them up here with brackets and a few attachments before they move into our build area.”

The team builds about 20 boards per day, between 400 and 600 of them a month, depending on the season.

“After the cabinet prep and all the sub-assemblies flow through,” Redig continued, “they end up in one of our build stations where the team builds the dartboard.”

The most veteran employees build, on average, 15 boards every day.

“Once the game is fully built, it moves into this stage here where it burns on our testing line for 24 hours, then goes through an extensive testing process to make sure everything’s scoring well before we box it up and ship it out,” he said.

“Here we have several rows of finished goods,” he pointed out. “These games are all built up, and many of them are going to tournaments across the country.”

Some of which are televised on ESPN.

“It’s so much fun. Absolutely love it here,” Redig said. “It’s fun to be part of a team that has passion for the product, but also the end user. There’s so many people that play darts across the country. We are in 30 thousand venues across the world, and it’s hard-pressed to find a bar these days that doesn’t have one of our Arachnid Bull Shooter Dartboards.”

Arachnid was recently acquired by TouchTunes Music Co., a large jukebox maker with offices in Schuamburg.

Dan Hamric is executive VP at TouchTunes. He says darts and music match up perfectly.

“TouchTunes acquired Arachnid a year ago with a good way to be able to bring common entertainment together in one business,” Hamric said. “Looking at darts and music, they go great together.”

Zammuto says the future is bright for Arachnid.

As for him, he said this when asked if he had another 47 years at the company in him.

“I do not have another 47,” he said while laughing. “But it’s been exciting. It helped develop a product from zero to one hundred. I’m glad to be part of it. It’s been a privilege to be part of it, soft-tip darts.”