Rocky Proffit's games of chance.

• Position: National Advertising and Promotion Co. - Company profile

Rocky Proffit's games of chance

For Rocky Proffit, board games are more than just a trivial pursuit.

Proffit's company, National Advertising and Promotion Co. (NAPCO), churns out boards for games such as Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary to the score of 1 million to 3 million per year.

NAPCO, in tiny Sparta, gets its business from national toy companies, including titans Milton Bradley and Western Publishing.

Over the past decade, NAPCO has produced a California Raisins game, a Just Say No game, a Bible game and many others. Some hit; others flopped.

"The toy industry is sort of a roller coaster," Proffit says. "But every year, somehow, we end up doing what seems to be hot."

In 1977, Proffit, then a student teacher and business-education major at Appalachian State University, and his younger brother, Brady (now vice president), started making boxes in Sparta for Dr. Grabow presmoked pipes. "We bought a little piece of equipment and worked out of the basement," Proffit, 37, says.

Sparta Box Co., as it was called, produced mainly point-of-purchase displays, until an offer came from a paper company to make some game boards. "We made 5,000 by hand. It took us a month," Proffit recalls. "We automated after that."

In the mid-1980s, NAPCO began manufacturing its own magnetic chess...