Brunswick Bowling & Billiards

The billiards division was established in 1845 and was Brunswick Corporation's original business. Brunswick Billiards designs and markets billiards table, table tennis tables, air hockey tables, and other gaming tables, as well as billiard balls, cues, game room furniture, and related accessories, under the Brunswick and Contender brands. Consumer billiards equipment is predominantly sold in the United States and distributed primarily through dealers. John Brunswick built his first billiards table in 1845 at his woodworking shop in Cincinnati, Ohio, for a successful Chicago meatpacker. The popularity of billiards grew quickly, and by the late 1860s, the U.S. billiards market was dominated by Brunswick's firm and two others. In 1873 Brunswick merged with one of his competitors, Julius Balke's Cincinnati-based Great Western Billiard Manufactory, to form J.M. Brunswick & Balke Company. In 1884, the company merged with the other competitor, New York-based Phelan & Collender, to form the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company. (The company name was changed to Brunswick Corporation in 1960.) The company grew quickly and added new product lines to its business in the 1880s. Brunswick began selling functional and decorative wooden backs for bars. Prohibition prompted a drastic change in the products offered by the company. And while the Depression was a difficult period for Brunswick, World War II brought a great deal of new business. The company's billiard products were popular in the United Service Organizations (USO) centers. More than 13,000 billiards tables were installed at military bases by 1945. In 1972 Brunswick Billiards began the design and manufacture air hockey tables. In 2008 the company introduced a line of game room furniture. Brunswick Billiards dabbled in retail at two times in its history. In 1947 the company opened "Cue and Cushion" establishments, family-friendly billiards establishments that include a lounge and soda fountain. In 2003 the company opened its first “Home & Billiards Store” in the Chicago area, and went on to open one other store in Boston and two in Denver. All of these establishments were later closed, and the company returned to selling its products exclusively through dealers. In May 2019, Brunswick announced its intention to sell Life Fitness Holdings to KPS Capital Partners. The sale was completed in June 2019. In 2022, Life Fitness agreed to sell its Brunswick Billiards business unit to Escalade Sports for $32 million. ==Bowling==

Equipment and products Brunswick began production of wooden lanes, bowling balls, and bowling pins in the 1880s as taverns began to install bowling lanes. John Brunswick's son-in-law Moses Bensinger, who was then directing Brunswick's day-to-day operations, actively promoted bowling as a participatory sport and was instrumental in organizing the American Bowling Congress in 1895. In 1906 Bensinger opened a large manufacturing plant in Muskegon, Michigan. The plant became the cornerstone of the firm's manufacturing, producing such products as the revolutionary $20 Mineralite (hard rubber) bowling ball, and grew to over one million square feet by the 1940s. During World War II, United Service Organizations (USO) centers and military bases eagerly purchased bowling equipment, leading to more than 3,000 bowling lanes being installed at military bases by 1945. Brunswick completed its exit from the bowling business in May 2015 with the sale of the bowling equipment and products division to BlueArc Capital Management, a private investment firm based in Atlanta, Georgia. BlueArc completed the acquisition with investments from Gladstone Investment Corporation, a publicly traded business development company in McLean, Virginia, and Capitala Finance Corp., a business development company in Charlotte, North Carolina. On November 15, 2019, Brunswick acquired Ebonite International and all of its bowling product brands. The division's products for bowling centers include capital equipment, such as Sync, a scoring and management system, Spark, an immersive interactive bowling experience, automatic pinsetters, bowling pins, "house" bowling balls, ball returns, lane surfaces, and bowling center furniture, as well as aftermarket products such as pinsetter parts, lane conditioning machines, and conditioners and cleaners for lane machines. The company's current pinsetter model is in the GS Series, but many A Series models remain in active service. Similarly, many centers still use Brunswick AS-80, AS-90, 2000, Classic, Frameworx, Vector, and Vector Plus scoring systems. Brunswick lane surfaces include the Anvilane and Pro Lane brands. Products are manufactured or sourced mainly from facilities located in Michigan and Wisconsin in the United States, as well as in Hungary and Mexico. Bowling products are sold through a direct sales force or distributors in the United States and through distributors in non-U.S. markets. In 1965, facing a decline in business after a period of rapid expansion, many privately owned centers found it difficult to pay the bills, and Brunswick took physical possession of 131 of these centers as payment for bowling equipment. In 1966, still suffering from the decline, Brunswick closed many European bowling centers. The sale of the bowling center division to Bowlmor AMF was completed in September 2014. By January 2020, all remaining Brunswick Zone locations were rebranded with either the Bowlero or AMF names. ==References==