Brunswick Bowling & Billiards
The bowling equipment line was sold to BlueArc Capital Management in 2015, which continues to use the Brunswick name among other brands.
[2] John Brunswick built his first billiards table in 1845 at his woodworking shop in Cincinnati, Ohio, for a successful Chicago meatpacker.
In 1873 Brunswick merged with one of his competitors, Julius Balke's Cincinnati-based Great Western Billiard Manufactory, to form J.M.
And while the Depression was a difficult period for Brunswick, World War II brought a great deal of new business.
[5][6] In May 2019, Brunswick announced its intention to sell Life Fitness Holdings to KPS Capital Partners.
In 2022, Life Fitness agreed to sell its Brunswick Billiards business unit to Escalade Sports for $32 million.
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.
[9] Brunswick's policy of selling pinsetters on credit, suburban expansion, and an aggressive advertising campaign all combined to make bowling centers enormously popular in the late 1950s.
In 2005 Brunswick moved its bowling ball production to Reynosa, Mexico, and in 2006 it closed the Muskegon plant.
In 1984, Brunswick acquired the Schmid Company of Scherzenbach, Switzerland, and with it the rights to manufacture and sell its GS pinsetter.
The mechanical portion of the pinsetter was originally manufactured in the Brunswick plant located in Stockach, Germany.
Products are manufactured or sourced mainly from facilities located in Michigan and Wisconsin in the United States, as well as in Hungary and Mexico.
Brunswick centers offered bowling and, depending on size and location, in-house restaurants, taverns, outdoor patios, billiards, video and redemption games, laser tag, pro shops, and meeting and party rooms.
[4] In 2007 the company opened its first Brunswick Zone XL centers, large, smoke-free facilities aimed at families, bowling leagues, parties, corporate meetings and group events, offering bowling, laser tag, bumper cars, video game arcades, Brunswick billiards tables, large screen TVs, and spacious meeting rooms.
[1] In July 2014 as part of its exit from the bowling business, Brunswick announced that it had agreed to sell the bowling center business, which brought in $187 million in revenue in the prior year, to its much larger competitor Bowlmor AMF (now known as Bowlero Corporation) for $270 million.
