Spittoons Out, Profits Up

Few years ago Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co., which makes 60% of all U. S. bowling-alley and poolroom equipment, vowed that the U. S. bowling alley should no longer be a hangout for the unwashed. Reasoning that where women go, men will follow, B-B-C launched a promotional campaign, persuaded alley proprietors to clean house, encourage female bowling.

Since B-B-C is banker as well as supplier to most alleys, it worked. Equipment was streamlined, spittoons were thrown out, floors were swept oftener, untidy language was frowned on. Sloganed B-B-C to proprietors: "Be a good host, be a good housekeeper, be promotionally minded." Result for BBC: a comeback.

Founded 95 years ago by Swiss Immigrant John Brunswick, B-B-C began as a maker of billiard tables, branched and merged its way into bowling alleys, tires, toilet seats, phonographs, records, radios, became the world's largest maker of bar fixtures. But Prohibition cooled the bar business. The music division was sold to Warner Bros. Pictures in 1930. B-B-C lost $3,047,963 in 1929, lost again in five of the next six years. Steering it helplessly in this heavy weather was Benjamin Bensinger, old-fashioned autocrat, grandson of Founder Brunswick.

In 1935 Autocrat Bensinger died. Into control swarmed a squad of five young men with new ideas, led by Benjamin Bensinger's two sons, President Robert F. and Executive Vice President Benjamin E. Weeding out remnants of father's regime, R. F. and B. E., no autocrats, gave their executives' ideas free play. Sales rose, profits soared from $49,058 (1935) to last year's $2,037,435. Last week, at the annual meeting in Chicago, B-B-C stockholders heard President Bensinger predict further sales gains for 1940.

Back as a leader in the bar-fixture business, new but important in the soda-fountain business, B-B-C nevertheless depends on bowling and billiards for three-fourths of its $13,745,522 (1939) sales.

More than half the total comes from bowling. Particularly profitable is steady replacement business in pins, balls, other accessories. Hence the alley promotion campaign was logical. Chief form of promotion known to the old regime was to subsidize nearly all top bowling and billiard* players. The new, having found these hirelings expensive and unproductive, retains only a few, makes them work for their pay. One of the few: Trick Billiardist Charley Peterson, who has lectured on billiards at Harvard, whose business card reads "show me a shot I can't make." Sample Peterson shot: standing a half-dollar on its rim between two cubes of chalk in the centre of the table, sending it to the cushion and back between the cubes, with one tap.

But the Bensingers are far from satisfied with their billiard business. Having cleaned up bowling, they think the great American poolroom, which has long had a bad name, can be reformed and popularized too. B-B-C is preparing new promotional schemes to do just that.

* The greatest: Willie Hoppe, to whom B-B-C used to pay $6,000 a year for what Hoppe calls "doing nothing" (see p. 65).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.