Bowling and Me.
While in college, I won the Brunswick National Amateur competition in 1977 and toured Europe for three weeks, bowling and representing the U.S. I aspired to join the Pro Bowlers Association tour. That was all cut short by a car accident, oddly enough at the Hoinke in Cincinnati.
Keith Spear started in 1981 by opening his first pro shop in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I then moved our main location in 1982 to Deltona, Florida. I opened my third store in Deland, Florida in 1984. From 1985-1991 I conducted services pertaining to the operations of professional tournaments for the Ladies Pro Bowlers Tour. My next pro shop was opened in 1992 in Daytona Beach, Florida. In 1996 I purchased my first domain name, bowlingball.com and began to envision the future of bowling utilizing the Internet. My Deltona Pro Shop opened in 2001 and then the Ormond Pro Shop opened in 2002. Since 2002 we have added an additional eleven pro shops within the state of Florida.
It has now been 13 years since we first started on the Internet and 28 years since I opened my first pro shop. We have grown from our humble beginnings to become the largest online retailer of bowling equipment in the world. At first, we simply worked out of our over crowded pro shops, and then when storage became a problem we rented a storage unit near our largest pro shop. We then rented another and then another storage unit until we had over 25 storage units. We consolidated our operations in August of 2002 moving to an 11,000 square foot warehouse housing over a million dollars worth of inventory. As of May 2009 we are now in a 33,000 square foot facility and carry over four million dollars in inventory. We are very thankful to say that we have serviced over 3,000,000 bowlers. We not only carry the complete bowling industry line but have expanded to reintroducing lines, such as Quantum. We also carry hard to find Pro Pins and Pro CG’s, once only available to touring professionals. We also currently have the largest private line of Brunswick Viz A Balls in the country. We currently make and distribute exclusive products such as: Disney’s Tinkerbell, Spiderman, The Hulk, Support our Troops, Official Jonathan Earl Bowser Angel bowling balls, The Money Ball, The Barb Wire, Monster Jam’s Grave Digger, and Mini Viz A Ball Awards, along with many others. Our success is achieved by fulfilling our mission statement, along with the fact that we strive to have fun every day with what we do.
I currently can no longer bowl due to a hip replacement. I can golf and do pretty much anything else, but I cannot bend properly to bowl, the muscles give out. I had hoped to reach a few more goals in the game of bowling but it would not buy me a cup of coffee so who cares. I am most likely stuck at 49 perfect games, I would have like to hit 50, I really don’t know why, it’s meaningless. Something I think I said I would like, not a written goal though. I have bowled 14 800 series and won numerous tournaments. Bowled in a few rabbits, when that was they way the PBA did it, and quite a few regionals. At least I went out on a high note, my last full season, before I had to quit due to the pain, I averaged 230, high in the league. I bowled 19 National tournaments, never did a thing there, averaged about 198 in all, always hated those idiots for not letting us practice. So there it is in a nutshell. Still love bowling, I would love to teach, but you gotta have someone who’s willing to listen. I’m moving on with bowlingball.com.