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Bowling supply · Fort Wayne Bowling Supply → The Classic Company → Classic Products
On the record
Founded: 1959, Fort Wayne. Classic’s own company history states it “was started by Bob Carteaux and Marty Schmidt in 1959 as Fort Wayne Bowling Supply (FWBS) in a small pro shop in the Key Lanes Bowling Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana.” No incorporation record or contemporaneous directory listing was retrieved, so the year is not proven; it is carried on the company’s own history, corroborated as to the firm’s identity, Fort Wayne headquarters and 1959 founding year by the independent company-profile listings worked in the pass (headquarters 4617 Industrial Road, Fort Wayne; founded 1959).
Founders: Bob Carteaux and Marty Schmidt (company history; the profile listings repeat the same pairing).
What it did: wholesale and retail bowling supply — balls, bags, shoes, lane and centre supplies and services — run at first, retail and wholesale together, out of the Key Lanes pro shop. Divisions were “soon added” on the company history: a trophy division, a bowling-lane resurfacing operation, and a screen-print and embroidery division. Growth is attributed in the same history to acquiring “exclusive Midwest U.S. rights to the Manhattan Rubber bowling ball line and DBA products.”
Course: in 1964 a fifth division was started on a separate retail site to sell dash-mounted eight-track stereo tape players — the origin of the car-stereo line. In 1965 the business split: the wholesale/retail bowling supply and the screen-print/embroidery operations remained as The Classic Company, while the car-stereo and trophy operations were sold to separate ownership — carried in the company history as still operating as Classic Stereo and Classic Trophies (a company claim, printed as such). In 1980 The Classic Company expanded its lettering operation into non-bowling work, “most significantly toward tee shirts for the music industry”; that side became dominant and led to the sale of the bowling-supply operation in 1987, which — in the history’s wording — as “the core of the original enterprise was moved and renamed Classic Products Corp.” The exact legal form of the 1987 sale (buyer, price, whether the corporation is the 1959 firm renamed or a successor) is not established on sources in hand; the lineage itself is the company’s own account and is documented as such. Headquarters remained in Fort Wayne throughout. Growth thereafter was by acquisition of other bowling distributors, dated in the company history: Mark Fore, Fort Wayne, 1990; Top-Line, Plant City, Florida, 1997; Cullen Bowling Supply, Clearwater, Florida, 2003; Universal Bowling Supply, Chicago, 2004; B&B Bowling Supply, Dallas, Texas, 2005; Done-Rite Bowling Supply, Cleveland, Ohio, 2007; Complete Bowling Service, Inc., Kent, Washington, 2015; a Las Vegas distribution facility 2018, consolidated into a Las Vegas super distribution centre 2022; the Task Force Technical Institute at Henderson, Nevada, 7 November 2023; Western Pacific Bowling Supply purchased 28 May 2026 and Bobs’ Business, Inc. assets acquired 4 September 2026 (both 2026 items are company-history entries, single-source, carried as such). By December 2024 the firm ran four distribution warehouses — Fort Wayne; Largo, Florida; Garland, Texas; and Henderson, Nevada — and was described in the trade press as the largest bowling-products distributor in the world (a trade-press superlative, carried as a claim, not an established fact).
Fate: still operating, independent. On 16 December 2024 Brunswick Bowling Products announced it would acquire Classic’s assets and run it from May 2025 as its “Classic Bowling Products” division, with owners Mike Eid, Shawn Spade and Jimmy Land remaining in leadership. On 23 December 2024 Brunswick announced that planned acquisition had been “amicably terminated” — for partner input, a change in strategic direction, and failure to agree key terms — and that both companies “will continue operations independently.” Classic’s subsequent 2026 acquisitions confirm it continued trading on its own account after the termination. Headquarters: 4617 Industrial Road, Fort Wayne.
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- § 05 — business
Sources: Classic Products Corp., company history — https://bowl2.classicproducts.com/company-history/ ; Bowling Center Management (BCM), “Brunswick Bowling to Acquire Classic Products,” 16 Dec 2024 — http://bcmmag.com/2024/12/16/brunswick-bowling-to-acquire-classic-products/ ; Brunswick Bowling Products announcement, 23 Dec 2024, via PBA Tour Experience / BowlingBall.com — https://pbatourexperience.com/brunswicks-plan-to-acquire-classic-products-amicably-terminated/ ; Places listing, Classic Products Corp. — https://classicproducts.com/ . Sources as cited in the profile.