A bowling centre closing near you!

[wchester]

AMF Closes 45 Centers
Jun 27, 2002, 4:17 PM


The largest bowling center chain in the world still carries the banner of AMF, but its domain slipped to fewer than 500 centers this month, perhaps at a location near you. The paring of about 45 centers to 490 represents a drop of about 10 percent from the 535 centers the Richmond, Va. company operated at its peak.

“Thirteen of the closures were from our South American joint venture, and we closed two in Spain, so we’ve got 103 international centers,” said a spokesperson. “Most of the remainder of the closings were not a direct result of the bankruptcy. However, the bankruptcy gave us a chance to look at all of the lease contracts and, like any retail chain, allowed us to make decisions based on that, and on poor performance, etc.”

There are 490 AMF centers today, 387 in the U.S.

THIS COULD BE HAPPENING NEAR YOU SOON

 

[AMF]

The CEO of AMF in Australia, Peter Finlayson, who returned from Hong Kong this morning could not confirm the detail of the news of AMF centres on a worldwide basis. However, although the centres were more likely to have been sold rather than "closed", he could confirm that it was certainly the new policy of the Company to concentrate its bowling centre operations in its traditional areas of operation in the USA, Australia, UK and Mexico and to move out of the newer, smaller markets into which the Company had expanded in the mid to late 90's. In fact Peter had been in Hong Kong finalising the sale of the remaining 3 centres operated by AMF in that country in accordance with this policy.

He hastened to add that, not only had AMF been operating Bowling Centres in Australia since 1964, AMF Australia would be opening their 49th centre at Dee Why, a northern beaches suburb of Sydney, in September 2002, and planned to continue to be the leading and most successful bowling centre operator in Australia for the next 40 years.