The popularity of certain forms of entertainment ebbs and flows with the times, and bowling is no exception. Hollywood crowds have made bowling trendy again, while families seem to be rediscovering it as a not-too-expensive form of wholesome entertainment. Hollywood Star Lanes has been around since the ’50s, and has weathered many economic fluctuations. Owner Sam Barnese spoke with Karen Teitelman about his longevity in the bowling world.
We have 32 lanes and we’re open 24 hours. We probably do more business after midnight most days than we do all day long. This being Hollywood, we have been involved in different “entertainment products.” They filmed “The Big Lebowski” here. It was my first real vacation in 37 years. They closed us for 17 days and I took my wife on a cruise.
Our business is really cyclical. In the early ’60s, business was pretty bad. Most of the smaller alleys went bankrupt and ended up being bought out by the two largest bowling equipment manufacturers at the time, American Machine and Foundry (AMF) and Brunswick. We managed to survive the drought, but it was very difficult. I don’t know if I could go through that again.
The biggest problem we have had, and I would venture to say that all bowling centers go through this problem, is marketing. If I could go back to school and do it all over again, I would change my major from accounting to marketing. For a small mom-and-pop type of business, besides word of mouth, the most difficult thing is to get the message across to the people in your area, with whom you want to do business. With any small business, the lack of gross prohibits you from competing with the huge amounts of money being spent by Ralphs or one of the huge chain stores.
The cost of a quarter-page ad in, say, the L.A. Times, is monstrous compared to the gross sales of most small businesses. Reaching all of the people you need is just out of the question. It used to be the same for cable television, but they have redefined their ad policy. We are in the process of making a commercial for cable, and they have split the (geographic) areas into sections, which makes it a little more satisfying for us to advertise that way. It’s probably the only other form of advertising that can work for us other than direct mailings. And this area is so dense, it would take us more than six months, with 1,000 to 2,000 mailings per month, to go through even the (neighborhoods within easy driving distance) around here.
