I live close to the area actsbowler operates his shop, actually all of Cliff's shops in this area are very well run and sell quite a bit of product.

 

While they are mostly EBI shops, they will sell you whatever you want...and have to second that what they do with their shop staffers(if you will) really gets the word out on new stuff for them-this works, at least in this area....

 

As for Columbia, I have drilled a few in the last year and they were good stuff. As for me personally though, I liked the older Columbia stuff like the Messengers and the old Boss series much better, jmo.

 

As for my city, I live/bowl about 30-45 mins. from Acts shop, and our local pro shops(2 independant owned) are not EBI affiliated. Out of the EBI brands, in my home center the majority would have to be Hammer/Track split, actually other than the pro shop operators, very few Columbia stuff now. Also, in my city you will see very few who are "brand loyal", I'd say 90% or more use a mix of brands.

 

 

They were bought... and look where they are now.

Around here most would disagree with you Kid, at least in my area there are more than a few who will not touch Ebonite but swear by Track, and has nothing to do with brand loyalty as much as ball reaction...actually I would guess EBI's situation is much like a Nascar owner with multiple teams. While they might be owned by one entity, and they might share certain info, at the end of the day they are ran as seperate companies...one thing I've always wondered and maybe somebody in the know can chime in here, does each specific brand under the EBI umbrella have its own R&D team, as well as coverstock guru's, and do they freely share this info between the brands?