Over the past three decades, TenPoint has been at the forefront of innovation in the crossbow industry, delivering top-notch products. TenPoint’s commitment to precision, quality, and customer satisfaction has driven them to excel and grow year after year.
The evolution of TenPoint began with Rick Bednar’s upbringing. As a kid who grew up in his father’s archery shop in Suffield, Ohio, Rick lived and breathed archery. His dad, Bill, also coached him to be an elite archer. Rick traveled the world as a member of the USA Pan Am, World Target and World Field Archery teams; qualified for the 1976 Olympic Team; and won the NCAA Championship three times at The University of Akron. Both his retail and competition background nurtured a strong interest in and appreciation for bow design, performance, and engineering, according to TenPoint’s website.
After he graduated in 1979, Rick started working in the archery industry at Cole National Corporation as its director of new store expansion. Two years later, he purchased the family business. By 1983, he had added a wholesale distribution component to the retail operation called PAC Distributing. The distributorship eventually caught the attention of a group of British entrepreneurs who convinced Rick to start an Ohio-based national sales and marketing organization to import and sell a line of crossbows, designed by British custom gun maker, Bernard Horton. Within the first year, Rick realized the British company could not produce and ship orders fast enough to fill the orders he was writing. He convinced Horton to move manufacturing to Suffield, Ohio, where sourcing component parts was much easier. In six years, Rick grew the Horton Crossbow Manufacturing Company from zero to a $4.5 million business.
Rick left Horton to start a new crossbow company — Hunter’s Manufacturing, which became Hunter’s Manufacturing Company, Inc. in 1994. His goal was to create the highest quality hunting crossbows in the world. Horton had already established itself as the leader in the crossbow market; Hunter’s Manufacturing Company had its work cut out for it. Horton filed a lawsuit as soon as the new company began operations, which limited Hunter’s Manufacturing’s operating capital. By the end of 1998, Hunter’s Manufacturing reached an out-of-court settlement with Horton. The settlement awarded no financial compensation to Horton, but Hunter’s did agree to change its trade name to TenPoint Crossbow Technologies beginning at the start of year 2000.
The name TenPoint was a way to differentiate it from its competitors. Rick also felt including the word “ten” was a symbol of the high quality of his crossbows, as in “a perfect ten.” The name also complemented the company’s first slogan, “the mark of perfection.”
In 2003, a huge opportunity for the company emerged. Several southeastern states eliminated restrictions on crossbows during archery season. Other states quickly followed, and what was once a five-state market blossomed into a 28-state, full-inclusion-archery-season market. In most of these states, TenPoint advocated for the legalization and full-inclusion of crossbows as a hunting weapon during the archery season.
During its 30-year history, TenPoint has secured over 95 U.S. patents and two Canadian patents, with several more still pending. No other company in the industry can compare when it comes to technological advancements. Its first patents in 1995 included a bow-to-barrel sound dampening system called the VibraCush and a dry-fire prevention mechanism called the Dry-Fire-Inhibitor. A year later, the ACUdraw, a ground-breaking gear assisted cocking device, received its first of many patents.
In 2010, TenPoint started another venture: Wicked Ridge Crossbows, a value-priced brand within the TenPoint family. Wicked Ridge grew into a successful brand with crossbows ranging currently from $499.99 to $1,099.99. Three years later, Horton Archery LLC, the crossbow company Rick helped start up, filed for bankruptcy. Seeing an opportunity, Rick purchased Horton Archery LLC’s assets, including machinery, equipment, trademarks, patents and licenses, and most importantly, a licensing agreement with Scorpyd Crossbows to design and produce reverse-draw style hunting crossbows. In 2015, Horton was relaunched as Horton Crossbow Innovations, adding another brand to the TenPoint family once again.
Ricks’ son, Phil, joined the company in 2008 and is currently the president and CEO of TenPoint. “I am one of the conceptual leaders for new products, and I try to identify holes in the market where we can develop a new product to grow sales and gain market share. We rely on consumer, dealer, and sales representative feedback to shape our improvements.” Some of the best ideas for product development come from customer reviews. In fact, the ACUslide Safe Cocking & Silent De-Cocking System was mainly driven by customers requesting “a safe and silent cocking system that allows a crossbow to be cocked and de-cocked with ease. As a result, crossbow consumers have responded with an unprecedented level of interest in our crossbow models that utilize this cocking system,” according to the TenPoint website.
As TenPoint’s crossbow technology evolved, production needed to evolve as well ensure a high-quality product that met customer demands. Rick’s youngest son, Steve, joined the business in 2013 and is currently serving as the executive vice president/COO and oversees the entire production process. “The assembly line was something we discussed for two years prior to implementing it. We even built a test line, where we ran bows down a mocked-up assembly line. As a result, we have been able to increase the production of crossbows per person by 15-20%,” said Steve. The company also added a test firing range at the end of the production line where new crossbows are fired into a chronograph to measure speed.
With 1 million bows sold, TenPoint is excited for its future. “We’re looking forward to the next 30 years where we’re going to be pushing boundaries and our engineers are going to be coming up with better crossbows every year which we think will carry us into our next 1 million crossbows shipped,” said Phil.
