Easton Archery – A Company Review
Easton Archery is one of the word’s oldest and largest suppliers of arrows and arrow shafts and arrow building components. Whenever people think of archery, the first name that comes in one’s mind is the name of Easton Archery. Presently, most people associate Easton Archery’s name with high technology aluminum and composite arrow shafts. But, during first twenty years of its existence, it was better known for manufacturing extraordinarily fine wooden arrows by hand.
One man working from his garage started the company more than eighty years ago. Now the company has grown to more than one thousand employees who are in the business of development and distribution of archery products along with other high performance sporting goods and equipment all around the world. In 1922, the founder of the company James D. (Doug) Easton started making custom made bows along with cedar arrows in his garage in California. But, the idea of making these bows and arrows started more than ten years earlier because of various experiences he had.
About a century ago, people in North America were not aware of using bows and arrows for hunting or warfare. Practice of using bows and arrows was prevalent among Native Americans. But, as they started living in the reservations, in their daily life the use of bows and arrows became unnecessary. Because of this development, their skill in the use of bows and arrows started to wane.
In 1911, a Native American belonging to Yana Indian tribe, named Ishi emerged from the wilderness. He was the last surviving member of his tribe who brought the centuries old skills of his ancestors of using bows arrows into the modern world. When he emerged from the forest, he came into contact with Dr. Saxton Pope who was a medical doctor attached with University of California at San Francisco.
Both of them became great friends and Dr. Pope learnt all the skills of making bows and using them for hunting till Ishi’s death in 1916 from tuberculosis. Dr Pope wrote books about the new skill he had learnt from Ishi.
Doug Easton’s introduction to archery started from an accident where lead shots from an unattended shotgun injured both his legs very badly. He was in a hospital for about a year and was saved from losing one of his legs. But, Doug was in love of hunting. Seeing this, one of his friends gifted him a book written by Dr. Pope regarding archery. He became very much interested in the subject and starting making bows and arrows in his garage after his recovery.
In 1923, while Doug was practicing with the bows and arrows made by him at an archery range in Golden Gate Park at Sans Francisco he accidentally met Dr. Saxton Pope. Dr. Pope got impressed when he learnt that Doug made those bows and arrows after reading his book. This encounter with Dr. Pope entirely changed Doug’s life and he decided to dedicate rest of his life in the development of archery.
Initially, he was using wood as his raw material. But, he was always looking for other raw materials for his products. This led to the use of aluminum for making the shafts in 1939.This was hampered by shortage of aluminum for civilian use during World War II. After the war, he continued in developing newer arrows using aluminum. In his effort world famous archer Howard Hill helped him. During this period, his company supported development of archery as a sport by sponsorship and providing training equipments.
In 1972, his company was celebrating golden jubilee but he died on the last day of that year.
The company continued to develop under the guidance of his son Jim who had joined his father in 1960 after completing his engineering degree from UCLA. Farther development included in using Aluminum/Carbon and only Carbon as the raw material.
Presently, under the guidance of Greg Easton, the grand son of Doug, who became the president of the company in December 2001, this drive of developing newer technologies for use in this field is continuing with great vigor.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Archery Types. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.