BOW INTERNATIONAL 55

dam begins, "I've been shooting since
I was nine, so I've been into archery for
a long time - I'm now 34. Id actually
ot been shooting for about a year, but
was doing some signwriting and just
as I started shooting again I realised that there
was a bit of a crossover. That's when I made my
first arrow wraps, and that's how it all began.
They were just plain coloured ones made out of
the signwriting materials I had to hand. I started
making some for friends and members of the
club as wel!, then branched out into eBay;selling
a couple of sets on there. We were constantly
getting asked "Can I have my name on them?"
The answer was always no because, frustratingly,
the equipment to do it was really expensive and
we never saw it going that far. However, one
evening when I was in Hungary with my wife a
friend of mine had a printer perfect for our needs
for sale - we took the plunge and bought it then
started producing our first custom printed wraps.
It started off just adding people's names, and then
we were getting a bit adventurous with it and
doing some more elaborate designs.
"The original technology we had did have its
limitations - it could do flat colours and blocky
designs, but nothing too complicated. We've
recently bought a new printer which will do
pretty much the same quality on a wrap as your
inkjet at home does for photo prints - now we
can print full colour photos or whatever else
customers may like:'
The company itself has grown quite
organically, as Adam explains, "It's always been
run around mine and my wife's day jobs. I'm
a director of a marketing company by day, so
Arrow Socks is now mainly now run by my wife,
with me pitching in in the evenings. We've never
had a 'grand plan' for it as such, it's just kind of
grown from an initial idea.
"Mid-way through 2013 we were selling
quite a bit on eBay and we made our own
website, it was starting to get a little more
BOW INTERNATIONAL 55
serious, and I think at that point I came up
with the name Arrow Socks and a loose logo,
the company as it is now was born. At the start
of20 14 Olgi officially took over - she went selfemployed after giving up her job to look after
our daughter and now runs the company from
home; she does most of the hard work:'
Did he anticipate it being as big as it is now
when they started? "No!" he laughs, "It kind of
exploded from The European Archery Festival
last year. It was the first time we'd ever done a
trade show of any description. We put together
a quick stand and from that it launched a fair
bit, and got us out there.
"It also got me back into archery a lot more
heavily, that show, seeing lots of people walking
around with their bows and thinking to myself
"I really should be shooting more!""
We ask about how the name Arrow Socks
came about. "I was looking for a URL for the
website" says Adam, "because I wanted to run our
own webshop. There wasn't a lot available - and
"Arrow Socks" sprang to mind. You know, you
put socks on your arrows like your socks on
your feet, and it all went from there.
The URL was available, we bought
it, I made a logo one lunchtime
which has remained pretty
much
unchanged
ever
since. It's now trademarked
and has become a fairly
recognisable brand:'
The conversation turns
to whether
that kind
of brand recognition
is
important - especially at trade
shows and big events like the
European Archery Festival. "Definitely
- it draws customers in;' he says, "Whether
they recognise the logo and name and know
what it is, or at least if it intrigues them as
to what an 'arrow sock' is, it draws people in
from a marketing point of view, and if they're
previous customers they'll see our logo,
branding and colours and wander over, have
a chat and normally show off their finished
arrows - which is great!"
Talking about creating and building the
business, Adam reveals his prior experience has
been instrumental: "Allof my previous jobs have
been very helpful. I started off as a technical
BOW INTERNATIONAL
illustrator and graphic designer when I left
university having studied Industrial Design &
Technology, before moving to the company's
marketing department. For the last fiveyears I've
been working in marketing and ecommerce, so
the whole process; from designing to creating,
marketing and selling online have been skills
I've acquired over the course of my career - they
have been very useful.
"Pretty much everything we do is done inhouse, all the designs, even our trade stand
was built in our garage; the only things that
get manufactured externally are things like the
slings and our shooting shirts:'
Keeping as much of the production inhouse as possible means the team
can be very flexible, which is
something
Arrow
Socks
customers value. "Weve got
a constant list of custom
stuff that we're working
on," Adam says, "as well
as all the generic stuff that
comes from the website.
It's one of the great things
about our product, you can
customise it, stamp your own
flair and personality on the end of
your arrows. Instead of having boring,
black or silver arrows with fletchings on, you
can really stamp your own identity on them. A
lot of our customers come up with entirely their
own ideas - I've had a couple of customers send
me print-ready files, so we can hit print and ...
done. Some of them send me an idea on the
back of a napkin - one sponsored archer sends
me pencil sketches of what he wants, and we
mock them up and print them out:'
Is there anything particularly tricky they've
been asked to design? "The trickiest thing?"
he asks, "There's a couple - mainly for our
sponsored archers - they tend to be quite
challenging and want something that's a bit off
the wall that no-one else has got. Jodie Grinham's
wraps were quite challenging: the design was
simple enough - a re-work of our popular splat
design - but actually getting the print to work
was the hard bit, due to the colours. She wanted
fluorescent pink with white and lime green,
which don't particularly go together from a
technical/printing point of view, so a lot of time
was spent test printing and changing how we
did them to get the colours the way we wanted
them - striking and vibrant. So I kind of dread
her using them all up and coming back for more
... which she has done several times!
"There is Michael Kells as well - the "Honey
Vipers'; as we call them - he sent us a rough ..,
design of a viper head and a honeycomb effect.
We contour-cut around the head of the viper so
it looks like it's coming out of the wrap, actually
swallowing the arrow. That was quite challenging,
but it turned out really well:'
Having mentioned sponsored archers, Adam
confirms it's something ArrowSocks decided to
get into quite early. "They are a mix of people
who have approached us, and people we've
extended the offer
he explains, "We tend to
look for people that we want to help and that
we think merit a bit of extra help and support.
Most of the big name archers have already got
big sponsors, and were realistic - we can't offer
a new bow or anything like that for example.
to:'
We sponsor a broad range of archers, from
youngsters like Jacob Caine, injured service
men and Invictus archers; Steve Gill and Leigh
Bland and Team GB members hoping to be
in the Rio Olympics. They all have one thing
in common - they are great people who were
delighted to sponsor and help in any way we can
on their chosen archery journeys.
"Sam Baldwin was one of our first sponsored
archers. He started as a customer of ours, moved
on to custom requests and really backed us as
a company so we decided to support him in
return. Sam flies the flag for Arrow Socks, as do
all our other archers. It's nice to help them out,
even if it's just in a small way, and it's also a good
marketing opportunity for us:'
He goes on to say the Arrow Socks shirts tie
into the same marketing and brand ambassador
philosophy. "We lose about a pound on every
single one of those shirts, we charge less than
they cost, so they are just to get the brand and
the marketing out there a bit. They've gone
down really well, we get so many positive
comments. I think there are about 100 of them
in circulation at this point. We currently have
a batch on their way from Canada, including a
one-off mini shirt for our daughter!"
After the dress code rule change, we ask if he
thinks people investing in different shooting
shirts goes back to the idea about people
wanting to make their sport individual to them?
"Yes, archery seems to be going through a
revolution, people are making things look nice,
personalising and adding style to their bow,
their clothing and so on, not just dressing in
green and white any more. Although ironically
our shirts are green and white ...
"I believe the more relaxed atmosphere is
good for the sport as well I think that this and
the London Olympics have improved the sport's
popularity among the younger generation archery is becoming more of a "cool" sport
and more widely available, which can only be
positive for the future:'
Having branched out from plain wraps into
printed and custom designs, Arrow Socks also
sells finger slings, and other accessories, Adam
explains why they decided to head in that
direction: "We'vr; got the finger slings, we now
do recurve strings, XS Wing fletchings and our
own brand beeswax as well. Our ethos is that for
everything we sell, we'd have to use it ourselves
and have faith in those products. Obviously we're
also trying to make a bit of money out of these
things; we are a business, so ifwe see potential in
things, they fit our business model and we have
confidence in the product; we'll stock it. It's nice
to support other small businesses as well - from
all over the world. Pretty much everything
we stock that we don't make is made
by companies like us - small
one or two people startups
focused on quality products.
We now also supply "OEM"
wraps to a couple of other
businesses across Europe.
"The slings came about
by chance. Adrian, who
makes them, also builds
a lot of arrows and started
buying a lot of our wraps. After
a while I contacted him for some
product feedback and as we got talking
he mentioned he made finger slings. I tested
a couple out and they were probably the best
quality slings Id seen, they're not made of
paracord, they're made out of something much
nicer making them comfortable and they don't
bite your fingers - I've been using one ever
since. We put them up for sale and they have
been very well received.
"We're hoping to get more lines of fletchings
in too - they're kind of an obvious addition as
if you're wrapping your arrows you're probably
going to have to re-fletch them, so items such as
fletching glue, fletchings, maybe nocks. Along
with Adrian, were looking into the possibility of
a fully custom-made arrow service. It's a service
we already do (quietly); if people ask us to make
them arrows we'll build them. We've made sets
from beginner Jazz arrows to a set of Carbon
Express Nanos costing nearly £700, using the
most exotic parts the customer could find!"
The company has covered a lot of ground in
a short space of time; what has been the most
surprising thing? "I was surprised by the rapid
success that we've had.,' Adam says, "I wasn't
expecting it to take off as it did - it caught us by
surprise quite early on and we honestly struggled
to cope with it at times. I was the only person
doing it at the start, Olgis thankfully managed
to learn the ropes and pick it up quickly and
now shes there most of the day, trundling
through the orders we get. We are
also looking at hiring someone
else at some point soon which should be a fantastic
job for someone interested
in design and archery.
"It never stops amazing
me, how friendly and
nice archery people are.
It's something that's always
taken me aback - you struggle
to find anyone in the archery
world who you won't get along
with. I don't know why that is, but all
of our customers have been amazing and very
supportive - they're all very reasonable if we
make a mistake (which weve done occasionally,
we're human after all) and our customer service
has hopefully been good enough to get that
sorted out immediately. Testament to this is our
3,000+ 100 per cent positive feedbacks on eBay.
"The value of customer service has been
something weve learnt as well, it's almost
as important as the product. We want our
customers to come out of every experience with
us wanting to come back for more. We use any
negative experience to reinforce the brand by
delivering the best customer service we can and
resolving problems in the best way possible." 0
"