Gossip behind the Tent Line : Sanlida Archery
Background: … Sanlida Archery was established in 1998. Their primary focus, according to the company, is creating high-quality archery equipment. In 2022, keen to become better known in the worldwide archery community, Sanlida teamed with World Archery to become the title sponsor of the World Archery Rankings now called the “Sanlida World Archery Rankings“. As a result of this “Diamond Partner” relationship, Sanlida branding is prominently displayed on the world ranking pages, athlete biographies, and social media platforms. This partnership is set to continue until the end of 2024.
Sounds like an ideal archery company … Can you hear that rapidly approaching “but”? … Here it comes! … but, there’s something rotten in the state of Sanlida.
Soyeahso … there have been a few poor reviews about Sanlida kit having subpar components. One notable situation involved a Sanlida X10 Recurve Sight. It was reported that there was play within the sight block, which affected its performance. Foreshadowing bigger issues, it seems sight design elements were copied from the Shibuya Ultima sight but using plastic fittings and that caused problems. Another report was quite harsh on their buttons … but nothing we haven’t heard before when an item isn’t “right”.
Then suddenly, quite openly, archery youtubers, bloggers and podcasters started making comments about how Sanlida products seem to be taking more than just inspiration from other company’s products. Blatant copying was being suggested. Now archers can be terrible gossips, but there seemed to be some substance to the comments. To the point that World Archery was starting to catch some flak about partnering with a company that did not respect intellectual property rights. Most of this is somewhat subjective and proving any of the allegations would be virtually impossible as Sanlida is a Chinese company and China plays very fast and loose with property rights and copywrite. At least, it was subjective .. until now!
Jake Kaminski, professional archery youtuber and two-time Olympic silver medal winner released a video (linked below) making specific allegations about Sanlida using his likeness in their promotional materials without permission. This isn’t the first time this has happened to Jake. Kaminski had already asked them to take down pictures and videos they had of him shooting their equipment as if he was one of their pro-staff. He wasn’t. When asked could they take him on, he said he preferred to remain independent of ties to any single company to maintain objectivity in his reviews. Sanlida apparently complied with his request, just not for very long. The most recent pictures in question were screen captures of videos Jake had made while reviewing Sanlida kit. They did so without permission hoping to increase their kits profile by associating it with Kaminski’s reputation as a fair/independent reviewer and Olympic archer. This is important – Jake is a professional archer. This is a massive intrusion on his business’s product (himself) and on his reputation for impartiality. In addition, there is a suggestion Sanlida may well be doing it to other archers. In his video, Jake stated he will be boycotting Sanlida’s products and urged others to do the same. Something which the majority of the video’s 300+ commenters (as of this articles publication date) agreed with.
This isn’t the first time things like this have happened as IP theft seems to go on a lot in archery. On March 2nd, 2020 Mathews Archery won a lawsuit against Bowtech for infringement of 24 different patents. While the settlement was kept quiet, it was “substantial”. In addition, so much of Bowtech’s kit relied on Mathews patents that Bowtech had to pay Mathews for use of their patents or shutdown. 40 of its Bowtech/Diamond branded bows, the majority of their product line, were affected. The joke going around at the time was … you could choose to shoot a Mathews branded Mathews bow or a Bowtech branded Mathews bow. However, Mathews are not squeaky clean in such things. In 2009 PSE were suing Mathews for copyright infringement related to the PSE X-Force and Mathews Monster bows. And that’s just 2 incidents … there are a lot more. (note: these were all issues with compounds .. nuff said!)
So, returning to this situation. This is a major headache for World Archery. Do they ignore these allegations and tacitly accept one of their partners may be committing IP theft from which they indirectly benefit? .. OR .. Do they terminate the relationship immediately? (possibly with financial penalties) .. OR .. Terminate at the end of the season/contract (accepting the short term bad publicity) and look for a new partner next year giving up on any extension of the partnership? There are no simple choices for WA here – none of them are that great. For Sanlida, here we have allegations of the theft of intellectual property and using an archers likeness without permission which are going to haunt them especially at the archery shop level. How Sanlida responds will probably be the key to its future in the international archery space and ultimately its profitability. Jake has done all he can to protect himself and his reputation. He has raised the issue, got the message out and people have been made aware. Now we have to wait (im)patiently to see what happens.
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It should be noted, that irony is not lost on us. In reporting this IP theft story, we have used a screen capture pic of Jake from his YouTube channel. Hopefully he approves of our article. If not, let us know Jake, as our fanboi editor would definitely be up for being harangued by an Olympic archer.
Jake’s video recounting Sanlida’s actions can be found here and in happier times, his review and coaching YouTube Channel is here
