Gossip behind the Tent Line: Cost of Archery

Buy gold or bitcoin? .. nah, I'm investing in archery kit. (there's £18k in the above picture)

In the last few years, archery kit prices have been sliding alarmingly upwards. Compound seem to be pricing themselves out of the majority of people's pockets. Outside of Hoyt, recurve is resisting with a wide range of price points but relentless price creep is a problem. Barebow is on a popularity uptick simply because its far more affordable. Some consumables (fletches and nocks) have seen price hikes of 80% in the last year. According to some financial analysts, archery equipment prices are rising due to "increased demand from growing participation (target and hunting), inflation and supply chain pressures". What on earth are we, as kit purchasing archers, facing?

Currently the popularity of archery is on one of those increases we see every few years but its especially frisky in North America and Asia-Pacific. For context, the worldwide archery market is valued at $4.21 billion (2024 figures) and is projected to reach $7.15 billion by 2033 (that's an impressive 6.1% compounded annual growth rate). So specifically, in the US alone, there's been a significant (15%) rise in demand for kit. Unfortunately for the rest of us, its a fact of life that North America dominates the market. They account for over 60% of sales by region. Here in the UK there are 45,000 registered (i.e. insured) archers. These numbers are a little anemic when compared to the 33 million archers* in the USA. Therefore, its no surprise the U.S. shows dominate spending and the potential for fast growth. With higher disposable income and a huge pool of archers, its obvious that the US will drive sales and, unfortunately, prices. Why? As per the laws of supply and demand .. too much demand on a limited or static supply pushes up prices.

Inflation ... its the only natural enemy of the archer in the jungle.

The rapid expansion we've listed above has unfortunately encouraged manufacturers, sniffing bigger margins, to invest their R&D in higher-end products which come with premium pricing. In other words the market is increasingly aimed at experienced or long time archers who will pay for the kit they want. (i.e. John, Geo, Oksana, Geo, Euan and Geo. As a compounder, Finlay will always have more money than sense! - Ed) When you tack on high end carbon arrows or advanced accessories, all of which command higher prices, the manufacturers are aggressively driving this rise. Unfortunately, this is a self destructive policy for archery in general as it starts to deprioritise the entry/intermediate level kit desired by the new entry archers. This cuts into the foundation of future sales. Thank the archery gods for Kinetic supplying great beginners kit.

Then there are the inevitable inflationary costs. Archery equipment has been affected by general inflation, increased raw material costs, and logistical challenges such as recent transit issues through the Suez canal, drought related problems at the Panama canal, tariff wars and container ship crew shortages. These pressures push up production and transportation costs which are inevitably passed on to consumers i.e. US!.

It doesn't end even when the kit gets to the UK. Importing archery equipment into the UK is expensive due to high import duties, VAT, and strict customs regulations. These factors combine to significantly increase the final cost for consumers. To give you an idea how this stacks up .. you need to add VAT = 20% and custom duty = 2-10% to the base cost of all the above incremental costs. Small items can be ridiculously expensive to get into the country with duty adding an insane 50 to 80%. Its not helped by the UK having extensive protectionist import policies, especially for niche sporting goods like archery equipment, even though we don't have much of an archery manufacturing industry in the UK to protect.

"archery related" stuff ... for Captain Sausage!

Finally we have postal shipping from store to your front door. This can be expensive due to size and weight, special packaging requirements, insurance for high-value gear and courier costs further inflating the amount we pay on delivery due to the huge spike in demand for mail order deliveries .. looking at you Amazon!

And that's why kit can be so expensive. To be honest, after all that its quite frankly amazing we can still get our archery kit at a reasonable(-ish) price at all .. Lets hope Rachel Reeves never finds out how resistant some of us are to price rises because the backlash from an archery tax would make the Boston Tea Party look like .. well, a tea party! Assuming we were given set up time, toilet breaks, gossip time, freedom of banter and sausages during our insurrection.

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* US Recreational (back garden) Archers: 17.6 million .. Competitive (club) Archers: 5.4 million .. Bowhunters (in the bushes): 9.9 million

Image of price curve curtesy of Copilot
Amazon box image by José Miguel from Pixabay