In January 1994, key members of my new staff and I traveled to what was then the AMO Trade Show with a working prototype crossbow in hand and a goal of launching a new crossbow company.

Easton Arrow Distributor George R. Gardner, a key partner, and I walked the show floor looking for retailers I had dealt with when I was the Chief Operating Officer of Horton Crossbows. We succeeded in convincing some of them to meet with us after hours, where we showed them our new crossbow design and gave them the best sales pitch we could muster.

It was a quiet launch, but here we are 17 years later making two successful crossbow brands - TenPoint and Wicked Ridge - for a customer base that consistently tells us we are doing a good job. We now hold 11 patents and have 14 more pending in the U.S. and 3 in Canada. No other crossbow manufacturer comes close to this record of technological achievement.

As I think about how far we have come since then, I believe our success has been built on a foundation of three fundamentals. First, the HuntMaster Advantage crossbow we brought to that first trade show was a technologically advanced product that still measures up to today’s standards, that hunters still use, and that we still stand behind.

Second, we started TenPoint with a clear vision of what we wanted to become. If you look in the "About Us" section of the site, you can read our Corporate Statement. We brought that to the AMO Show as well. Its principles guide us today just as they did back then.

Last, we have grown our companies with a group of people who have worked hard to translate our vision into reality.

Superior product and service, a clear set of guiding principles, and a quality staff. With those fundamentals in place we have managed to build two quality crossbow brands we are proud to put our name on.

We hope you will become as excited about our 2011 lineup as we are to offer it.

Good hunting,

Richard L. Bednar - CEO & Chairman