Bowhunt America

Article Topics

APA Innovations

Outstanding Products & Service

By Bill & Sherry Krenz

Business, it is said, is the science of service. He profits most who serves best. What that means in the real world is that solid businesses aren’t built and maintained by getting the better of someone else. They prosper by providing goods and/or services that are worth more to their customers than the amount those customers pay for those things. That’s how businesses get ahead.

“When I was very young,” says APA Innovations CEO Nibal Achkar, “I saw just how important customer service and good food was in the restaurants my family owned. I saw how difficult it was to gain new customers and yet how easy it was to lose them. Only if we offered the sort of food our customers enjoyed and the sort of service they expected did we thrive and grow. That revelation made a huge impression on me.”

Nibal Achkar immigrated to Canada with his family from Lebanon when he was only eight years old. His industrious family, which had been educators in Lebanon, turned to business in their new country, focusing on a series of widespread restaurants. By age ten, Nibal was helping in those restaurants.

“About that same time, I also discovered that I was fascinated by archery,” says Nibal. “My first bows were willow switches and string, although by age ten I had made a more lasting bow from the lower, stiffer section of an old fiberglass fishing rod. No one else in my family was involved in archery, but something about bows and arrows attracted me. Oddly enough, my first name, Nibal, means arrow in Arabic.

“One of the things I really enjoyed was simply seeing how far I could shoot an arrow. I was forever launching arrows in some open field to see how far those arrows would go.”

As the years progressed, Nibal’s interest in archery grew.

“I began bowhunting and also shot a bit competitively,” Nibal reveals. “The area where we live in Saskatchewan offers excellent deer hunting, for both mule deer and very big whitetails. I had the pleasure of doing some of the taxidermy work on the famous Hanson Buck (the world record typical whitetail), which was taken only ten minutes from here. And within a two-hour drive we’re also in the midst of good elk, moose and bear country.

“Having always been the sort of person that would pick something up, hold it in my hand and then try to figure out how to make that item better, I quickly became the sort of archer that went through a lot of bows. Every year I upgraded to a new model. That eventually provided me with a good understanding of what was available in the way of archery equipment. It also taught me a great deal about setting up, tuning and getting the best performance out of a wide variety of bows.

“Eventually I began using that knowledge to help friends set up and tune their bows. That snowballed to the point where I was helping friends of friends, and eventually I came to the realization that there was a real demand in our area for someone who could do this work and provide this service.”

In 1999, Nibal Achkar opened a small part-time archery shop in his home in Biggar, Saskatchewan. The idea behind the dealership was to have access to factory parts for service work and a small selection of chosen bows and accessories to recommend to customers. Expert service and the right gear was the credo.

“Within two years, however, my sideline was taking over our house and my time,” Nibal remembers. “I had reached the point where I had to make a decision––do I cut back or do I jump into it full time and move the business out of the house?

“Although I did have some hesitation about opening a full-scale archery pro shop, with the support and encouragement of my wife Caty, the decision was made to go forward. In 2001 we erected a building, brought in more equipment, offered even more services and opened Al’s Precision Archery for full-time business. Al is what many of my customers called me.

“Al’s Precision Archery was an archery-only pro shop offering the highest-quality gear and expertise services. We also provided an indoor range as well as a virtual hunting simulator. Our bow lines included Mathews, Hoyt, BowTech, PSE and Martin.

“Biggar, Saskatchewan, is a small town. Its population at that time was less than 3,000 people. I knew that to be successful we would have to draw archery customers from as far away as possible, and that meant offering what wasn’t readily available everywhere else. We really built that business on the customer service aspect. Yes, we had the right equipment, and that was crucial as well. But it was the expert archery service that attracted customers from hours away, endeared them to us and kept them and their friends coming back time and time again. The formula was simple. We had to be the best.”

About the same time that Nibal opened Al’s Precision Archery he was also making a change in his own shooting style. That change led to an even greater involvement in the archery industry.

“I had long been a finger shooter,” Nibal relates. “I liked shooting with my fingers, but I could see the writing on the wall. The vast majority of my customers shot their bows with a release, and I needed to do the same.

“As I made the switch from fingers to release, one of the things I discovered was that the release-oriented arrow rests of the day were troublesome, particularly in hunting situations. At the time, dual-prong rests were the most popular, but it was always a challenge to keep your hunting arrow on those rests while in a stand or when stalking. There had to be a better way.

“I was actually trying to modify an existing arrow holder when I came up with an idea for a much improved arrow rest. Rather than delicately prop the arrow up from below, why not support it more fully from above? In that moment, the overhead arrow-rest concept was born, and in no time I created a prototype of the rest we came to call the Ultimate Arrow Rest.

“The Ultimate Arrow Rest fully enclosed the arrow so that there was no possible way it could become dislodged or fall from the rest. It also offered minimal fletch contact for excellent arrow flight, proved to be pinpoint accurate and had no moving parts so it was magnificently reliable.”

Quite suddenly Al’s Precision Archery was flirting with the idea of also becoming an arrow-rest manufacturer. But to keep the pro shop separate from the manufacturing business, Nibal decided to form a new, additional company called APA Innovations, the “APA” moniker coming from the archery shop.

“To start the manufacturing operation on the right foot,” says Nibal, “I sought out the help of a number of local and provincial business-development firms. As we fleshed out APA Innovations, we worked closely with Bear Hill Development, Midsask REDA and Meridian Community Futures Development Corporation to help us orchestrate our initial manufacturing-business plans and financing. All three of those firms proved invaluable in helping us properly launch our new company.”

A big part of that launch was exhibiting for the very first time at the big AMO Trade Show in Nashville, Tennessee, in January of 2002.

“We had never done a trade show before, but we knew that show was where dealers went to see and buy new archery products. It proved a huge effort for us to make it to that show. I remember we worked right up to the last minute to prepare prototypes of our arrow rest for display.

“Fortunately, the APA Ultimate Arrow Rest received a great reception at the show. People were astonished. Many dealers brought other dealers to our booth to show them our revolutionary new arrow rest. Most were simply amazed by how simple and effective our new concept was. And just like that we were in the archery-equipment manufacturing business.”

In the next couple of years, Nibal Achkar and APA Innovations continued to improve and expand their arrow-rest lineup. They improved the cosmetics of the rests, covered the cradle with a rubber coating to silence the rest, added a micro-adjustable version and developed different styles of the Ultimate Rest for release shooters, fingers shooters and even for young and beginning archers. By 2004 the arrow-rest business was booming.

“Bowhunters loved the simplicity, durability and arrow security that the APA Ultimate Arrow Rests provided. In 2004 we also introduced our Safari Series of Ultimate Rests as well as the drop-away-style APA Twister Rest. In addition, we introduced a totally unique new product called the APA Bow Carrying Handle.

“Let’s face it––bows are typically awkward to carry for hours in the field. That’s because they were meant to shoot well and not necessarily carry well. Most archers resort to one of two carry methods. They either grab the bow by the bowstring or they grab the bow by its grip. Neither works well for long. The former has the bow swinging annoyingly from side to side. The latter just isn’t comfortable. In 2004 we solved the carry problem by introducing a bolt-on Bow Carrying Handle. The APA Carrying Handle projected out in front of the bow slightly and made it very easy for any archer to comfortably carry any bow for hours on end.”

That same year, APA Innovations qualified for the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce ABEX Awards. The ABEX (Achieving Business Excellence) Awards were created to honor outstanding achievements in business excellence. APA Innovations placed in the top five honorees in the province.

Outstanding products and service remained the watch-words at APA Innovations, but gradually a new revelation began to dawn.

“By 2005 we had concluded that accessories alone were not enough to sustain the sort of growth we envisioned for our company,” Nibal explains. “We had to do more. Our first attempt to further expand our business scope was to offer to license some of our innovations to a number of the most respected and successful bow companies. That proved generally unsuccessful. So we simply decided to create our own bow line to exploit our ideas on how bows could be made better.

“As that plan moved forward we focused on the idea that to be successful in the bow industry, we would have to be truly unique. Otherwise it would be a very tough road as the bow marketplace was highly competitive and had been so for decades. In other words, APA bows would have to stand out in the crowd both in terms of cosmetics and performance.

“We began designing bows by looking closely at the riser and figuring out how we could make that key component much more user-friendly. To do that, we incorporated the distinctive APA carrying-handle concept directly into the riser. That Bow Carrying System delivered three distinct advantages. First, it once and for all created a comfortable carrying handle for the bow. That riser-integrated handle perfectly balanced and controlled the bow for extended carry. It also had the effect of making the bow feel almost half of its actual mass weight. Second, the integrated carrying handle helped stiffen the riser, allowing us to go with a thinner, more torque-free grip, and at the same time helped further stabilize the riser for improved shooting performance and a more dampened shot. And lastly, the riser-integrated carrying handle became an instant APA identifier for our bows. Nothing else looks like an APA riser.

“I suppose we could have stopped there, but we didn’t. Below the riser’s grip we created what we called the APA Utility Tool Center. That unique Tool Center includes a nock-turning tool, a broadhead wrench and a carbide sharpener built directly into the bow. As a result, with an APA bow there is no need in the field or at the range to dig through your tackle box or pack to find those commonly used tools. With an APA bow, they rest conveniently right at your fingertips.”

Late in 2005 APA Innovations introduced their very first bows, the APA Black Mamba and the APA Taipan. Both bows featured the unique APA riser with Carrying Handle System and Utility Tool Center. The dual-cam APA Black Mamba was touted as the world’s fastest bow. The single-cam APA Taipan was designed for more moderate performance. Those two very distinctive and user-friendly new bows quickly put APA Innovations on the bow map.

Within a year APA Innovations had expanded its unique bow lineup to six models.

“We did that based on the outstanding initial success of the Black Mamba and the Taipan, but also to better satisfy the needs of different types of archers. Some want faster bows. Some want longer axle-to-axle lengths. Some want an easy-drawing, quieter bow. And the only way to achieve all that and to reach out to and satisfy even more customers was to intelligently expand the line.”

Enjoy this article? Share it!