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Kyle Stokes of Stokerized

There aren’t a lot of hard and fast rules in business today.

By Bill and Sherry Krenz

So much is changing. But one thing continues to hold true. Exceed your customers’ expectations, and your customers will keep coming back. Kyle Stokes knows about customer expectations. To begin with, Kyle is the founder, owner and operator of a successful archery pro shop—Swatara Creek Outfitters in Annville, Pennsylvania. He launched that operation based on his own expectations of what a full-service archery shop should be. In time, he discovered firsthand not only what consumers required to be happy but also what retailers needed to be successful.

More recently, Kyle has taken those ideas and applied them even further to become the inventor and manufacturer of his own archery product––Stokerized Stabilizers. Archer, retailer and now manufacturer, Kyle Stokes has made a habit of playing to and exceeding his customers’ expectations.

“I didn’t get it at first,” says Kyle. “The truth is I was an underachiever in high school.” That’s a pretty frank statement. But it’s indicative of the sort of introspective and forthright nature that now makes up Kyle Stokes. “I did just enough to get by back then, and my high school grades and learning certainly reflected that. But then something clicked. I got into college only because I applied myself, went to summer school and brought up my grades. In college I became focused and determined to do well. I set my mind toward receiving the best education possible, and I ended up graduating in the top of my class with honors. The revelation I had was that by ratcheting up my own expectations and applying myself, I could achieve so much more.”

Immediately after college, Kyle landed a job teaching elementary school in Maryland. “It’s what I felt I’d always wanted to do. I’d worked on that goal for four long years in college, and I signed on with a great school.”

Life, however, has a way of throwing curveballs.

“Soon after I began teaching, I started having serious hip complications. Eventually I had to have my hip completely replaced, and I was only 27 years old. During my recovery in the hospital I told my wife that I wanted to move back home and open an archery pro shop. I’m sure she thought I was joking. But during my teaching years in Maryland I had also held a part-time job in the archery department of a local sporting goods store and had discovered that my true passion was for archery, tuning bows and helping other archers become successful. I had picked up my first bow when I was about eight, was bowhunting by the time I turned fourteen and was working on my own equipment by eighteen.

“All that recovery-room thinking led to another revelation. I began to see that if I put as much focus, time and effort into an archery pro shop as I had into college and teaching, I could be successful with a retail archery business as well.

“In 2002 we decided to move back to Pennsylvania where we were from and open an archery pro shop. In building up to that decision we first did a lot of market research. We found that anywhere between 5,000 and 7,000 archery tags were being sold in the county where we grew up. We also discovered that there was no major archery pro shop in that immediate vicinity. In all that and more we saw opportunity.”

Kyle and his wife Jennifer both quit their jobs in Maryland, sold their home and moved back to Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. Jennifer landed a job with the Penn State Hershey Medical Center, and they used the proceeds from their Maryland home sale to purchase a piece of commercial property on a heavily traveled local thoroughfare.

“There was a house and a commercial building on the property. We gutted both of those structures and remodeled them for our purposes. The house we would live in. The commercial building we would turn into an archery pro shop.”

Few small businesses become immediately profitable or even self-sustaining. It takes time to establish a loyal customer base and build up sales.

“For the first three years we were back in Pennsylvania, I worked two jobs,” Kyle reveals. “It’s what I needed to do to make things go. I worked a nightshift at a local chemical factory and ran the archery shop during the day. My schedule was brutal. My nightshift ran from 11 at night until 7 in the morning. I’d come home from that job, sleep until about 11:30 and then open the archery shop. Its hours were noon until 8 in the evening.

“Growing up, I’d been in a lot of different archery shops, some quite good and some barely adequate. In our immediate area there really wasn’t another shop with full business hours, a broad equipment selection and the expertise and mindset to professionally service its customers. My vision of Swatara Creek Outfitters was of a six-day-a-week, full-service archery pro shop where an archer would come in and the owner would fuss and tinker and take all the time in the world to get that guy’s bow set up exactly as the owner would want his own hunting bow set up. The all-the-time-in-the-world thing changed pretty quickly, but everything has remained pretty much the same since day one.

“At Swatara Creek Outfitters we have long delivered an extensive selection of the finest archery gear available, competitive pricing and the very best in personal customer and equipment service and expertise. And we still strive to set up every bow as though it were our own.”

Developing and operating a successful retail business teaches you things.

“Maybe the biggest thing I’ve learned over the years with Swatara Creek Outfitters is how to judge a new product,” says Kyle. “New, seemingly exciting products flood the archery marketplace every year. Sorting out what will be good for your customers and your business isn’t always easy. I’ve streamlined the process down to three simple questions. First, does the product work? It must do what it promises. It’s surprising how many new products actually fail this simple test. Second, is the product innovative, distinctive and exciting? Does it have that ‘Wow!’ factor? Is the product itself and even its packaging attention-grabbing? And third, and this is very much from the pro-shop-owner’s perspective, will it make the shop money? Does it offer a reasonable profit margin?

“The really great new products are the ones that work and are exciting and profitable for the shop to stock and sell. Those are the ones that exceed everyone’s expectations.”

Running an archery pro shop is time consuming. Typical pro shop owner/operators will spend 60 to 80 or more hours a week in the shop. Kyle Stokes has done that in Swatara Creek Outfitters for almost a decade. But still, he found time to think about doing more.

“I’ve always maintained lists,” Kyle admits. “Lists of ideas I’ve had for new archery products that I thought could be successful in the archery marketplace. I knew what constituted a great new archery product, and I firmly believed that some of my ideas could create a big splash. My ideas ran the gambit from cable guards and broadheads to sights and arrow rests. But when I looked hard at all of my lists, the first thing that really jumped out at me was an idea I had for a better, more exciting, profitable stabilizer.

“The problem with so many of the archery product categories right now is that they’re pretty crowded. There are all sorts of companies, for example, offering broadheads, sights and arrows rests. But it seemed to me that there were relatively few providing high-quality, top-end stabilizers. In addition, I thought that my idea for translucent acrylic stabilizers was a good one. I firmly believed that such an innovative new stabilizer would deliver genuine benefits, would indeed be unique and different enough to instantly grab people’s attention and could be offered to archery retailers at such a price that they would find it quite profitable.”

When living in Maryland, Kyle had gotten into goose hunting and goose calls in a big way. One day while lying in a goose blind waiting for the flocks to appear, he began wondering why an acrylic goose call sounded so much better than a wood, plastic or metal goose call. The main reason, he theorized, was that the vibration of the reed was dampened so much better by the nature of the acrylic material. The result was a more realistic, throaty tone.

“In 2006 I decided to do some research and what I found was that acrylics were a special group of polymers noted for their transparency, toughness and elasticity. So much so that acrylics were typically used for helicopter windshields, bulletproof glass and NBA backboards. Furthermore, the material was machinable, naturally dampened vibration and had a ridiculously high tensile-strength-to-weight ratio. I imagined that the material would make an extraordinary archery stabilizer.

“I also discovered who makes acrylics in the United States and called them, got even more information on the material and ordered samples of various acrylic rods in different diameters.

“The initial challenge I encountered when crafting my acrylic stabilizer prototypes was how best to attach the stabilizer hardware to the acrylic rod. Conventional wisdom said to simply glue that hardware in place, and I tried that. But, as other stabilizer manufacturers probably already knew, gluing stabilizer components together creates ongoing problems with adhesion and consistency of straightness. I knew I needed a better way in order to meet and even exceed my own expectations and those of what I hoped would be my future stabilizer customers.

“After a lot of trial and error, I struck upon the idea of drilling and tapping the acrylic rods to accept the component sleeve. That inventive approach proved almost foolproof in terms of creating a secure, consistent and straight component-attachment system. It also delivered an additional benefit. When a bow was shot, the excess vibration in the bow ran straight into the stabilizer’s mounting stud which, in my acrylic prototypes, was fully surrounded by the acrylic material. That material and that surrounded attachment system proved exceptional at damping vibration.

“I called the new development the Tri-Lock Assembly Process. By Tri-Locking the components of my new acrylic stabilizers together, I created stronger, more precise stabilizers that dampened shot vibration like never before.

“Bowhunters and target archers alike appreciate a dampened bow. Such a bow is easier and more fun to shoot. Unlike most of the other materials being used for stabilizer rods—usually aluminum or carbon—we found that vibration dampening was greatly enhanced with a solid acrylic rod. Typically, those aluminum and carbon stabilizers that were effective had to fall back on supplemental dampening components to try to squelch shot vibration. In other words, only a small part of those stabilizers actually dampened anything. With my acrylic prototypes, the entire unit, from end to end, was a dampener.”

Kyle filed for patent protection on his innovative stabilizer concepts, continued testing and started work on developing an efficient manufacturing process in what spare space he could find in the back of his archery shop. He also began utilizing his 18 Swatara Creek Outfitters staff shooters to demo the new stabilizers at local, state and national 3D tournaments.

“The initial consumer response was very positive,” recounts Kyle. “The quality and dampening of the new stabilizers was quite evident, and the unique and distinctive look of the semi-transparent rods was a show-stopper.”

Somewhere about that time the “Stokerized” name was coined.

“That name began as almost an inside joke. As we continued testing prototypes with limited local consumer sales, customers began coming into the shop requesting that their bows be retro-fitted with custom-colored strings and cables and also a custom-colored acrylic stabilizer. Guys began referring to that process as getting their bow ‘Stokerized,’ and the name just stuck.

“We continued testing our prototype stabilizers and our manufacturing process for about a year and a half. We tested the stabilizers in cold and heat. We torture tested them for strength. Then, as our confidence grew, we began offering them to local dealers in 2009. In January of 2010 we took a giant leap forward. We attended the ATA Archery Trade Show in Columbus, Ohio, as a manufacturing exhibitor.

“We rented a 10x10-foot booth and prepared as best we could. Having attended the ATA Show as a dealer for years, we knew what we had to do to grab people’s attention and convince them that we were a legitimate manufacturing company with a truly effective, exciting and money-generating new product. We knew that doing all of that was crucial. If a new exhibitor simply sets up a card table and hangs a small banner behind that, it’s pretty difficult to grab people’s attention. We worked hard to show our professionalism at that very first show. We spent a good bit of money on a striking pop-up booth display, had professional catalogs printed, developed a multi-tiered pricing structure, put a nationwide network of rep groups in place and before the show ran preliminary print ads in Inside Archery magazine.

“Dealer reaction at the 2010 ATA Show was fantastic. Lots of dealers had seen our pre-show print ads and were intrigued. That drove traffic to our booth, as did our sales reps. Savvy dealers were quickly able to see that we indeed had something new and innovative that worked, was unique and offered great profit margins.

“We also built up our stabilizer inventory before the show according to reasonable sales projections. Still, we quite frankly underestimated just how strong the demand would quickly become for Stokerized Stabilizers. We shipped most show orders almost immediately but then got swiftly buried by a mountain of reorders. Dealers and consumers everywhere liked our inventive stabilizers.

“To combat that, we quickly remodeled the existing square footage of our two-story building to accommodate all of our Stokerized manufacturing needs. Machined parts are outsourced with reputable firms. Everything else is now done in-house, including cutting, drilling, tapping, laser-etching, assembly, packaging, shipping, invoicing, etc.”

One of the most amazing aspects of the Stokerized Stabilizer offering is the level of customization that is available. Short, hunting-oriented stabilizers are offered in three lengths, two of today’s most popular camo patterns, black, polished and ten stunning semi-transparent colors. Target stabilizers are offered in multiple lengths, camo, black, polished and that same array of arresting semi-transparent colors. By the way, the best-selling of the target colors to date have been black, smoke, blue, red, amber and copper.

“Of course, no dealer can or should stock all of the various Stokerized options,” says Kyle. “Smart dealers are stocking the basic best-sellers and then custom-ordering
anything else from us that a specific customer might request. We then build and get that custom stabilizer to that dealer in just a few days.

“We can also custom laser-etch shop logos and even bow manufacturer’s logos on our stabilizers. Some especially creative Mathews dealers have even ordered unique red-and-Lost-Camo stabilizers to play off of the red-and-camo color scheme of the hot-selling Mathews Z7 bow. That’s the sort of Stokerized customization that we can easily do.”

On top of being great at dampening vibration, stiff, strong and striking, every Stokerized Stabilizer is weight adjustable at both the front and the back end of the stabilizer.

“Weight distribution is important in creating a personalized, preferred feel and balance in any bow, before during and after the shot,” says Kyle. “With a Stokerized Stabilizer an archer can add weight and also easily move that weight around. If he wants more weight in the back, he can do that. If he wants it in the front, that’s easy to do as well. Having the ability to move that weight around allows an archer to achieve the exact balance he wants in his bow. For example, I don’t want my hunting bow to jump out of my hand. Nor do I want it to kick or tip back toward me. And I especially don’t want it to torque left or right at the shot. With even a short Stokerized Stabilizer I can strategically position a reasonable amount of weight around and below the grip on my hunting bow. That truly stabilizes my bow, directing it to tip just a slight bit straight forward at the shot. That’s how I seem to shoot best. Someone else may want the bow to remain perfectly upright at the shot.

“When I’m shooting targets, I reach for a Stokerized Nucleus, a pioneering new stabilizing system that adds stabilizing weight in all four quadrants around the bow rather than just a gigantic amount of weight out in front. The Stokerized Nucleus can be shot alone as the primary stabilizer or in conjunction with a conventional front-mounted stabilizer.”

Where does an archer-turned-dealer-turned-manufacturer go after such success?

Kyle Stokes smiles as he answers. “We’ll continue to be innovative. In fact, for 2011 we’ll be debuting five new additions to the Stokerized lineup. And we already have new products in the works for 2012 and beyond. Our possible-new-product lists go on and on.

“My plan on the manufacturing side is to keep Stokerized out in front. We may get copied, but no one is going to catch us. We’re innovative and creative enough that we’ll keep coming up with new ideas. I’ve got a great staff to ensure that continues to happen, the key members of which are Todd Sheetz, Shawn Lutz, Eric Kauffman and Kirk Stokes.

“In addition, I have no intention of selling or getting rid of the archery pro shop. Swatara Creek Outfitters has a great customer base and cash flow, I enjoy it and it keeps me firmly in touch with the realities of the outdoor marketplace. That, I feel, is imperative.”

Whether you’re a retailer or manufacturer, it really is all about meeting and hopefully exceeding your customers’ expectations.

For more information, log onto stokerized.com or call (717) 867-1782.

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