Jay McAninch CEO of ATA Create unity within our industry

I appreciate the opportunity to give people some background.  Jay McAninch CEO of ATA Create unity within our industry. Trade associations are a different creature, different than a lot of our bowhunters and archers are familiar with because most of them belong to groups that are non-profits.  But there are groups that are aligned with memberships like folks who shoot target archery, folks who hunt whitetails in all kinds of different ways, folks who may just like a particular kind of equipment. We have all those groups to which members belong.  Jay McAninch CEO of ATA Create unity within our industry

The difference in a trade association, which is real important to remember, businesses belong to trade associations, not individuals. So we have retailers, manufacturers, distributors, all the different facets of the industry including press and media.  Jay McAninch CEO of ATA - create unity within our industry

We needed to build our organization from the inside out

I gave you that background because when I came, one of the things that I felt was really important is that we needed to build our organization from the inside out. And by that I mean we needed first to aggregate all of the companies in the industry so that they not only worked together but got along and had a shared vision and shared mission that they wanted to accomplish. We did a strategic planning effort in 2001, and we pursued that really strongly for the first half dozen or so years, 2006, '07, '08, through that period. And what we really then was build the show, build the organization, try to create unity among the companies in the industry folks so that we were all pulling in the same direction.

The next step we got to sort of a second tier was how do we get grow archery and bowhunting in a very methodical, very practical but long-term way so that we had real results. Being a mile wide and an inch deep is fun because you have a lot of context, but you're not sinking tap roots and you're not really getting things done. I've been in this business now just 40 years now this...a year or so ago, and I have not seen the kind of numbers increase over my career. And I take some responsibility for that.

So one of the things we did, Bruce, was we started looking at how do we create funding for programs that have at least a three to five year plan? How do we create infrastructure out there? And here's what I mean by that. If we're gonna say that a state agency or a school or a parks and rec program is truly going to truly help people get into an activity, then you have to have a few things to make that happen. You have to have staff. You have to have a budget. And you have to have a program that you're gonna implement. It's not different than in manufacturing. You can't say you're gonna manufacture a product if you don't' have a facility, if you don't have people working for you, if you don't have a budget, and you don't have raw materials. So that was why we started a fairly nationwide, strong nationwide effort to build the kind of programs, train the kind of people, and make sure the kind of staff were in place to get things done.

together to try to create a really strong foundation.

So that was our second phase and then our third phase was really trying to put all those pieces together to try to create a really strong foundation. Underneath, all of archery and bowhunting could not only have fun but could grow and flourish and really get to the point where we are today. And I like to think that, today, when you look around, all the folks that are out there like you and many others in the media are seeing a breadth and depth to archery bowhunting that we haven't seen before. And I think that a lot of that has come from an industry that has been united but quietly in the background providing funding,