employees shot in leagues at the archery shop where I worked Packers pro shop

ways to Sunday from the very top to the bottom line. The second world, however, is one we can only feel. It;s the excitement of business, the innovation and often the resourcefulness of it all. Only when the two worlds combine does something truly special happen. "I was going to college at BYU during the day," says John Tilby, "and working in a local archery shop in the evenings and on weekends. One day the archery shop ran out of a popular item--leather wrist slings. Having long been the resourceful type, I told the shop manager not to worry. I went home that night, rounded up some scrap leather and my old leather-working tools from scouts and made up several samples Aaron Rodgers Jersey. The next day I presented those samples to the shop owner. He liked what he saw, bought my samples and committed to more. I went to a Tandy Leather Factory store, bought more leather and better tools and quite suddenly I was in the wrist-sling business. "Within weeks I began thinking about armguards. I bought some heavy-duty Cordura fabric, and designed and managed to sew up an innovative Cordura armguard. The shop owner liked that as well and my product line suddenly doubled. So did my work load. I needed help. 

Tapping the free time, hands and talents of my friend and brother-in-law Ed Brewer, the two of us set up shop making slings and armguards in the tiny kitchen of my apartment. Ed was also attending BYU at the time and majoring in business. I called our enterprise Tilco Archery. The year was 1988." What else did the local archery shops need? The two partners asked the question. and the answer was a quality, affordable polar-fleece fanny pack. "We can do that," the partners said in unison. "We;ll have samples for you in two weeks." "We rushed out and bought polar-fleece material from a local fabric shop," remembers Ed. "Then we pooled our funds and splurged on a used sewing machine, and just like that we were in the pack business." Their next evolutionary step, almost something of an accident, would influence their lives for years to come. John explains. "Every time we cut up a new batch of polar fleece for fanny packs, we ended up with small scraps of the material. Late one night--in between college books, cold pizza and a rattling sewing machine--we got an idea. If we took those small scraps, trimmed them into rectangles two inches wide, put multiple slits in the ends and tied them on a bowstring, we;d have great bowhunting silencers. 

We made up a few, tied them on our own bows and they looked, well, like big hairy tarantulas sitting on the bowstring. The very next day we took sample sets in to the local archery shop where I worked and let the owners, the manager and customers try them. Everyone loved them. They were soft and weatherproof, and they worked very well to dampen noise from string vibration. The name Tarantulas instantly stuck." "At the time," adds Ed, "rubber Catwhiskers and yarn Puffs were the leading bowstring silencers for compound bows. Our Tarantula Fleece Silencers were lighter in weight so they had less effect on bow performance, and yet they seemed just as effective at reducing shot noise, a fact we confirmed with decibel-testing equipment on the BYU campus." Timing is crucial in any business venture, and it seemed that right then the archery industry was looking for a new, faster and more water-repellant bowstring silencer. "Being located in the Salt Lake Valley in Utah, we knew plenty of the key people that worked at both Hoyt and Browning Archery at the time," says John. "Many of those bow-company employees shot in leagues at the archery shop where I worked Packers pro shop. We made sure they all got Tarantula samples. One thing led to another, and in no time Hoyt had generously agreed that if we would supply the Tarantula Silencers, they would send out free samples to every one of their far-flung dealers with their letter of recommendation. That sample program almost instantly put us on the nationwide archery map. And no matter what additional items we were to create in at least the next ten years, it effectively branded us as the Tarantula company." With an expanding, creative, quality product line