BEN PEARSON

Ben Pearson made his first bow and began practicing with arrows he had made. He entered the Arkansas State Archery Championship in 1926 and came in second to last. He went back and built better equipment and won the Arkansas State Championship in 1927. He began making archery equipment for other archers in the area. He was successful but realized that making archery equipment by hand was slow and expensive. He wanted to be able to offer high-quality, affordable bows to the masses. He designed machines to mass-produce archery equipment, but the country was in a depression and financing was hard to come by. When Ben Pearson met Carl Haun, an oilman with an interest in archery, Ben got the financing he needed to start Ben Pearson Inc. His first catalog in 1938 featured only arrows, and Ben's initial claim to fame was as an arrow maker. By 1941, however, he was making several bow models. Before 1958, Pearson bows had only one model number. In 1958, bows received names such as Cougar, Javelina, Mustang, and Pinto. In 1961, the high-end Golden Sovereign line was introduced to compete with the elite Palomino in the regular line. By 1963, average daily output was 3,000 bows and 3,000 to 4,000 dozen arrows. In 1967, the Leisure Group acquired Ben Pearson Inc., and the Golden Sovereign line was discontinued.