Archery Products on Etsy

The best places to buy archery products are typically in a bricks and mortar store, followed by the various archery websites which ship such products (including both Amazon and eBay), and then there is one website that few archers ever discuss.

Etsy.

So the problem with Etsy is that the products on there are made by 3rd parties who may have wildly different standards for what they are making and selling.

A quick search on Etsy for "archery" garnered 24,067 results as of January 31st 2020.

By the time this post goes live on February 4th 2020 there will probably be more than that. 24,100? Maybe.

The first thing I did after doing that search was click the option to Sort By Top Customer Reviews.

This way I could see what products are super popular and people really like them.

One of the first items I saw was a two-in-one armguard with bow glove, designed for use with longbows or horsebows (shown below) with 717 reviews. It is not the most highly rated item on there, but I can see why it is ranked so high. And it comes with a bonus shooting tab.

Downside: It was $83 CDN.

 Now you may recall I purchased a similar two-in-one armguard and bow glove last year and did a post about it. I got it off Amazon.ca for a mere $19.99 CDN.

No shooting tab that came with it, but I have been very happy using it and very happy with the quality.

This one looks nice with the black and brown leather layers, but colour is just about aesthetics. I don't see anything that makes it functionally better or worse than the one I purchased from Amazon.

I also saw the following things on Etsy worthy of mention:

• A bow rack / arrow rack for $300 with 90 reviews.
• Bow gloves.
• Finger gloves.
• Tabs.
• Quivers
• Thumbrings for horsebows.
• Replacement nocks.
• Overpriced longbows with a dubious number of 5 star reviews.
• LARP arrows.
• A variety of archery themed shirts with varying numbers of reviews.
• Jewelry.
• Pants.
• An annoying number of ads for firearm holsters, decorative hunting knives, slingshots and other things that are off topic for what I searched for...

By the end I was getting the impression that all of these products have an annoying number of 5 star reviews that they must be faking it. No product ever gets that many 5 star reviews.

So I have to conclude that the reviews must be fake. Completely bogus.

So that armguard above, did it really get 717 reviews? I admit it seems like an awfully big number, but if they are all faking it then perhaps it is really easy for people to fake the reviews.

And then I found out a fault in the reviews system...

The number being shown wasn't for the product. It was for SELLER. The seller had a total of 717 reviews. It isn't for the individual product at all.

When I went back and checked the armguard a second time I saw there was only 53 reviews for that specific armguard.

And everyone, for whatever reason, only seems give a 5 star review.

So it might as well just be a Thumbs Up/Down system.

So now I am skeptical about the whole idea of buying anything off Etsy with respect to archery equipment. I cannot trust the review system whatsoever.

To say nothing of the puffed up prices.

Amazon and eBay both have their faults too, but I think my preference will continue to be to shop at brick and mortar stores. I would have to see something truly special on Etsy to want to buy anything on there. And I don't see anything particularly spectacular.