The Daughters Behind TargetTack

September 25 is National Daughters Day. For most families, it means a phone call, an old photo, maybe a text that says more than it looks like it says. For our family, it also means looking around this business and noticing how much of it was built by the women in it.

TargetTack is a veteran-owned, family-operated American company, and that second word carries real weight around here. Julie Berry is the co-founder and co-inventor of TargetTack. The serrated edge that makes the pin hold the way it does started as her idea. She spent her career in information technology, including work supporting the defense industry, and she brought that same problem-solving mind to a frustration Ben had in the backyard with a staple gun and a turkey target.

Our daughters have been part of it from the beginning too. Cortney serves as a brand advisor and has helped shape how TargetTack shows up and speaks to the people we serve. Lauren is a United States Navy veteran who carries on a family tradition of service, and she is at our side at trade shows and events. Ben's sisters, Kim and Lisa, handle sales. His mother Mary, a former U.S. Army labs comptroller, has stuffed more than a few product clamshells at the kitchen table.

"I am the founder on paper," Ben says. "In reality I am surrounded by smart, capable women who tell me when an idea is good and, more importantly, when it is not. Julie invented half of this product. My daughters have made this company better in ways I could not have done on my own. I am grateful for them every day, and today I want to say so out loud."

A sport that has room for everyone

Archery and shooting sports have always been at their best when they are a family activity. Ben got his first bow because his father saw how much he enjoyed being on the range. That is how it usually goes. Someone takes the time, someone makes room, and a kid finds something they will carry for life.

But that only happens if the door is actually open. Too often the barrier is not interest. It is equipment that costs more than a family can spend, a program that does not exist in their town, or a range day that turns into forty minutes of wrestling with tape and staples before anyone gets to draw a bow.

Those are the barriers we can do something about. So we do.

TargetTack is a bronze partner sponsor of the Scholastic 3-D Archery association, and our products were used across every competitive bale at the inaugural S3DA Open. We support NASP (National Archery in the Schools Program), the Boy Scouts, and youth programs and clubs across the country. We donated TargetTacks to a nonprofit that fundraises to buy archery equipment and rent it to families at a price they can afford, the same way kids rent instruments for school band. We are a supporter of the VAST program, Veterans Adaptive Sports and Training, which opens sport to people who might otherwise be told it is not for them.

And we build our products to take friction out of the range day, because friction is its own kind of barrier. A girl who is curious about archery should not lose her first practice session to a staple gun.

What we want for our daughters, and yours

We are not going to pretend we have this all figured out. We are a small family business in Maine with two official employees and a lot of relatives who show up. What we can tell you is what we believe.

We believe a young woman should be able to walk onto any range in this country and be handed a bow, not a look. We believe coaches and club leaders who make that happen are doing some of the most important work in this industry. We believe the fastest way to grow the shooting sports is to make them genuinely welcoming to the people who have not always felt welcome, and then to get out of the way and let them shoot.

Mostly, we believe what any parent believes. That our daughters are capable of more than we can imagine. That they will do it their own way. And that the hours spent side by side at a target, saying almost nothing, are hours that hold a family together.

To our daughters, to the women who built this company, and to every daughter who is going to outshoot her father this fall: happy National Daughters Day. Thank you for making this sport, and this family, what it is.

TargetTack is a veteran-owned, family-operated American company creating practical, USA-made products for archery ranges, firearms ranges, training facilities, and families across the country.