History

In 1897,  the Braeckeveldt  family in the town of Izegem in West-Flanders, Belgium, started to produce bows and arrows.

The third generation of the family decided in 1967 to divide the manufacture of bows and of arrows.  Arrows continued to be manufactured under the brand name Theobra, headed by Erwin Braeckeveldt, while his brother Hendrik retained the bows under his name.  If was from that pint that they bows were named Greenhorn although people often still refer in common parlance to a Braeckeveldt instead of a Greenhorn.

The end of the 60s was the era of the monoblok , a model in which the central section consisted of a complete piece of wood, or layers glued together; limbs, also integrated into the central section, took the form they still have today.  The main components were laminated wood and fibre. Models such as the Cobra and Phoenix still capture the imagination of older archers, and have become collectors' items.

At the beginning of the 70s, the three section bow appeared. Globalisation of archery prompted a search for a more easily transportable bow than the single section bow.  Greenhorn's first three section bow, the Rus Sidoruk, immediately became a world champion when it was produced in 1973. Since then, we have played a part in various world titles and world records.

In 1980, we discovered the traction adjustable bow.  The benefit of this was that bows were more individually adjustable. It was also around this time that the compound bow was launched.  In Belgium in particular, this bow quickly became enormously popular.  Up until 1994, the central sections were still made of magnesium.  It's true that the design was continually being optimised, however. This took place in collaboration with the university of Ghent. The expertise gleaned from these experiments was incorporated in 1994 into our first milled bows which are now manufactured from an aluminium alloy. By now, layers of carbon had also been added to the limbs, and fibre layer was also available in ceramic.

In 1997, Hendrik Braeckeveldt decided to step back and sold his company to Francis Notenboom. He had already developed the Victory, Emery and Scopus models.

In 2002, production of the bows was taken over by Greenhorn Archery bvba. The Sirius recurve riser and the Cayenne compound were the next top models in the Greenhorn range. The Passion, which can be used as both a recurve and a compound, was then created to replace the Victory.

In 2008, production of Greenhorn Archery bvba bows and limbs was taken over by Greenhorn Archery NV. The company received the financial means to be able to develop and market new products.

Greenhorn Archery BVBA was restructured to form a retail company and a new commercial name was  launched: E-Cool Archery. The first shop opened in Kalmthout in September 2008 followed by a second in November 2008.