Who We Are
When you navigated to this page, you came in search of knowing just who was behind the products that you see on this website, or that you may be currently using, or even that you have used in the past. Let us say, first of all, that we are very thankful for YOU, and while an “About Me” page will only give you but so much information, we truly hope that we can know you personally in some way in the future.
There is no specific “Who” that is behind it all. We have hundreds of amazing employees and some specific people that you should know, starting with our Founders, Greg and Margaret Summers. In 1985, Greg and Margaret decided to start a business machining parts as a job shop for many local businesses in the Madison Heights, VA area in effort to better care for their five children and to further their passion to provide the utmost quality to whatever they did. Greg had years and years of experience and was extremely talented in machining, and with some help from his father and brother, who after many years later stepped away, the business had begun and started planting its roots.
In 1995, Greg decided to branch out into an area of his interests, Archery, and that is when T.R.U. Ball® Release was started. AXCEL® Sights and Scopes became part of the picture in 2007, and then AXCEL® Stabilizers and Finger Tabs were added to the product lineup a few years later.
All of Greg and Margaret’s children have worked for the business in some way shape or form. Three of which, Ben Summers, Brian Summers, and Kelly Summers Reyes, remained and served in major roles at the business. Each garnered decades of skills and experience from education as well as working, serving, and building up the business to what it is today. In 2024, Greg took steps to retire, focusing on more designs and engineering work, and ownership transitioned to Ben, Brian, and Kelly, who are all highly passionate about preserving the legacy of the business while providing jobs for hundreds of amazing employees in the heart of Virginia.
But T.R.U. Ball® / AXCEL® Archery would not be a success without incredible people who have devoted significant years of their working lives to making archery better! We are so thankful to Supervisor Archie Towler, Sales and Tournament Representative Randy Summers, and Product Design Engineer Marc Rentz, all of whom retired while working at T.R.U., Inc! We are also thankful to Wayne Stanley, Anthony Kidd, Josh Mays, and Ray Burford, who have worked at the company for 25 years! Tristan Mason and Brent Steele are always at the drawing board creating new products with Greg. Brandon Reyes is a professional archer that manages the domestic shooting staff, hauls the trailer to archery shoots around the U.S., and also tests prototypes utilizing his 40 years of expertise in archery.
We have an incredible team structure that is based on the “farm team” system in Major League baseball. There are countless people who have risen through the ranks from our assembly department and have worked their ways up through learning to be Quality Control Technicians, CNC Machine Operators, CNC Machinists, CNC Setup Machinists, CNC Programmers, on their way to becoming Product Designers. Team members are asked to teach the person who will replace them and learn the position of the person above them so that they can move up as the company grows! We have found that America is full of incredible people with great work ethics who are very trainable and we challenge other companies to make a difference in their communities while supplying quality products to the world, like we have!!!
Over the years, many have asked where the company name comes from or what it means. T.R.U. stands for Tomorrow’s Resources Unlimited. It was abbreviated with T.R.U. with inspiration from a song, “Got To B Tru” by Stephen Curtis Chapman, and the company motto “We Make Archery Better” hinged from a desire to make products that were of True Quality and a True Solution of Innovation in the archery marketplace while also being True about who we are.
The “Ball” part of our name comes from our first caliper jaw designs, which were ball and socket-shaped, like the joint in your shoulder. We were already machining these shapes in our machine shop for a customer that makes robotics that check for flaws in nuclear reactors. And you’ll still see that we use a chrome-plated steel ball inside many of our caliper head releases, keeping the T.R.U. “Ball” name strong!!!
When we were looking for a name for our line of top quality sights, we wanted a name that was extremely positive and could work for both tournament archery and bowhunting. The first part of the brand name “AX”-CEL refers to the multiple AXIS adjustments in tournament sights. And when you combine the full name “AXCEL”, we wanted to be the catalyst for Excellence and we wanted for archers to be able to excel with our products. These positive meanings made “AXCEL” a natural choice for our line of sights, finger tabs, and stabilizers.
The T.R.U. Ball® logo was created as a world on fire, and the wording of “Jesus Christ is the Only Unlimited Resource” was added underneath the logo. Understanding that we can only generate products or produce to quantities that are limited by the resources that we have, we also understand that one day the earth will be destroyed by fire like a “thief in the night” as described in the Bible in 2 Peter 3:10. We know that Jesus Christ gives us the resources that we have that can make the business thrive or fail, and beyond that He is the Only Unlimited Resource that exists perfectly because we will never have enough resources on our own to succeed.
One of the last “Who” that we think you need to know about is Jesus Christ. We recognize what is True in Romans 3:23 that we have all sinned and we can never be good enough. For example, we may not be able to provide the best resources in every situation because we are imperfect, and that imperfection comes with the consequences of death. However, we have been given a perfect, free gift of eternal life and His eternal resources as a result, all because Jesus Christ sacrificed His life for us and then rose again on the third day to prove that He defeated sin and death (Romans 6:23; Romans 6:8-11). Thankfully, He loved us, even as imperfect sinners (Romans 5:8; John 3:16), and it is important for you to know “About Us” that we have each made the decision to accept that Jesus Christ is our Savior and our “Only Unlimited Resource”. We hope that you can come to know Jesus Christ as your “Only Unlimited Resource” too. If you want to know more or have any questions, don’t hesitate to email us at truball@truball.com.
