Basic Beginner Buying Barriers

Opinions on HEMA Gear part 1

HEMA is a growing hobby.  Especially since the pandemic has slowed and clubs around the world have begun to reopen into more normal operation, there are more people participating in historical fencing than ever.  HEMA is also a gear-based hobby, with very few parts of practice not being touched by the ecosystem of manufacturers, resellers, shippers, taxes, and import fees.  I have many opinions around the topic of gear in HEMA, and whenever I try to write about them all at once it becomes less focused and more wandering.  Instead, here I begin some more bite-sized writings about my opinions on the current culture/ecosystem of the equipment necessary to fully practice the hobby I love.

Gear Opinion 1: Beginners have too many barriers to buying

Since starting historical fencing in 2016 in Denver I have seen the same scenario play out over and over again whenever a new student feels that strong magnetism to HEMA and wants to take the plunge into the community.

Welcome to HEMA!  I’m so glad you are loving classes, fencing, swords, and all the nerdiness that goes with it!  Let’s get you sparring more often, with your own gear, your own colors, your own kit!  Here’s our recommended gear list, an order in which we think you should buy the equipment, and a dozen horror stories from clubmates about the gear buying process.

Good fuckin’ luck!

While our hobby has grown and matured over the years, HEMA gear has lagged in maturing along with it.  More students are practicing, more gyms are forming, and more tournaments are being held than ever before, but the availability and accessibility of basic safety equipment in HEMA has not matched pace.  There is still no true off-the-shelf in HEMA, with most gear often being out of stock or made-to-order with little visibility to the buyer that they’re in for a wait. No matter how invested into the hobby you are, all too often the ability to actually get the gear you need is shrouded in mystery, unreliability, and sketchy buying practices.  

A club mate of mine went through the process of being a highly motivated student wanting to take the plunge into longsword fencing just over a year ago, navigating kitting out for the first time, and had this to share with me.

“I was a bit intimidated looking for and buying gear by a couple of factors: 1) I was told to expect 6 month wait times for everything (ridiculous) 2) There is so much variety within the HEMA gear suppliers in terms of quality, at the time clubmates opinions on gear, and in terms of actual safety, and the most important factor...looks. I didn't want to spend 300 bux on something that would take 6 months+ to show up only to have something wrong with it and need to be updated/fixed/returned and if it did how much longer would that take?“

HEMA needs more basic gear that is easier to buy, not more models

Companies like SPES have expanded their offerings from 5-6 jacket models in 2016 to around 20 (if you count different Newton ratings), with AP, AP PRO, AP PRO PLUS, AP LIGHT NG, AP LIGHT PLUS and more muddying up the options, but still struggles to supply a basic model with a low wait time.  Sword makers like SIGI—who have pioneered safer and beloved feders—have gone from 4 to around 14 different swords to buy (not counting long/short/hilt variations) while wait times for these safe training tools have ballooned from 3 months to 6 or more.  We have more new gear makers than ever before, but the “new sword, year wait” structure keeps appearing again and again along with them.  A beginner waiting over half a year or more for a basic set of mask, gloves, jacket, and pants to come together should be unacceptable to a community that wants to attract and keep new students.  Again, from my club mate, reflecting on their experience buying as a beginner:

“Now that I have purchased quite a few things and used them I feel more comfortable in what to look for in a supplier in gear.  And whether or not the stuff I am looking at is quality.  But that is not a skill I think people purchasing protective gear [for the first time] for a high contact sport should have to have.  It should be more clear what the gear is made of, what testing (IF ANY) it has gone through, and what its lifespan can be expected to be.”

Foam kits can often be much faster to compile with GoNow longswords, masks, and gorgets as a great option to both lower initial cost and get fencing quickly.  Although these pieces of gear can carry over into steel work, they aren’t the long wait time items that slow entry into that part of our hobby.  For some fencers (myself included), steel and all the dynamics and feels and excitement that go with it is one of the things that hooked me into doing HEMA over other weapon martial arts.  Foam is great as a training tool, but the ability to fence with steel is why I do HEMA. The opportunities provided by building and using foam kits do not effectively address or remove the barriers to building steel kits, which still remain behind the same barriers so far mentioned. 

Why can’t I buy an off-the-shelf HEMA jacket?

Oftentimes this question is answered in a few ways:

• HEMA is a niche industry of largely handmade goods

• We have small makers with an unreliable customer base requiring make-to-order exclusively

• The extremely understandable impacts of the pandemic and invasion of Ukraine

• And more…

However, even pre-2020 there was little progress towards easier-to-access gear, with makers such as Neyman following the same script of offering countless models and delivering few of them on time.  Wait times have only increased for almost every piece of gear over my fencing career, and the stories around buying HEMA gear are unchanged since I jumped into the HEMA pool 7 years ago. Stories of sketchy transactions through Facebook rather than a storefront, of 6 months waiting for a jacket that arrives in the wrong size, or of swords breaking from a couple months of use¹ after waiting almost a year or more.

What does progress in HEMA gear availability look like, then?  The customer base for all HEMA gear has gotten larger and larger, with waitlists for swords and soft gear getting longer and longer, and more growth likely in the future.  However, gear makers seem to be focusing on making fancy new products rather than streamlining or increasing the production of the products they already have.  Will I ever be able to point a new student to a “SPES AP Basic” model in size medium or a “SIGI Waster” longsword and have them delivered quickly and reliably like any other sport, or will there be just another sword maker pop up promising a fancy new model that won’t see the light of day until I’m a year older?

There have been some positives, however.  Wukusi masks have gone from buying through Facebook and waiting 6 months to having multiple resellers with stock in hand.  Vytis gorgets, one of my favorite innovations in all of recent HEMA, are spreading into more stores and are easier to buy than ever.  HF Armory gloves are now occupying shopping lists such as on Purpleheart Armory, rather than being solely on their niche storefront.  Regenyei swords are finally available through more than one reseller in the US.  These individual changes are themselves great, but none of them significantly improve the current problem of long waits for equipment which could drive an otherwise interested and committed beginner away from the sport altogether.

Conclusion

At present, the inability to easily buy and receive standard HEMA gear in a reasonable timeframe is ridiculous given the growth of our hobby over the last few years.  There will always be more niche parts of HEMA gear like harnessfechten, custom orders for the fanciest bespoke kit, and specialty makers forging a training sword from scratch. But when will a beginner be able to reliably pick a normal jacket, a size, a standard color, and not have to wring their hands over when/if it will arrive?  When can a feder break and it not leave someone without a safe training tool for over half a year?  Is there any hope that HEMA gear will not simply become more in variety, but more in reliability?  What do you think are the barriers towards gear being as easy to order as a MOF jacket? With the waitlists for gear as they currently are, I don’t know if we’ll see change for years to come…

1. Swords breaking isn't a bad thing.  Swords are training tools and should break rather than injure, but not being able to replace a training tool quickly and easily will lead fencers towards stiffer more robust swords more likely to injure than risk being swordless for another year.

Thanks to Ember, Calum, and Renee for their input and proofreading!