As with any business the main goal is to make a profit. to do so you have a lot of costs to cover such as employees salaries, benefits, company insurance, rent/mortgage, utilities, marketing, shipping costs, R&D, etc. As you can see a company needs to have an X amount of cash to just be able to run without even turning a profit. Depending on the size of the company and all the variables one company could sell the same bow for 300 while another might have to sell it for 500. It's simply business and for the most part I do not think companies really want to sell really expensive bows bu they have to make some money so they do have to charge for them. Also remember that 500 dollar price isn't what the company will get back. The dealer gets a cut of that based upon how much he needs to keep his business running also. He dosn't pay "list" price on it so he has a lot of say in the final price and what he needs to pay his bills & cut a profit.

I'll use an example for you. Lets say we have a dozen arrows that retail for $75.00. now lets break it down, of course this is all made up so keep that in mind & is only to show a point.

Materials $1.00 (ok right now you are saying wow a $74.00 profit!)
Labor costs $30 (benefits included) for one hour
R&D $3.00 spread over "x" amount of product over "X" amount of time
Marketing $1.00 spread over "x" amount of product with ongoing costs spread over the life of product.
Packaging .50 per Dz.
Building & utilities $1.50 averaged out over all products
Shipping $1.00 averaged out over all products per year
Insurance $1.00 averaged over all products
Misc. Expenses $1.00 averaged over all products
profit $3.00 per dozen

Total $43.00 just to complete the product & out the door to a disstributor.

distributor gets product for $43.00
Rent/Utlities $1.00
Shipping $1.00
Labor Costs $5.00
Marketing $3.00
Insurance $1.00
Misc. Expenses $4.00
Profit $3.00
Total for product now $61.00

Local Pro Shop gets product for $ 61.00 so he has $14.00 to cover all of his expenses and to somehow fit a profit into that $14.00 just to sell it at list price.

As you can see it can cost a company a lot to just make the product to cover their expenses. each company will have variations with what they pay for what but you get the idea.