Good day partner,
In what’s becoming a local Oxer tradition, we wanted to share with you some of the most interesting pieces from our most recent podcast.
On Tuesday we released our episode featuring Claire Williams, the Executive Director of the British Equestrian Trade Association (BETA).
In her role, she works with companies all over the world to help them make the most out of their businesses, and to make sure that such companies are serving the interests of riders around the world.
Claire has a view of supply chains around the equestrian world…quite literally: suppliers to manufacturers, manufacturers, and retailers.
And before working at BETA, she was the head of a sheepskin company in Germany.
Spending pretty much her entire career either working for or with manufacturers, Claire Williams knows more than a thing or two about how your saddle reaches the tack room from conception to sale.
Below you will find the most insightful points from the podcast.
If you want to listen to the whole thing, find it on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Before we get into it, have you signed up to try out Pegasus’s beta?
If not, head to Pegasus, click “get early access,” and sign up today!
Let’s get into it.
The American Equestrian Market Is Attractive to Enter, but Difficult to Succeed In
It’s easy to be allured into entering the American equestrian market.
Consider the statistics.
In Texas alone, there are more than three-quarters of a million horses, and that’s just one state—you still have 49 more. The American horse economy is so large that it employs almost one million people.
To put that in perspective, if all employees in America’s horse economy were to fit in one city, it would be the sixth-largest city in the United Kingdom.
Inside of Europe, the UK is the largest economy outside of Germany.
Yet the United Kingdom is still a tiny market compared to the United States.
The equestrian economy in the UK is worth about $9.87 billion (£8 billion).
Whereas in the US, the equestrian market adds “approximately $50 billion in direct economic impact to the U.S. economy, and has a direct employment impact of 988,394 jobs.”
It’s easy to understand, then, why any company would want to enter the American market.
But the challenge that Claire outlined was that entering the American market is a daunting prospect for many companies.
As Claire said, “I think a lot of people desperately want to get into it because of its size, and that’s sometimes a risk. Because we always say, the US market is not one market, it’s 50.
“And because every state has its own, especially in some of the product sectors, like in feed, it’s really complicated.
“So quite young companies always say, we want to get into the American market. And we’ll say, just think about your own market. Make certain you’ve got a good domestic market. Then maybe look at Europe and then go further afield. Because it’s too easy to do, too much too soon. And that’s why some of our bigger members…got into the US market is by establishing offices there.
“They get that base and then grow from there…they’ve only really managed to succeed by having that base in the States. It’s really difficult otherwise.
“Here you can quite successfully be a British company and export into Europe without necessarily having to have the office there.”
Horse Racing Is Not as Big as You Think
Dare we may say that horse racing isn’t as big as you think it is.
In previous Oxer editions, we have addressed the problem that other horse sports face: they have to eat the burden of bad news from the racing industry.
It wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that the general public knows horse racing more than any other horse sport.
So when something bad happens in the horse racing industry, it gives a bad look to the rest of equestrian.
Let’s dispel the notion that horse racing is as big as much of the public would think.
It is true that horse racing is surely the biggest part of the UK horse sports market, a £3 billion slice in an £8 billion pie.
Despite it being the largest financial part of the UK horse sports market, the actual population of sport horses designated for racing is actually very low.
“We estimate the equine population to be 720,000. So of that 720,000 horses, only 15,000 are actual race horses.”
It’s evident that the level of media coverage horse racing gets, compared to other horse sports, is a reason why many think it’s the biggest horse sport.
It’s certainly not the biggest when it comes to the number of horses participating.
🐴 This Week’s Final Foals
🇺🇸 The American Horse Council still has a week left of collecting data for its next economic impact study. Take the Horse Owner Survey or Horse Industry Supplier Survey today!
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Thanks to Claire Williams for being a wonderful guest and we hope you enjoyed this short version of the podcast.
If you want to listen to the rest of the episode, find it on Spotify, Apple, or any podcast platform.
Clean your tack,
The Oxer by Pegasus
Note: All photos of Claire Williams, including the one in our cover photo, were provided by her.
