Rodeo and Summer Mean Retail Boost

For some Western retailers, the summer rodeo season is as big if not bigger than the holiday shopping season. Even in towns that you wouldn't necessarily view as having a ton of Western tradition, rodeo thrives. Not only does it mean business for equine retailers, but the rest of the town doesn't do too bad either. After all, cowboys have to eat and drink, too!

July 4 is often called the "cowboy's Christmas." If you schedule things right, you can make up to a dozen rodeo appearances in four days, which raises your chances of winning considerably. For equine retailers, it means customers who probably don't darken their door any other time of the year come in and purchase hats and shirts and boots.

Hopefully, retailers are doing their best to not only sell these customers on rodeo duds, but also on the benefits of shopping in their stores year-round. A phrase you often hear new customers in a Western store utter is this: "I didn't know you had these."

Western apparel has become more than just choosing a felt or a straw hat. There is a bountiful number of selections. Today's Western store is more than just pearl button snap front shirts your grandfather used to wear. The key is to do a better job of letting people know about what's out there.

That might help stem the tide of a disturbing trend that has been evident the past few years. Rodeo fans coming to the rodeo in cutoffs and sneakers, tank tops and "farmer" hats. Now, there's nothing wrong with that and those marginal rodeo fans should be welcomed with open arms because there is great potential with them to get them hooked further into the industry.

But the idea is to give consumers an excuse to try Western, and rodeos for many years filled the bill. Today, there's less emphasis on coming to a rodeo dressed properly and that can only result in less interest in Western products as a category -- which is not good for the equine trade industry.

The Western retailers who "get it" go to great lengths to put rodeo-goers into the correct attire and have them leaving the store with the idea that they might be back one day soon, long before the next rodeo is scheduled.

If you're headed out to a rodeo this holiday weekend, be sure you're a good model for the Western sector of our industry. Wear your hat with pride and polish up those boots. That's the way it should be.

Most Patriotic of Holidays

In just a couple of days, folks all over the United States will celebrate Independence Day. Communities all over the country will hold parades, festivals and fireworks displays to show their patriotism.

Horses will be a big part of the parades in many cases. How many of you saw your first horses being ridden in a parade?

Unfortunately, there's an undertone developing that's rather unsettling when it comes to horses and parades. A number of communities have told riding groups to stay home this year, for a variety of reasons.

First among them is my favorite: liability. This is a nonstarter. Most states have equine laws and even the worst them protects the presence of horses in parades. It's amazing how many times the word "liability" and "horses" are used in the same sentence around the country. Most of the time, the true liability is highly exaggerated.

Of course, horses are flight animals and many of them weigh well over 1,000 pounds so the potential is there for a misstep, but no more so than anything else that appears in a parade.

Another common complaint is the fact that horses leave manure behind on the streets. Now there's a classic. Yes, since the horse was first created, it's been leaving its calling card wherever it walks. My horse, in particular, is always careful never to dump UNLESS we're in the indoor arena where I have to climb out of the saddle and scoop it up! When we're in the great outdoors, he wouldn't even think of pooping!

Well, most mounted groups will supply some sort of pick-up service if requested, so that doesn't seem like too much of an insurmountable issue.

Perhaps my favorite is the one that bans horses from parades because it's animal abuse to ride a horse in a parade. Now that's really out in left field. As mentioned previously, horses are big and powerful animals and they ultimately decide whether they want to be in a parade or not. If a horse decides "no," it would take an army to change his mind.

Well-trained horses with quality riders work as a team. There's no abuse involved and in many respects, a lot of horses enjoy parades. My horse views every living soul as a potential source for a treat so you can imagine his response to being in a parade. He gets more excited than the kids scooping up the candy along the curb.

Wherever you live, whatever July 4 holiday parade you attend or take part in, I hope your community welcomes horses with open arms. There's nothing like the bond created between equine and humans to make the world a better place.

Market Backlash Continuing

Everyone who follows the equine trade industry is aware of what's happening with the predominantly East Coast, predominantly English trade shows. It all began when Stanley Expos took the KOP market to Atlantic City. Then one of Stanley's top people, Kent Hopper, split off on his own and announced four new markets. On top of that, the American Equestrian Trade Association was formed to sanction a trade show of its own. Meanwhile, long-standing trade shows in other cities across the eastern part of the United States have been thrown into uncertainty.

When this all began to happen last winter, we picked up on a LOT of discontent with all the trade show organizers on the part of the manufacturers and retailers. Some were downright nasty. Many pledged they would never attend another trade show again.

Initially, I figured it was a temporary backlash and eventually everyone would come around to sorting things out. Some markets would survive and others would not.

But something strange is happening. The anger isn't going away. In fact, it's getting worse by the week. There are about five of us who regularly answer phones from retailers and manufacturers in our industry and recently when we put our heads together, we discovered that nearly everyone who calls expresses some amount of anger -- from red-faced yelling to quiet contempt) for the entire trade show process and what's happened in the industry.

The number of people who say they will simply stay home because they don't know what to do is also growing. Some very large companies who are trade show veterans will not show their faces this August. An even larger cadre of retailers have completely given up and are concentrating on working harder with reps and pursuing product lines online.

From our end of it, I think we have concluded that what has happened has not been good for the industry as a whole and if we're gauging the mood properly, someone is going to suffer -- maybe a lot of someones. Frankly, I'm not ready to write off trade shows and markets until we get through August. I expect August to bring about a lot of sorting out for this issue. Without support from retailers and manufacturers, the trade show organizers aren't going to be able to continue. It's tough to have a trade show with no exhibitors and no retailers.

The best face we can put on the entire situation is that once it all settles out, a lesson will have been learned. Actually several lessons. The first one being: Don't take your customers for granted.

Here's Jack!

Several of you have asked, so here are some recent pictures of my Quarter Horse Jack. You'd never guess he's 20 years old! He has so much natural oil in his coat it's hard to believe. I've never had to use a conditioner of any sort on him, just brush him and the oils come to the surface.

I got Jack in a trade a couple years back. I had "inherited" (read: someone didn't pay her training bill) a gumpy older mare who I just couldn't in all good standing sell to anyone because of her personality. So I thought at least I could trade her for something. I ran a couple ads and came up with a family looking for a dead-broke horse for their youngsters to participate in kid shows on. The family met and instantly fell in love with that horrible old mare(!) and they offered me Jack.

I was told he had been a top-level barrel horse most of his life and liked to go. That was an understatement. It took me a year to get a canter out of him. He had two speeds. Stop and haul butt. The first time I actually got him into a nice collected canter, it was like he had discovered a new world.

Other than having to conquer his need for speed, Jack is the perfect horse. He had really great ground training and is very tuned in when you're working around him. For instance, if he has to shoo a fly away from his foot and the fly happens to be on a foot on a side you're standing, he brings a foot from the other side over and deftly "kicks" the fly away, rather than stomping his foot and risking coming in contact with your foot. I've always wondered if someone trained him to do that or if he just picked it up on his own.

He's an extremely sensitive horse and really the first one like him I've ever had. Every time I've had difficulty teaching him something, the trainers I've worked with have said, "you're trying too hard ... just ask." Sure enough. You don't even really need cues to put him through his paces. Bring your right knee in and he spins to the left. Bring your left knee in and he spins to the right. The smallest cluck sends him into a canter and his trot is a neat little Western pleasure gait.

He's quite a character, though. Nothing pleases him more than to stir up trouble in the gelding pen, biting his buddies on the butt, chasing them around on the end of his nose. Then when everyone is rearranged to his liking, he mellows out and is everyone's friend.

Jack didn't quite thin out as much this summer as he has in the past. He's an extremely easy keeper and eats carrots and apples by the bushel. He knows how to make eight neat bites out an apple!

Besides being just an all-around good horse, he's also a good friend. He never interrupts when I'm talking. He has an amazing capacity to listen and empathize and he sometimes seems more like a human than a horse.

So in future blogs when I refer to Jack, you'll have a better idea who he is and what he looks like.

I'm Back!

Having been working on assignments out of the office last week, and with the technical problems Blogger.com has been experiencing, I went an entire week without writing anything for this feature. It wasn't that I didn't have a lot to say, of course, but time and technical conditions being what they were, it just didn't happen.

I spent the week on the West Coast, mostly in Washington and Oregon, preparing stories for coming editions. It rained every day I was there, of course. While that part of the world seems almost ideal as a place to live, learning to cope with mildew under my fingernails would be a bit difficult for me.

I spent time with two top retailers in our industry. You'll read more about their escapades in future editions of Tack 'n Togs Magazine.

We often speak of "Minnesota Nice," but the folks in Oregon have it all over on us when it comes to the nice department. You meet people there and 10 minutes later it's like you've known them all your life. That hardly ever happens in Minnesota, where everyone who hasn't known you for at least 20 years still gives you a suspicious look upon meeting. As Garrison Keillor is fond of saying, "We're a dark people."

Nothing dark about the people in Oregon, even if the skies are often dark and rain is falling out of the clouds.

The scenery is also unbeatable, as well as the fresh air.

Having spent a good deal of time on I-5 driving between Portland and Seattle, I will have to say that someone is asleep at the switch when it comes to traffic planning and road conditions. The congestion is horrible. I hadn't built in sufficient time for travel for any of my adventures, which means running late and constantly having to call and apologize to people with whom you have appointments.

Mind you, I just spent a week on the East Coast not too long ago and I thought their traffic was the worst. It's about the same. You just don't think of the Northwest as the land of traffic jams.

As always, after a week on the road, it was good to get back to hearth and home. I finally got a chance to take some photos of my Quarter Horse, Jack. I'll post a couple over the next several days.

My Kingdom for an Educated Rider

Each morning when I drive to work, it strikes me that the price of gasoline has done one thing to promote the health of Americans. I encounter dozens of individuals riding their bikes to work. A year ago, the count was zero.

In addition to being an avid rider, I always am a bike rider. My wife and I have enjoyed mountain biking in several parts of the country, as well as on the trails at home.

Like riding a horse, there are certain things you have to learn to be successful at bicycle riding. Too often in the horse riding world, we see situations that are unsafe. The horse doesn't fit the rider (both in temperment and size). The equipment the rider is using doesn't fit or isn't the correct equipment for the horse. The stirrups are adjusted two holes to long or four holes too short. Sometimes, we get to thinking that only people who ride horses check their brains at the door.

Not so.

Bicycle riders are nearly as clueless, it seems. First, you can't just hop your butt on any old bike and ride down the road. Well, let me correct that to say you CAN, but you won't be doing it for long. Bicycles comes in various frame sizes and you need one that fits your frame. A short person on a large-framed bicycle is a hazard to himself and others.

Second, proper adjustment of a bicycle seat is equally as important as proper stirrup adjustment on a horse. This morning, I saw this poor bike rider struggling to get up a significant hill near our offices with his knees come up and nearly striking him in the chin with each round of the pedals. Not only is it uncomfortable, but you could see the ligaments around his knee straining and popping. I guarantee you, he'll be sore tomorrow ... and he'll probably blame the bicycle and the person who sold him the bicycle.

Now I'm not one of those that advocates that in order to ride a bike you have to own every piece of equipment from the titanium helmet down to the shoes specially designed for your pedals. I'm not even that way about horseback riding, although I do have an obvious bias for products in the industry. But the basics are the basics.

The biggest problem with uninformed users of anything -- horses or bicycles or cars -- is that they make life miserable for the rest of us, and for themselves. A person riding a bike that is two frame sizes too small with seat adjusted too low can easily lose control and wind up in front of your vehicle. A person riding a horse in a saddle that's too small or with the improper stirrup length can easily be catapulted to the ground, thus pushing the stereotype that "horses are dangerous" even further into the psyche of the uninformed.

They key in all of these situations is education. You should be riding a bike on public streets without some sort of time spent with an expert picking out the right bike, making sure it's adjusted properly and you have the right safety equipment to make it a safe ride. Sames goes for horses. I know bike shops do a great job with education. I think most equine retailers do a good job of educating first-time riders.

Now we just have to convince the consuming public that they don't know it all and actually need to avail themselves of the education offered.

Get Out Your Lamp

Half of the shrinkage (unaccounted for products) retailers experience usually left the building through the hands of an employee. That's a statistic that was revealed at the National Retail Federation's Loss Prevent Conference this morning. We'll share more of the survey data on our Web site later this week.

Given that statistic, hiring the right person (in other words, an honest person) is a key to reducing losses. So how do you go about that?

I suppose you could replicate the efforts of Diogenes but you might end up in an asylum somewhere. More practical are any number of methods being used by retailers everywhere today, including background checks and integrity interviewing. That's defined as asking a specific set of questions and watching for the applicant's responses, not necessarily listening for the answers.

You could also try brain scanning. One speaker this morning talked about an emerging technology in which retailers and other employers can send candidates for jobs off to a clinic and have a scan done of their noggin. Apparently, dishonest people have specific things about their brains that are different from honest people.

What all of this emphasis on finding an honest employee boils down to is that we as a society can't necessarily be credited with having integrity.

Remember the stories you've heard (and it may be your own story) about stealing a penny candy from a store and your parents making you take it back and apologize to the merchant and that was just the public punishment.

Apparently, not too many parents or our education system or our churches, for that matter, teach children today that taking what doesn't belong to you is wrong and you should be expected to be punished for doing it. Today the attitude seems to be, "Hey, they're rich ... they'll never miss it."

Since that basic trust of an employee is explicit in the success of a retail operation, it's a particular concern in our industry. When retailers rail against the declining morality in our country, it's not because they're some right-wing nut. It's because that decline is causing the decline in their bottom line, which means they have less revenue with which to expand and hire more morally challenged workers.

Yeah, morals and honest is the best policy and all that seem old-fashioned and so five minutes ago, but look what's happening in retail. Now multiply that over every aspect of our society and try to calculate the loss of resources that's involved. It's staggering.

So what are you doing to bring integrity back into our society?

Stealing Them Blind

Today and tomorrow, I am out of the office covering the National Retail Federation Loss Prevention Conference and Exhibition here in Minneapolis. I will be sharing information from that conference here and on our Web site www.tackntogs.com.

In 2005, retailers in the United States were the victims of more than $37 billion in theft and pilfering, a staggering figure. What's worse, that's up nearly four percent from the previous year, so it's not getting any better.

The average per-case loss is $1,053 and the average loss per incident of shoplifting is $854, 3.2 times greater than it was just two years ago.

The conference is designed primarily for the loss prevention professionals from most of the largest retailers in the country. These folks are on the cutting edge of the battle to beat back thieves from inside and outside. To give you some idea of how hard retailers fight, there are more than 2,600 loss prevention professionals registered for this conference.

Each of them, in most cases, has a staff. So if you just figured the cost of their work alone, the costs to business is staggering.

One of the points made repeatedly today is that employers have to get serious about how they treat their employees. Satisfied employees not only don't steal from you, they keep others from stealing from you.

Another theme ... don't hire anyone without a background check and a drug screen. According to figures released at the conference, one in 10 U.S. workers is involved in drug abuse. Those who abuse drugs have a 300 percent higher health benefit utilization rate.

An employee who uses drugs costs his or her employer $7,000 to $10,000 a year. Sixty-five percent of one-the-job accidents are linked to drug abuse. Between 38 and 50 percent of all workers' compensation claims are tied to substance abuse.

One last thought for to end today's report ... loss prevention experts say the problem with theft by both employees and customers is the result of a society that no longer teaches children moral absolutes. Seems "thou shalt not steal" has been removed from what children are taught today.

More tomorrow.

And They're Off

I will be the first to admit that I don't follow horse racing too closely. I find it interesting and exciting, but it's never really been a big part of my life.

I didn't realize how many had an interest in racing until Barbaro came along. This morning, I read that he was probably bumped right before the injury to his right rear hoof that put him out of racing and nearly took his life. If you ask people to name the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, they'd struggle. But ask them who Barbaro is, and you'll get the full story.

While the life of a race horse is filled with stresses, they're treated quite well. The jockeys, on the other hand, have it considerably worse.

The June edition of For Him Magazine (FHM) includes a feature story on jockey John Velasquez. As the editor of a magazine myself, I know to take anything printed with a grain of salt (or two or three!), but the story did a great job of showing the dangers.

In addition to being tossed and trampled, the danger most of us would think of first were we to take a job as a jockey, there's the somewhat seedy side of eating disorders among jockeys. You have to "make weight" in order to ride, so your livelihood depends upon staying lean and mean.

Jockeys use sweat boxes, a steam room to literally steam the juice out of you, and Lasix, a dehydrating agent generally reserved to use on bleeding horses. Laxatives are also popular, as is purging.

Some track have a dedicate special toilet in the locker room reserved for purging jockeys, the story in FHM claims. Eating disorders aren't the sole purview of teenage girls, it would seem.

The jockeys have the potential to make a fair amount of money, if they live long enough, but what amount of money is worth ruining your health and dying young?

Odd country we are -- if we treated horses like we treat the jockeys, we'd be arrested for abuse.

Horse ... Mule ... Horse ... Mule

Have you noticed that equines of all sorts are turning up in the mainstream media? Advertising agencies have suddenly discovered horses. That's a great thing for our industry, although I'll have to admit that most of them need to get a clue about the species.

For instance, this morning before coming to work, I was watching one of the morning news programs and this advertisement came on for some new product Nestle has out. In the text of the commercial, this farmer/cowboy type stares into the camera and says, "Today I was kicked by a MULE." The camera pans back to show clearly a DONKEY.

So you have to figure, did they do this to prove this guy wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer or did someone at the ad agency the filmed it truly not know the difference between a mule and a donkey? If the later, shame on someone. A quick Google search could have cleared up that matter in seconds.

Another commercial I saw recently showed a really nice horse in a really nice barn and you know ... that's all I can remember about that commercial! Probably not too effective for the client, but it did catch my attention. If anyone has seen that one and knows who the client is, let me know.

Some years back, there was a laundry soap commercial which featured a horse that a cowboy was breaking. After he gets tossed in the dirt, he looks up into the camera and tries to wipe the dirt off his shirt. Of course, it all ends well because that particular soap takes out every speck of dirt. Hmmm ... in my own personal experience, I haven't found one detergent that works too great on truly ground-in horse-related dirt. And I know for a fact we've tried the one that was featured in this commercial.

I've got a couple good ideas for television commercials companies could use that feature horses.

-- Rolaids could use a horse in a commercial. The scene would feature a horse lifting his tail and passing gas with his owner standing right there. Text would be something like, "there's not much I can do for his gas, but when gas hits me, I take Rolaids. Works every time." Last scene: horse nosing the Rolaid roll trying to get one out for himself.

-- This one would be for Super-Glu. Opening scene, rider gallops by on horse. Second scene, horse rides back through camera range without rider. Fade to black with the words "Super-Glu. We don't horse around."

-- Calgon might like this one. Scene is a horse owner working hard to clean his gelding's sheath. Closeups of his hands at work, that disgusted look on the horse owner's face, that wild-eyed look some horses get during sheath cleaning. Final scene: Horse owner soaking in a hot tub with this tag-over: "For your worst days, let Calgon take you away." Then horse reaches his heat through bathroom window and nudges horse owner in the back of the head.

-- Verizon commercial. Man riding horse with cell phone in his ear. Stops in Spot 1 and says into the phone, "Can you hear me now?" Horse looks irritated, swishes tail. Man rides on and stops in Spot 2. Repeats the catch line, "Can you hear me now?" Again, horse reacts negatively. Final scene. Man riding horse is now being sat on by the horse and instead of "Can you hear me now?" he's saying ... help ... help ... someone ... anyone!

Probably won't see those in production anytime soon, but hey, television is escapist in nature anyway, isn't it?