Go or Stay Home?

Rita and Jack Mendel of Carousel Tack Shopper in Birmingham, Alabama, sent me the following letter. I thought I'd share it with you and then ask others to chime in on their thoughts.

LET'S NOT GO! Retailers, Dare To Stand Up and Say 'Enough!'

Three, four, five markets twice a year. We can't do it. We can't afford it. We can't get enough done to justify the expense. Let the exhibitors put on the multitude of shows in January and February. If we don't attend, maybe they will re-think the time and financial burden they are asking us to bear.

Maybe they will get together and have ONE big show in January and ONE big show in August. Maybe they will chose a place that is reasonable cost-wise with a concentration of hotels near the exhibit halls.

Maybe they will choose a place that is convenient to fly in and out of, for example, Dallas-Fort Worth. Wouldn't it be nice to take a nonstop flight to market in January, no worry about blizzards, and not blow all that money on over-priced hotel rooms.

There is your opportunity to show your strength. The vendors would also greatly benefit. They would only have to set up twice a year, and they would know they will see all the retailers.

Okay, I'll go first. It's very easy to understand the frustration retailers in our industry are experiencing. Up until very recently, their input and thoughts when it came to trade shows were largely ignored. Everyone had the idea that when it comes to trade shows, if you build it, the retailers will come.

Some retailers can afford to stay home from trade shows, others can't. If you're on the main trail within the territory of good sales reps, you are indeed blessed. For those who are off the beaten track, trade shows are often the only way to see the products our industry has to offer.

Even if you are visited regularly by a gaggle of sales reps, you still can learn a lot and get a better feel for what direction your retail business should be heading by attending a trade show. Besides the obvious buying that goes on, there's a great deal of exchanging of information that energizes you for the months ahead.

It appears fairly obvious that one "really big show" other than WESA-Denver probably isn't ever going to happen. So do your homework, figure out which of the markets has the vendors you most need to see and go there.

Finally, I've attended one trade show in my career in this industry where I thought the hotel rates were out of line. The rest are generally excellent values, rates negotiated by the market organizers, who do a great job. Just one example: I stayed at an amazing four-star hotel in Baltimore last fall for almost a fourth of the rack rate. Now that is a bargain!

And now let's hear from you.

The Message is Getting Through

Some of us have been talking for a very long time about the equine industry's need to get young people involved. I remember bringing the subject up at a Western-English Trade Association board meeting three years ago and basically being told "it wasn't a priority."

Fast-forward to today, WETA is on board with a major marketing initiative, one of the primary goals of which is getting young people (and oldsters, too!) involved in riding.

This morning, I learned that the United States Equestrian Federation has established its first-ever Yough Council. In addition to developing new programs aimed at youth, the council will provide leadership, promote excellence in riding and strive to be the best.

The groups who have most recently caught the vision are joining a couple flagship organizations that have been bringing youngsters into the equestrian fold for years. Those include Little Britches Rodeo, National High School Rodeo Association, Pony Club and others.

Who are going to be the customers of the future who will buy the saddles, boots, chaps and headware manufacturers will create? These young people who are just now getting their start in equestrian pursuits.

Traditionally, riding and horse activities have had a rather odd sense of entitlement, if you will. If you were "born" into it or "grew up" with it, you were in. If you didn't, you had to break the door down and actually fight to get in.

Hopefully, that's changing. Almost every other sport in the world welcomes new participants with open arms and doesn't make fun of them if they don't knew every rule and concept of the sport the first day. With riding, the tendancy is to make fun of new riders, rather than welcome them and help them succeed.

If you know of other groups and organizations out there doing their part to bring new people into the equine fold, let us know. We'd like to compile a list and find a way to recognize these organizations.

The Race is On

If you're reading this, I presume you survived the Thanksgiving holiday, Black Friday, and whatever else has been thrown your way in the past week. For retailers, the race is on, with a crush of customers, longer hours, mayhem and the occasional crisis sure to be part of life in the next four or five weeks.

It's been difficult to determine where retail sales are headed from the reports coming out the past few days. Some retailers are way up, some are way down. No one seems to know what has made the difference.

One thing that's apparently way up is the ridiculous behavior of the buying public. Camping in line for 24 hours to purchase a toy seems over the top to me, but then having to get into a fistfight in the store adds insult to injury.

Funny how people who can't seem to find their way to work on time can appear like clockwork at the door of a store opening at 4 a.m. I was also surprised to find out what the entire X-box line of products costs. Obviously, consumers aren't afraid to spend some money this year.

My dream is that one day crowds of people will camp outside an equine trade retailer and stampede into the store to buy the newest saddle on the market. Now wouldn't that be a treat!

We will be surveying retailers in our industry several times between now and Christmas to see how sales are going. We'll share those results here.

We Need Numbers

I've had four calls in two days now requesting hard and fast numbers on the equine trade industry. Well, the short answer is that they simply don't exist.

Look at the structure of our industry. We're a mixture of small and large companies, most privately held, most do not report their sales numbers to anyone (except the IRS, we hope!).

Two of the callers I spoke with her attempting to valuate businesses, one a retailer and one a distributor, for possible sale. Both didn't believe me that the numbers weren't readily available. One wanted to know specifically about the size of the Western accessories (belts, wallets, etc.) sector of the industry. "Surely there's someone they report their sales numbers too," he whined.

No. There isn't.

Two more were working with brokerage-type firms attempting to gather information for a perspectus for going public. We've seen a steep rise in these type of inquiries. Apparently, the initial public offering from Dover has planted the seed in the minds of others in the industry.

The sense you get when you work with the people asking for these figures is that they're not sure they want to be involved in an industry that doesn't have a clue how big it is or how much clout it has. I know of one situation that played out a couple weeks ago in which a small company that had a great opportunity to sell to a larger company to the benefit of both went sour over the statistical information issue.

I tried my best to mediate, but neither party was satisfied with the answers so the deal was called off. What message does that send to people who own manufacturing businesses and retail operations in our industry?

Why is it that almost every other industry -- even ones with the same collection of small- to mid-size companies -- has sales statistics and we don't? What is it going to take to change that? Can we hope to see anything that will help make our industry grow without the statistics that business professionals need?

It's time for our industry to grow up.

Putting Christmas back into Christmas

If it accomplishes nothing else, Wal-Mart's decision to drop "Happy Holidays" and go back to "Merry Christmas" has certainly won them the lion's share of media attention. Undoubtedly, you've already read or heard somewhere about this decision and what's behind it.

Wal-Mart is all about selling products, and if people are going to stay away from their store because they refuse to say "Merry Christmas," you can bet they'll be saying it. Other retailers, like Best Buy, continue to try to please everyone in their own way. They'll keep "Happy Holidays," at least for now.

The bulk of retailers in the equine trade industry are Christian and celebrate Christmas. Among those who aren't, I've never had anyone tell me they were offended by the word "Christmas."

We live in a large metropolitan area of the country. We play host to just about every ethnic group out there. Many of them celebrate their own particular holidays. We've never been offended when a retailer uses the name of one of those holidays in their advertising. In fact, as much as we can, we enjoy participating in the celebrations of those other cultures just as we would hope they would enjoy participating in a Christmas celebration.

To me, that would be like someone who competes in dressage being offended by National Day of the Cowboy. If someone would like to create National Day of the Dressage Rider, that would be great!

It boils down to this: Celebrate Christmas or don't celebrate Christmas, but let those who do enjoy their holiday. If people who celebrate Christmas turn around and tell other religious groups it's not appropriate for them to celebrate their holidays, that's wrong. Our country is big enough to handle all sorts of traditions.

Actually, I think the entire question is more of a media creation than an actual bone of contention between ethnic groups in the United States. We'll see what the the change in policy at Wal-Mart does for their holiday ... ooops, "Christmas" sales.

The Heart of the Matter

Horse people often talk about a horse's heart. Usually, they don't mean the melon-sized blood pump that sits inside his body. It's more often a reference to the ability to come through in a tough situation and triumph with great effort.

Yet, what allows a horse to overcome and triumph is, in many instances, the organ itself. Horses have amazing hearts, according to information supplied by the University of California-Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

Much like the human heart, a horse heart has a lot of work to do. With each beat, blood is pumped throughout an intricate system pf arteries and veins. Horses are often called upon to tax their cardiovascular systems to the limit, yet you almost never hear about an equine cardiac arrest.

In fact, almost all of the diseases of the heart common to mankind are seldom found in horses. We could learn a lot from horses when it comes to protecting our own blood pumping system.

For instance, horses exercise regularly. They have a strong play drive that keeps them active. They're social and that interaction also keeps them moving.

They eat very little (if any!) fatty red meat, pork or most other cuts of meat. Animal fat is the enemy of both the equine and human heart.

Horses don't drink alcohol. Horses do not smoke tobacco.

If you'd like to have the heart of a horse, these fact might become your primary considerations. How much heart do you have?

The Challenge of Immediacy

Some of you reading this are old enough to remember a time in the equine trade industry when a saddle company might have the same saddle as it's prize product several consecutive years. Boot-makers made boots and we all bought what they made and the retailers sold.

Those days are long gone. Even the relatively staid English sector of our business is seeing an explosion of products with amazing new technologies and flashy colors.

Part and parcel with those changes has been the need for better communication within the industry. If something important to retailers and manufacturers happens today, there's no need for them to hear it on the grapevine or wait 30, 60 or even 90 days to get the news.

This point hit home with me in a big way recently when I received an every-other-month magazine with a story regarding the retail outlook for the holiday season. The headline began with "Despite High Gas ... Prices ..." Obviously, when the story and headline were written, with gas at $3 or thereabout a gallon, it was accurate.

But in what we call the lead time -- the time from when a published piece is finalized and it appears on the street -- things obviously changed quite a bit. Of course, there are those who argue that the $2 a gallon we now pay is still high and unacceptable. However, there was almost no one in the equine industry retail world who ever believed high gas prices would impact business.

We talked to a hundred or more retailers on that topic and couldn't find one who said gas prices were going to be a factor. Now for Wal-Mart, it's a huge factor because most of their shoppers are on the lower end of the economic scale and for them it boils down to a choice between eating and driving to the store.

For consumers in the equine industry, who have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in horses, trailers and various pieces of tack and equipment, whether gas is $2, $3 or $5 a gallon, it's not going to keep them home worrying about whether they can afford gas.

The world is moving at an incredible pace today and keeping up with it is a challenge. Technology is a big help and is the latest and greatest ways of communicating are becoming even more important tools.

Will PBR go the way of NASCAR?

For the past couple years, people have been referring to the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) as the next NASCAR. The comparison has to do with the meteoric growth of both entities. PBR has exploded in popularity and draws an amazing amount of sponsorship from the equine trade industry.

If you buy into PBR and the similarities to NASCAR, PBR may be in for some rocky times ahead. Ray McNulty of Scripps Howard News Service recently wrote a column detailing what appears to be the beginning of the fall of NASCAR.

McNulty postulates that NASCAR has "raced" away from its core constituency. It's lost its rural "Dixie" roots and has instead concentrated on making money. He says the drivers have become less colorful and approachable. NASCAR, he contends, has become more entertainment than sports.

PBR seems to have avoided most of the pitfalls McNulty believes NASCAR has experienced, at least to this point.

The amount of money the top bull riders earn is extreme, but after all, this is an "extreme" sport. PBR does a good job of getting out into the heart of America.

As to being more entertainment than sport, you could probably make a good argument that almost any pro sport is more entertainment than sport. PBR does have its fireworks to celebrate 90-plus rides and uses a rather elaborate opening ceremony, but both seem to be nice added touches, rather than an overbearing showiness.

Then there's Flint Rasmussen. Unquestionably, he is entertainment for the PBR, and he just happens to be the best in the world at what he does. If you've ever attended a PBR event and had the chance to witness Flint in action, you know how hard you can laugh at someone dressed in Enterprise Rental Car green and white! He's become as much a part of PBR as bulls, dirt and trips to the pay window.

Hopefully, what's happening to NASCAR will be additional impetus to PBR to assure it sticks to its roots and continues to be a forum to bring a sector of our industry to the country and the world.

Wondering about Retail

On occasion, someone in our industry will fill my ear about how awful retailers are in the equine trade industry. They're behind the times. They don't take well to change. They aren't professional enough.

I always listen politely and then give them names and addresses of retailers in our industry who do it right and encourage them to go and visit.

When you interface with retailers in other industries, you tend to get a better appreciation of equine industry retailers.

Take, for instance, the embroidery retailers. As the trade show season approaches, I realized that because of the age of my existing Tack 'n Togs logo shirts and having lost 20 pounds in the past six months, I was in need of several new shirts.

An industry source provided me with some beautiful shirts tailor-made for embroidering a logo on. So armed with a digitized version of our logo, I set out to find a store that could perform this service.

I thought I had seen a couple such shops near where I live so I headed out to look for them. Either I was drinking heavily when I saw those stores or they vanished into mid-air. I turned to the Yellow Pages. Several stores were listed.

Since embroidery projects aren't the kind of thing you can neogitate over the phone, I headed out to find the three locations listed. The first one no longer existed. The second one no longer existed. The third one was closed. At 5 p.m. Actually it closed at 4 p.m.!

My next step was an online Yellow Pages-type listing. I found three more there, but none of them were businesses, as such, they were located in homes in residential areas of our community. I'm not a huge fan of having to traipse through someone's living room to conduct business. It just doesn't seem professional.

Finally, in desperation, I decided to call a couple of the retailers listed online, the ones located in homes. It wasn't a good experience. The first "store" acted as though they'd never heard of having a logo shirt embroidered. No matter where I took the conversation, it always got back to "now what is it again you're wanting to have done?" Yeesh!

The second retailer informed in a completely monotone voice that I'd have to come to her location between 1 and 3 p.m. on a Tuesday or a Friday or she wasn't interested in doing business with me.

Now granted, two shirts isn't an order that I would expect someone to move heaven and earth to fill, but over a period of a couple years, we tend to go through a lot of shirts. This is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

Long story short (oops too late for that!) my shirts are sitting here in my office with the logo on a CD. I've got money to spend. I need this service and I need it now ... and no one will take my money.

Hopefully, no consumer goes through anything remotely like this experience with equine retailers. Just thinking, there are probably a few equine retailers who have embroidery equipment. If you'd like some business, contact me!

Three Cheers for Us Old Guys!

A tip of the hat today to Adriano Moraes who won his third PBR world title on Sunday night in Las Vegas. He collected a cool $1.34 million, sufficient money to treat his ailing back, one would think.

Adriano, for those who don't follow the PBR regularly, is also the grandpa of the PBR at age 36. Saturday night, a lot of people (including Ty Murray) were ready to count Adriano out of the running. But he battled back and made all of us who are a bit long in the tooth proud.

This past year, a number of young bucks have appeared on the scene of the PBR, including the likes of Kody Lostroh and L.J. Jenkins, the youngest t 19 to every participate in PBR Built Ford Tough World Finals. No doubt, you bounce higher and heal quicker when you're 19 than when you're 36. But there's also that intangible experience brings, mental toughness. In other words, you 19-year-olds may be able to outride us oldsters, but we've got better developed brain matter.

Adriano's win is a shot in the arm for anyone who's ever been told the young turks are going to rule the world and you seniors are going to have to step aside and let them.

It was also good to see that grown men still do cry, even on national television. Guilherme Marchi finished second to Adriano and retired to the locker room to have a good cry. I think all of us have felt like that at one time or another. However, Marchi walked away with $295,000 or so in winnings. I think that would have sufficient dried my tears. Guilherme will be back next year with another good shot at winning the entire pot.

What on earth happened to Chris Shivers? The former PBR world titleholder was flying off bulls like salt shakers off a whirling Lazy Susan. It has to be frustrating to be in a slump like that. I particularly liked the scene in which the cameras followed Shivers back into the bowel of the arena. He found a poor helpless stock trailer and proceeded to take out his frustrations on it. Yep, there are days like that.

The PBR goes into hibernation for a few weeks and then comes back with the new season, kicking off in Hawaii. It's still the fastest growing sport in the United States and is rapidly catching on in a ton of foreign countries, as well.

Especially Brazil.

Election Fatigue

Are you going to be as relieved as I will be when the never-ending cycle of negative political advertising on television ends? I've never been more thankful for PBS in my life. It's about the only place you can go to get away from the assault.

Think of the billions of dollars that are spent on advertising in this manner. And then think of all the great things any number of groups within the equine industry could do with even a tenth of one percent of the money.

Take the Western-English Trade Association Marketing Initiative. The immediate need is for about $60,000. I'd guess thee are candidates who are spending that for each MINUTE of negative advertising. Plus, the marketing initiative is something very positive. It's a way of broadening the outreach to help retailers and manufacturers grow their companies.

Could you image how much additional program an organization like National High School Rodeo Association could do with their portion of the tenth of one percent? Or how about Pony Club? 4-H?

These programs are making an impact for the long-term for the equine industry. Yet the money is plowed into telling us what a lying scum-sucking dog one political candidate or another is.

Personally, I can't bring myself to vote for any politician who engages in this type of campaigning ... which means my ballot will be mostly blank this election!

My second great misgiving about all the hoopla over the election is this: does it really matter who is elected, who runs the United States House of Representatives or the United State Senate (collectively known as Congress)? Can you as a small business person say with certainty that you've done better under Democrat control or Republican control?

Or has it really come down to a choice between the lesser of two evils? And just exactly how did we end up in this situation?

One of these years, I'd like to see some key people in the equine industry run for public office. I can't imagine a group of people I'd rather see run the country. Oh, it would be a little bit wild at times, since equine people all have different opinions on any given topic. But they also have a good grasp of what it takes to be successful. Plus, they're not afraid of hard work. I think if every elected official were required to spend a week on a horse ranch in Texas or Colorado, they'd have a far better grasp of reality for the remainder of their term.

Or, require them to spend a week working with one of the retailers in our industry. Talk about an education in the real world! It would give them insights they could not gain in any other way.

For the 25 years I spent in the newspaper business, I used to write a rousing editorial every election day reminding people of their patriotic duty to get out and vote. Don't complain about your government if you don't vote ... the entire spiel was quite a production number.

Perhaps I've become jaded -- or perhaps it's just realism setting in -- but today I am less likely to preach that voting is the way to impact change. Today, I'm not sure that anything short of storming the Bastille is going to be the way to force change!

One positive about election day though, the negative campaign advertisements will stop. For a few months anyway and then we're back into another national election cycle.