Horses? Must be a winner…

Gareth    Planning    

So, Webtogs would take over the world, one outdoor activity at a time, starting with horses (or equestrian wear, to be more accurate). We looked at a few equestrian websites, talked at length to my wife Mandy, as the resident expert and I even did a mock-up design:

Ahem…

My mock-up proved 2 things; 1. Horses were not going to be easy, layout wise and 2. I should never be let near a copy of Photoshop again!

As luck would have it, the largest indoor equestrian clothing and gear show, Beta International, was only a week away, at the NEC in Birmingham. Alex was already going, as in exhibition hall B, they had a big shoe show on. We would go to the NEC, get the Webtogs brand out a bit and talk to suppliers about stocking their kit.

As the show approached, I did some more research, discovering lots of relevant stuff about the equestrian market, including its lack of size (about £22m in the uk), poor demographics for Internet usage, highly specialist nature and that it’s dominated by a small number of well respected retailers. I spoke to several active people in the industry, who all told me, for different reasons, that we were nuts!

Matt (bless him), was never really behind the idea, and came up with ever inventive ways to make fun of the whole situation, including my favourite, the ‘togShit’ logo, that appeared on my desktop!

My trepidation grew, but I thought we’d do the show and see what happens. Proudly sporting my ‘Webtogs’ badge, I walked up to a major equestrian brand and started chatting to the rep. The conversation went something like this:

rep: “Webtogs, sounds cool. Do you have shop?”
me: “Not yet, we’re building it. Should be finished in the summer next year”
rep: “Ah, you’re building a shop from scratch. Whereabouts?”
me: (starting to get confused) “er, on the Internet.”
rep: “I see, do you have an actual S H O P”
me: “as in high street?”
rep: “yeah”
me: “No, we’re planning to launch the website first and then…”
rep: “We don’t supply Internet companies, ever. Under any circumstances”

This trend continued, unabated, throughout the day. On the odd occasion I got far enough to ask why, “company policy” seemed the normal answer. To be fair, a few of the players were cool with it, but most of the ‘must have’ equestrian brands couldn’t get rid of us fast enough. The fact that we had a definate strategy to open fixed retail stores alongside the website seemed to make little difference.

Matt’s togShit logo was beginning to appear before my eyes…

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