Horzehoods WIN the BETA Business Awards, Open up to Trade & A Move!

Hi Everyone, Stacey here, with our first ever blog entry? can you believe it has taken 4 years for me to finally get round to starting our company blog? I thought what better way to launch our new blog than by updating you all on our very busy and successful January.

It is now officially a week on from our first ever time exhibiting at this years BETA International, having always been an Online Mail Order Company and being able to do it well we have always been undecided on whether supplying to local retailers would be beneficial for us and more importantly our customers; however during the last 12 months with an influx of customer queries regarding their nearest stockist and also direct request from retailers themselves we understood it was perhaps finally time to say goodbye to 4 years of purely e-commerce to increase the ease at which our customers can get our products quickly and locally without postage fees and online services.

We decided after several invites that BETA 2017 would be the perfect place to launch our 'Opening to Trade' and had a lovely exhibition location right opposite the fabulous sponsors 'Neue Schule' Horse Bits. 

The show proved to be a huge success for us and after just day one we had run out of application forms (which was a little embarrassing) having to request more reprints. We met some wonderful retailers and traders and promised to action all orders as quickly as possible once we headed back to the office. Myself and Katy were on the stand for the full 3 days and it had been lovely to be able to follow up to all retailers this week and go through all their requirements which best suit the customers needs.

Prior to preparing for our first BETA and the two weeks run up to the show, also proved challenging as we had our moving in date approach for our new warehouse premises. With the increase of orders meant more imports which equally meant more holding space and unfortunately our lovely office unit could no longer keep up, so we sadly handed in the keys and it was time to move for the 3rd time due to substantial growth, with better facilities brings even more advances in service and operations so i am really excited we are now in and still making our way through boxes. I just want to also thank all our customer for their patience during the first few weeks of January we had issues with changing both phone lines over and Internet which did interrupt our speedy responses a little. I am pleased to say we are now yet again all systems go!

BETA International started in the day and finished at 6pm it then gave us all untill 7.30pm to get our glad rags on ready to attend the very prestigious BETA Business Awards the same night. Myself and Katy had managed to get back to the hotel in time to grab our dresses, put our make up on and all was going quite smoothly untill we realised somebody forgot to pack the toothpaste! Oh dear! We however was saved by the hotel reception staff who were very lovely, not quite Colgate but it did the trick!. We arrived at the GALA Awards and were welcomed with a lovely champagne on arrival. I was in awe of being amongst such amazing equestrian companies within the UK. I had grown up purchasing from these companies and it was a really overwhelming feeling to turn up for the second year in a row as a BETA Business Finalist. 

So, the time had come for the Award to be announced, against such wonderful finalist including the amazing Harry Hall who i adore and respect so much having been in the industry for such a long time. I would be lying if i said i was not nervous; although i knew how much work myself and our team put in to Horzehoods I truly thought being a young 'new kid on the block' business would mean we were out of the chances, and that was it, so it was announced?! It was us, Horzehoods, and followed by such a lovely write up by the presenter read on from comments the judging panel had written following their decision. 

Walking up to collect our Award was quite daunting, especially being used to wellies and mud and now having to concentrate with a long dress on thinking 'please do not fall, please do not slip' i do not think us ladies get enough credit for the amount of effort it takes to walk in a pair of heels (particularly in a room full of fabulous company representatives). I did it, i made it on stage and i did not fall, in actual fact i even managed to smile whilst holding our trophy and certificate. Bonus!

The bottle of champagne given to us was also a nice touch, however i am not sure my head would agree.

So that is it! I survived my first ever company blog (almost 4 years to get time to write one) terrible right!?. 

Keep a look out for our weekly blogs, we are looking to get blogs in from professional riders, tips from owners and riders, daily updates from our sponsored riders and general store news, product news, trade news and just general Horzehoods Team Chit Chat should you lovely people be interested. We also have a newsletter you can sign up to to follow our blogs and releases.

I do say it all the time, however i can never tire of saying it 'we are truly lucky to have such fabulous loyal clients that recommend us day in day out and continuously repeat order'

Without our customers none of this is ever possible.

Much love to all our clients, old, new, past and present.

Stacey & HH Team