1. Explain the concept behind The Stallion Company and how, by utilising its services, breeders can realise their goals of improving their stock?

In fact it’s not a concept as such, it’s a reality. I’ve owned stallions since 2009, and prior to that I was an agent for all the big French-based stallions. As an agent you earn a living, but you don’t make profits, and most of the owners you work for a very restrictive with the conditions, which is why when there are problems, the breeders often lose out. I learned a lot from my time as an agent, mostly from a negative point of view, and as an owner I was determined not to see my breeders ever to be put in a difficult position. The breeder wants a pregnant mare and then a foal on the ground, the arguments, which are always about money, can wait.

I don’t like to be an agent, I prefer to own or to manage stallions, it’s easier and you have greater control over the outcome. There are always exceptions and this year Casall is the one stallion that I’m prepared to be agent for - who wouldn’t?

Irish breeders need to concern themselves less with the “deal” they’re getting from a stallion, and more with building a trusting, durable, working relationship with the owner. Once established, that relationship naturally brings good deals, but allows the breeder access to new and interesting stallions and better advice. The outcome is better breeding, and better results.

2. The opening of your 2016 centre at Ashbourne, Co Meath, has brought world class stallions right to the door of Irish breeders, what’s being the reaction of the Irish market so far and how do you see it developing?

I was very happy with the numbers of 2016: we bred exactly 280 mares in Ireland and 136 of those came through the new centre in Ashbourne. It was a brand new team, and they were seriously efficient in getting mares pregnant and using low dose frozen inseminations. This year we have Romanov and Quintero la Silla standing with us in Ashbourne, both famous for their sports careers, with Quintero also being one of only two stallion standing in Ireland who are in the world top 100 sires.

The market in general was very happy to see the arrival of The Stallion Company in Ireland, as they wanted and needed to see in increase in the professionalism in the stallion owning industry. It’s no surprise that the competition weren’t happy, but we’re here to do a good job for the breeders, not be best friends with our competitors! When they’re whining on Facebook, you know you’re doing the right thing - it’s a success tax, you just pay it. In the end, the breeders are the winners, and as we put more stallions into Ireland, who are world ranked, we will see an improvement in the quality of the breeding.

3. You’ve teamed up with Irish show jumping ace Bertram Allen in a new partnership, offering the services of Romanov, Dino-W, Hector - that’s exciting. What can you tell us of this partnership?

Yes, the collaboration with April and Bertram is great, we’re very proud that they contacted us and proposed this last year, just as Dino and Hector were rising up the international ranks, and as Romanov was in the process of retiring. We’d always had a connection with Ballywalter because of Molly Malone, and naturally they wanted to breed with Kannan each year. It’s worked well so far, Hector sold out last year, and I’m sure he will again this year. Romanov is very busy sending semen to Europe already, I hope that the Irish breeders wake to the fact that he’s in Ireland and use him, he’s a very easily useable sire, and will influence Irish breeding in the future. I think Dino is an Olympic horse for Ireland in three years, and breeders would be nuts not to jump on him in his first year in which he’s commercially available.

TSC also manages the breeding careers of Michael Whittaker’s and of Sergio Alverez Moya’s stallions.

Trust is important in this business, and the Allen’s don’t hand that out for fun. In Ireland, it seems that it’s more important to be liked than to be good at your job, I prefer to be liked because I’m good at my job.

4. And of course Kannan is a hugely popular stallion following the success of Bertram’s Molly Malone V and Steve Guerdat’s Nino des Buissonnets. Tell us about how his rise to the top and the demand this year for him.

It was of the best stories in the stallion world. I bought Kannan originally and sold part to GFE, although even today there are people in Ireland who think I don’t own him! GFE was much bigger than The Stallion Company, and whilst I sold a lot of breedings from Kannan, they were selling over 1,000 each year, so I could sit back and enjoy the financial benefits. Remember, The Stallion Company only started nine years ago, with €5,000, now I own 19 stallions, including the highest selling in history (Kannan). In reality, Kannan’s current ranking has nothing to do with my ownership nor work since I bought him, that’s all from before. But, his future ranking is down to our good work, in offering him at the right price and conditions. He has covered 7,000 mares since I bought him and he now sells out of frozen semen every year, which is why we don’t need to do deals on his breeding fee, even for the 2000 “best mares in Ireland” that “can help promote Kannan”. His foals remain commercial as always, and one of his three-year-olds sold for €620,000 at last year’s Westfalian auction, so he stays at the forefront of breeding commercially.

5. Marketing - how do you rate its importance in promoting stallions and how do you market The Stallion Company?

I’m not a former international rider, or come from a rich, famous family, so I have to own the best stallions possible, and we have to be very active in making sure that people know we and they exist. Kannan’s easy, but we have five stallions in the world top 100 and three more who are in the world top 100 for their age, based on their production. We don’t have the hype that other stallion owners have, so we have to stick to fact. I’m always amazed at how many breeders have their heads turned by over-hyped stallions, rather than doing their research. The more information that’s available online, the less breeders seem to use it. So for TSC, social media is the most important part of our publicity drive. After that, it’s direct contact with the breeders which we’ve worked on very hard this year during the off season. But your product must be good in the first place, if it’s not, you need hype.

6. Where are the majority of your customers from- the UK, mainland Europe? Is The Stallion Company’s customer profile broad-based, ranging from large-scale commercial studs to owners of one/two mares?

We trade all over the world, currently we sell in 32 different countries and have a broad network of agents. The majority of breeders that use us are 1-2 mare owners, but the big breeders use us more and more now. We’re very strong in the southern hemisphere because of our social media presence. Distribution is key, semen is no different from any other product in that respect, and transparency is vital. If you sell semen for different prices and conditions, the internet will find you out, and you’ll lose breeders.

7. What kind of advice do you offer customers, e.g, matching the most suitable sire to the customer’s mare and how do you rate the influence of the mare/mareline, 50/50 stallion/mare, 80% strong dam line etc.

We know our stallions inside out, and we see hundreds of foals by them each year. We’re brutal in our assessment of each stallion, and invariably sell a breeder a cheaper stallion because he’s more suitable for the mare being described to us. It’d be easy to sell Kannan to every breeder, of course, but that’s not good breeding, he doesn’t suit every mare. I gain a lot of credibility with this method. I believe in strong damlines, but I always keep an eye on who owned them and which rider they used to prove the genetic. I’m not sure what the percentage is, but if mare owners want to believe that the mare is worth 80% of the end result, that’s fine, but they have to accept that this also counts when a bad horse is produced. She can’t take all the credit for a good one, and then blame the stallion when it doesn’t work out!

8. Do you have a particular favourite breed or is it purely whatever individual sire delivers the commercial goods?

If you look in our catalogue, you’ll see that I own mostly Belgian-bred or Holsteiner-bred stallions, with four Selle Français and four KWPN. There’s no real bias intended, a good stallion is a good stallion. What I concentrate on is performance, or production (better if we have both), good motherline, model and fertility. I’m not a multi-millionaire, so I have to concentrate on upcoming stars, whose background numbers show that the stallion will appear in the world top 100 very soon. Eight of my existing roster have been in the top 100, and three will enter it in the next two year, notably Cormint and Cristo. Bentley van de Heffinck currently is world #1 for his age group. These are the stallions that breeders should be using for commercial foals or three-year-olds in the next couple of years.

9. The future of sport horse breeding; will it become increasingly commercial or is there still a role for the small owner?

The small owner is often where the best come from, especially if they own a very strong damline. It won’t become more commercial, it’s already at the limit. The thoroughbreds use zero techonology, it’s natural covering or nothing, simples, and they are extremely profitable as an industry. By comparison, the sport horse industry uses (in chronological order) AI, frozen semen, ET, cloning and ISCI, and yet there is no evidence that as an industry we are in any way profitable across the board. It’s a sobering reality.

10. And the future of the sport? Can stallion owners fine tune the type of stallion they breed, own or promote to cater for the increasingly sophisticated and diverse main markets, together with changes in the sport?

There will always be a place for every shape and type of horse in the jumping world, no one type wins everything. The first stallion owner or breeder to guess the market correctly will become a millionaire. Until then, we can only try to breed good horses from good mares, produce them well, sell them well or manage them well. Miss any part of that process and all is lost.

If you’re trying to breed for the top end of the sport, that represents only 2% of the buying market. Gerry Mullins once said in a breeding conference, that every breeder should walk the Grand Prix course at the RDS, stand in the middle of the biggest oxer, hold out their arms, and try to imagine their mare jumping it. If not, she’ll never bred a top horse. I largely agree with his sentiment, and it’s a quite seminal lesson for any breeder, but that doesn’t represent the other 98% of the buying market, which is looking for a super 1.30m jumper which won’t put your rider in hospital at the weekend, and those horses are becoming more and more valuable every month. European production of sport horses is down 3/5ths since 2007 while demand has gone up at the same time. The supply and demand curve therefore speaks for itself.