TOM MACGUINNESS should write an autobiography for he has an incredible story to tell. Ironically for someone with a real can-do attitude – it is at the core of his success in business as managing director of the global brand Horseware Ireland and in sport as Ireland’s premier endurance rider at 66 years of age despite only taking up the discipline earlier this decade – MacGuinness did not plan to reach this point. It is just that he doesn’t see an obstacle that can’t be cleared.

Growing up around the family riding school in Dundalk, he was attending Loughry Agricultural College in Tyrone in 1970 when, as he described it in a previous interview, “I had what you might call a spiritual experience. And it changed my life.”

He spent the next eight years doing missionary work in South America, only leaving when the coup in Argentina made it too dangerous to stay. His faith was at the foundation of everything, as it is today, and with it came an optimism that ruled out the impossible.

He married Carol and spent a few years in her native America before coming back to Ireland for his brother’s wedding.

“We hadn’t a plan as such so I drifted into managing the family riding school, which was a fairly small affair really,” MacGuinness recalled by phone from Florida earlier this week.

He got all the necessary certification, ran the school and at the weekend and competed in eventing. Then, in 1983, came economic meltdown.

“The recession we had lately was nothing, it was a joke compared to what we had then. People didn’t have indoor plumbing. There was I think 21% unemployment in Dundalk, 16% inflation, 14% interest rates. So I lost half my business but I already knew that there was no real future in that. It was just something that I was doing. We also had our first child to I had to get serious. The penny drops!

DISASTER

“I would have had 20 horses and I didn’t even bother blanket them because you couldn’t. They’d fall off, they’d be stinky, you couldn’t wash them, they weren’t warm. It was a disaster. I just felt there had to be a better way of doing it.

“At that time the synthetic quilts were coming in so I thought if I could make a sleeping bag for a horse and put that on him, wouldn’t that work? My motto was ‘If we can send a man to the moon, we can make a better horse blanket.’

“I had no knowledge about fabrics or sewing or anything like that. I said to the girl working for me one day, ‘I’m going off now to see if I can make a horse blanket. See ya in three months.’ I’d no big master plan. If I could sell a few blankets over the winter, sure wouldn’t that keep me going?

“At the end of three months I had designed a blanket which would reduce the labour input by 30, 40%. It was warm. It didn’t move. It looked great. And I could sell it for £35 and make £20.”

He bought an old sewing machine from a used car dealer, and despite initially not even knowing how to insert the thread, began making his new blanket. Nowadays, when he visits the manufacturing plants in China and Cambodia, the staff are always surprised when the boss sits in to do some of the stitching – just to show they cannot pull the wool over his eyes on anything.

Tom MacGuinness and David Minto (Business Development Manager, CX+ Sport) present Taoiseach Leo Varadkar with a CX+ Sport athletics singlet

Horseware Ireland was born in humble circumstances but now, it is an industry leader, with around 93% of its product targeted at the export market – 25% to America, 25% to the UK and most of the rest to mainland Europe. They employ approximately 850 people, the vast majority of those in the manufacturing plants in China and Cambodia.

There is a workforce of 150 at HQ in Dundalk with sales teams of around 30 each in the US and Britain.

In keeping with his previous missionary work, he uses the success to help others, supporting charitable organisations such as AllKids in Cambodia and JustWorld International.

GOING GLOBAL

The turning point came with the development of the signature Rambo rug. It came about when MacGuinness discovered hydrophilics in 1990, which when applied to a rug made it waterproof and breathable. It was revolutionary and turned Horseware Ireland global.

“I had it to myself for five years until everyone else copped on and that’s how I really got going.

“I had sorted one of the main problems, to keep the bloody thing on. Then I sorted out how to make it waterproof and breathable. It looked great as well and put them together and you were on a winner.”

Once he hit the half-a-million turnover mark, he closed the riding school, turned the indoor ring into a factory and extended on an annual basis as business continued to grow.

MacGuinness has always demanded that the company break new ground. He has no interest in copying a product – he wants to set the agenda.

“What we do is we look for something unique. We’re not going into an area where we’ve nothing different.”

They are currently doing in-house testing on a design of helmet that will allow air to get in and out. “The big problem with helmets – not so much in Ireland but over here in Florida for example – it’s the heat. Over here no-one wears a helmet only in the ring because the heat would kill ya. There hasn’t been a massive amount of high-tech work in that area.”

He sees a problem for the horse or rider that hasn’t been addressed by the market and he asks his team to come up with an answer. He was the first to provide fly rugs. The Micklem bridle also proved a phenomenal hit, as has the Ice Vibe circulation-enhancing rechargeable boots. Comfort and durability in practical use are imperatives. The Motion Lite jacket is another example.

“(It) is basically mesh material but it looks great. It’s padded design, very stretchy and when you put it on, it fits you, no matter what size you are. It’s very solid. If you put it on over a white shirt, you won’t see the white shirt but the wind goes right through it. That’s a unique product to us. We launched it two years ago and it’s one of the best-selling jackets on the circuit.

“We understand manufacturing. We’re very, very, very knowledgeable on textiles. So we’re not just going out to some fella and saying ‘We’ll make something like that’, he makes a container of it and sends it to you. We’re developing the fabrics, sourcing the fabrics – we’ve 20 people in an office doing that, going to fairs, looking at new developments. We’re able to innovate from the very core. We see a fabric and see that it will be great for a job and we develop a product with the fabric.

“Just like the Rambo. I found the technology and I said ‘We’ve got to put this together with something that’s really tough.’ The toughest fabric I could find was this ballistic nylon that was being made in Scotland. It was during the Troubles (in Northern Ireland) and they were making hundreds of thousands of police vests. So I put it together with that and that’s where Rambo came from.”

EUREKA

It was Carol who had the Eureka moment of coming up with the name and with the producers of the movie franchise, not unsurprisingly, having left the trademark registration lapse for clothing and rugs, Rambo was theirs. It perfectly captured the indestructible nature of the product.

The same could apply to MacGuinness and his company. There have been many setbacks but his positive energy sustained him and emboldened those around him.

“We had a hurricane (Floyd in ’99) and lost half a million dollars’ worth of stock just at the beginning of the season, we’d a fire the following year in Dundalk. We were hit badly by currency a few times before we started hedging. We’ve had a few setbacks but we’ve been in profit nearly every year except for one or two.

“The biggest hurdle is getting the right people. If you have the right people, the right attitude and the right product, it’s relatively easy. We have a great team.”

He would have gone to the wall if he attempted to keep making his products in Ireland.

THE FAR EAST

“Our main production is now in China. We moved out there in 2004. We were very late to move. I nearly went out of business because costs just exploded in Ireland. All my competitors had gone to the Far East. I was in big trouble. But we were very quick to ramp up out in China. Then seven years ago we had an opportunity to set up in Cambodia.”

To retain an edge in horse products and clothing – Horseware has three clothing ranges – requires a finger on the pulse at all times. MacGuinness broadened his horizons in recent times and is now working with the cream of racing’s crop.

“The equestrian business is pretty small really when you get right down to it, compared to golf or skiing. If you want to keep growing your business you have to steal it from somebody else.

“Recently we’ve signed an agreement with Godolphin to be their preferred supplier. So we’ve developed a whole range of products for them with their very specific colour of royal blue and we supply that to them worldwide. Before that, they were buying a bit here, buying a bit there; nothing was the same. Now, all over the world, the Godolphin products are the same.

“We’ve done a similar thing for Aidan O’Brien (and) Willie Mullins on a direct basis. Paul Nicholls is another. He has different colour blankets. Heavyweight is one colour, mediumweight another colour and lightweight another colour. So he says to the lads ‘Tonight we’re gonna use the green and the blue ones.’ It’s a colour-coded scheme he invented himself.”

It comes as no surprise to learn that MacGuinness took up polo in 2010 and a little after, began endurance riding, at an age when many are thinking of more leisurely pursuits.

Just last week, he finished 10th in a 100km race in Uruguay, having been 11th of 85 in the European Championships over a 160km track in Brussells. He performed at the World Equestrian Games in Normandy in 2014 and is attempting to put a first Irish team together for Tryon next year.

The gold medal success of the show jumping team at the Europeans was “amazing” but there was one element of it that left MacGuinness perplexed.

“I was shocked – there was a snippet of it on the nine o’clock news and I mean a snippet. Ten seconds. Right? And the rowing was on RTÉ – it nearly made me sick. It was rowing this, rowing that – it was amazing how much rowing was on. Sure there’s only two guys in the country that can row. There might be four. And they’re all down in some wee place in Cork.

“That’s fantastic and I’ve nothing against that but we have 10 show jumpers in the top 50 all the time. We’ve won junior Europeans, senior Europeans, eventing, show jumping, doing well in dressage – there’s something seriously wrong. The PR for it is total hunger. Whoever is the PR person for those rowing guys, we need to go hire them. Irish people love horses for God’s sake!”

The paucity of State funding is a disappointment too.

“We have to raise a lot of what we get. Two-thirds of what we get is from the Lotto – we get very little from the government in something where we’re world leaders. World leaders! What else are we world leaders in? We don’t even own Guinness anymore. It’s crazy. But we haven’t done the PR.

“I know Barry O’Connor did put together on the economic benefit of the industry and I was involved in that. That has shown up pretty interesting numbers in terms of what it’s worth to the economy. And when you compare that to what is being put in, it is quite substantial. They take a hell of a lot more out of it even in wages and stuff like that than they put back into it.

“But how the money would be spent? That’s the problem. There’s all the boys always having a bit of a row with each other, never agree on anything, though HSI have pulled things together well to an extent.”

Needless to say, Brexit is a concern because of the uncertainty that hinders good planning.

“You don’t know do you put your price up? Do you put your price down? We hedge our funds up to a year in advance. Do you take a punt now that the pound is going to be at 90 (cents) or do you take a chance that it’ll be 85 or 95 or what? For me it’s a currency issue rather than anything else.

“I don’t think Brexit will affect our business in whether we sell more or sell less. It’s what will be the value of the pound. That will be the issue.”

TECHNOLOGY

It doesn’t stop him pushing back boundaries. Horseware has been developing software technology in recent years that produced a rug advisor initially and then Horse Pal – a sensor placed in a little pocket in the blanket that gathers heat and humidity data and is accessible from your phone, or anyone else’s that you want it to. With weather forecast data for the next three days, you can make an informed decision on what rug to use.

Other information can be added relating to horse’s breeding, condition, age. In time, people will be able to make transactions with their farrier or vet at the click of a button and have a historical database for each horse they own. It is pioneering work.

“We do evolve because we’re not just a rug company. Rugs are our main business and we’re the world number one in rugs – I don’t think there’s anybody would dispute that. I’d say no-one would dispute the fact that we’re probably the most innovative country in the industry.

“So this is not necessarily what we set out to do but it’s where we are. Our mission is to make life easier for the horse and rider so if a product does that, it’s something we would consider.”