Women in Business Series - Fiona Baptie and Catherine Stott of Pro-Equine
When I arrive at Pro-Equine headquarters, the first thing that strikes me as Fiona and Catherine open the door, is the aroma. The unit is packed with shelves of products and heady scents permeate the air, mainly from the production area where the award-winning range of all-natural horse products are made. I am immediately intrigued, even more so when Fiona points out that the production area is the only place they can’t show me due to stringent policies to ensure zero cross-contamination. We head instead to an adjacent office and sit down as part of the Women in Business series to find out more about the story of Pro-Equine...
Pro-Equine was founded 20 years ago and was the brainchild of co-director Fiona Baptie, who almost literally gave birth to the idea while in hospital having her first child! “That’s how we always know the exact age of the business!”, Catherine Stott, the other co-director, says laughing. Fiona explains further, “I was pregnant with our first child and realised that I needed a change of career as I wouldn’t be able to continue riding and teaching but needed to do something!”. Pretty much scribbling the company name and logo on the back of an envelope, the company was incorporated the same month Fiona’s daughter was born, in October 2004. This immediately gives an insight into the type of person Fiona is. As so many of us horsey folk are, she is not good at doing nothing! Having left school at 16, she pursued a career in coaching at a local riding school and it was her experiences there that first planted the seed of an idea. “I was given a massive bottle of fly spray that you had to wear thick gloves to apply. You couldn’t touch your skin with it, and I thought, I have to put this on the horses?!” At the time, there was nothing else on the market so there was no choice. Fiona continues, “when you talked about natural, it was essential oils or homeopathic where the horse was meant to give it a sniff!”. Similarly, there was a misconception that natural meant lacking any real effectiveness. Testimony to this is the fact that, as Catherine explains, in the early stages of the business, they spent most of their time trying to explain to people just how the ingredients they were using worked. “We’ve had to do a lot of educating. No-one had heard of neem oil, for example. When we first started going to Blair, we had to spend the whole time explaining to people what neem oil is and what it does”. Pro-Equine was the first company to introduce neem oil and neem-based products to the UK equestrian market. Fiona continues “We didn’t just have to educate customers about neem, we also had to point out that, much as they might not like the smell of neem (some liken it to rotten cabbage!), it doesn’t matter to the horse what it smells like, so long as it works!
Pro-Equine's trade stand at Bramham Horse Trials 2023
Plant power has been providing solutions to a whole myriad of problems for thousands of years. It was this understanding that underpinned Fiona’s initial vision. “If plants work for a human, why wouldn’t they have similar effects on horses?” And so that’s where the research began. The prime example of this is the fact that Fiona’s daughter suffers from cystic fibrosis, one of the symptoms of which is a buildup of sticky mucus in the lungs. It was the process of researching herbs, specifically ones that might help alleviate her daughter’s symptoms, that led to the creation of Pro-Breathe, a syrup supplement for horses that aids airway and lung tissue function. All of Pro-Equine’s topical products are tried and tested on humans, much to the dismay sometimes of Fiona’s children! “On holiday there is always Lavender Sunblock poolside and when I used to stand at the sidelines during football matches, if my son got an injury, I’d be running over with my arnica! He would be so embarrassed shouting Mum that’s for the horse!” As well as her children, it was racehorses where many products were first tried and tested. While working with 3 race trainers in Scotland, Airway, a powerful blend of plant extracts and oils to encourage full capacity lung function, was first tried on racehorses suffering with a virus. When the vet took blood samples, the horses who had been on Airway rather than a placebo were completely clear of the virus, while the other horses still had it lingering in their system. The joint supplement Activgait had similar results. “We had jockeys out on the track saying they couldn’t hold their horses back and that’s when we knew it was working!”
Fiona testing out the award winning Lavender Sunblock on herself!
Using the knowledge gained from working with racehorses, Fiona was always keen to work with all horse owners, creating an uncomplicated product range that was FEI compliant and legal across the board. Still working from her kitchen however, wanting to expand was slightly problematic! As Catherine explains, “Fiona was so customer orientated, that somebody would spend 20 minutes on the phone talking about their horse and then Fiona would say ‘I’ll just make you something up!’ I had to stop her making bespoke!” Part of Catherine’s role when she joined as a partner in the business in 2006 was to streamline the product range. With a background in sales and marketing, Catherine was a customer of Pro-Equine and running her own PR and copywriting business, before taking the opportunity to join Pro-Equine. “I had been doing some PR work for Fiona when she asked if I’d like to join the business. I loved the products and could see their potential. I could also see that my knowledge and experience would be useful. I’m very much the facts and figures person, I like crunching numbers, so we complement each other very well”, Catherine explains. “Fiona had 80% of the products we have now on the market then, but, as for any small business, it was getting them out on the market that was the challenge”. Ensuring that each product has a very specific purpose and is not over-complicated are key to Pro-Equine’s success. As Fiona explains, “it’s easy to add lots of ingredients but there is no need to do that because the risk is that ingredients end up counteracting each other. We keep it simple. The most ingredients we have is 7 in one supplement, all of which work together”. She continues “that’s probably the hardest part of formulating a product. It’s relatively easy to find ingredients that have benefits; but then you have to decide which ones and research every single one of them, consider how much they have been proven, how they will work together, all sorts of things like that".
Testimony to Pro-Equine's ability to get the balance just right is the many awards their products have received in recognition of their effectiveness
When I ask more about the process of creating new products, Fiona explains that it all starts the same way – with an equine problem that needs a solution and then research – and lots of it! The process is rigorous and relies on an evidence-based approach to studying research papers on the efficacy of any intended ingredient. Catherine uses the example of the development of Ulsa-Soothe prior to its launch in 2013. “The UK has been incredibly slow in catching on to ulcers in horses, so the majority of research papers we were studying were from the USA”. Most of the research that had been done at that time was also confined to racehorses, until the University of Glasgow undertook a large research project to find out the prevalence of ulcers in horses and ponies across the board. As a consequence, Aberdeenshire-based dressage rider and Pro-Equine Brand Ambassador, Carmen Gammie, took her horse Leya and pony Bubbles to Glasgow for the trial. The study found that over 85% of horses scoped had ulcers. Gastro-guard was the only available treatment at that time and, though effective, it was very expensive and horses couldn’t be competed while on it. There was also the question of what horse owners should do after a course of Gastro-guard. Ulsa-Soothe was in the final stages of development at this time. “We showed it to one of the Glasgow vets who was very interested, especially because he had recently read a paper on sea buckthorn (one of Ulsa-Soothe’s ingredients) which noted its beneficial effect on racehorses”, Catherine explains. The proof was in the pudding however and when Carmen’s horse was re-scoped after being on Ulsa-Soothe, “her stomach was clean as a whistle, and she never had an ulcer after that”.
Pro-Equine Brand Ambassador Carmen Gammie and her horse Leya
This authenticity has been key to successfully building the brand. “Our evidence is our customers, the results speak for themselves”, as Catherine explains. If the products didn’t work, they simply wouldn’t sell. As Fiona continues, “we’ve created products that really work, and work quickly, which is why customers come back over and over. There are people who have been customers for the last 20 years”. Transparency has also been key to consolidating customer loyalty. Every ingredient is listed on the bottle, even though it is not a legal requirement. No fillers or stabilisers are used either, so everything in the bottle has a specific purpose. This means that there can be quite dramatic differences between batches. For example, some companies add colouring to their products to keep them all looking the same, Pro-Equine doesn’t so batches will often differ in appearance quite markedly. Indeed, sometimes customers even call to ask if there is something wrong with the product! When you’re making 100% natural products, you have to expect variances for a whole myriad of reasons - from the weather and late harvests, to the altitude and season when something is grown. The higher the altitude lavender is grown at, for example, affects its properties (who knew? I didn’t!). And the lavender that smells lovely is excellent for perfumery, but not for skincare. Peppermint oil, lemon oil etc. all come in many different solutions and densities as well. A great deal of research is therefore undertaken by Fiona and Catherine into sourcing not only the very best quality ingredients, but the ones that are most suitable for the job. Key to the green ethos of the business is sourcing these ingredients as locally as possible, or at least from within the UK. This isn’t always possible of course given some of the ingredients are not native to Britain. The company’s ‘green credentials’ are extremely important to both Fiona and Catherine and have certainly played a part in the company’s continued growth. From the outset the business has encouraged customers to reuse and recycle the packaging, offering environmentally, and purse-friendly refills. Over the last 5 years, the company has changed, wherever possible, to packaging made from recycled plastic. Now, over 80% of the products are supplied in recycled packaging. Since 2023, no plastic is used in outer, bulk packaging either.
Eilidh Costello - Country Ways sponsored rider and ambassador for Pro-Equine - tell us about her favourite product!
It strikes me that the success of Pro-Equine is all the more impressive given that, while product names can be trademarked, none of the formulae can be patented. Added to this the fact that all the ingredients in each product are listed on the label – how do you then protect your recipe for success? “You can’t”, Catherine answers, “but we are robust enough that we can say it’s quite flattering that people copy us”. The key to being robust comes from several factors. Firstly, the quality of the products thanks to the ingredients and the research that goes into them. Secondly, Fiona and Catherine know their customers as well as their products. The fact that Fiona and Catherine are both horsey themselves lends itself to an understanding of just how expensive anything related to horses is! “We have always wanted our products to be fairly priced – horses are expensive enough!” Fiona exclaims (and boy don’t we know it!). “Like everyone, we have been subject to many price hikes but we hate to put our prices up, and we only increase prices when we are pushed to the max. We hold back as long as we possibly can”. I can’t help laughing as Catherine continues, “we would definitely be doing something else if we wanted to make a quick buck!”
Catherine and her horse Macklin by the warm-up arena at Arena UK 2021
It's clear that Fiona and Catherine make a great team and complement each other effectively. This is evident when I ask their advice for running a successful business. “You’ve got to have the passion”, Fiona responds immediately. Catherine laughs and points out “that’s a classic answer from Fiona. I’ll give you the business answer, which is absolutely to have a passion but to go steady in bite-sized pieces. We have seen other local businesses grow too fast and make the mistake of moving away from their core business. It can be tempting to diversify into too many different products, especially with Fiona’s enthusiasm, but we are managing to steer a steady course”. Growing organically has been key to their success and when I ask how they have managed to scale up their output while maintaining their handmade approach, Fiona replies, “it’s easier to make big rather than small so we have upsized some of our products – which also seems to suit our customers. Making the products by hand gives us total flexibility and quality control. To expand further, we simply employ more people and make bigger batches!”. Bulk buying ingredients, standardising packaging and streamlining processes such as labelling, have all contributed to scaling up.
Even with the business moving away from retail sales and increasingly towards business to business selling as it grows, Fiona and Catherine’s principles remain unwavering. Their commitment to harnessing the best of the natural world for our equine partners is matched only by their passion for all things neem! I’m looking forward to learning more about an exciting new product which will be available in time for Blair…
Visit Country Ways in-store for a great selection of Pro-Equine products. Both our Aberdeen and Banchory stores stock the range and our staff are always happy to help and advise. If you can't visit in-store, we also stock the range online at CountryWays.com
Shop the collection here: https://www.countryways.com/collections/pro-equine
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