THE FRENCH horsedealer Frédéric Colin started buying horses in Ireland 10 years ago to feed a taste for Irish breeds among French amateur riders. Colin, whose family have been horsedealers on the Normandy/Mayenne border for three generations, buys Connemara ponies for French pony clubs and sports riders, and Irish cobs for the leisure rider.
It can be a good business. In France, Colin says, it costs about €4,000 to produce a sports horse; in Ireland he can buy an unbroken three-year-old Connemara filly for between €1,000 and €1,500. He then pays the transport costs, breaks the horses in himself and is sure of finding a market for between €2,000 and €3,000. But he has learned the hard way that the Irish have their own approach to doing business.
“Many Irish horsedealers don’t know how to say no,” he says, smiling. “You tell them what you want and they say yes, and then when you go to buy, it’s not what you wanted at all. It’s the poet in them.
“Ireland is small, but it’s big. It takes time to travel the twisty roads to go to see horses. It all costs money.”
Colin has been told by individuals that horses have the correct paperwork, but when he goes to collect the animals the paperwork doesn’t exist. This year he had to wait three weeks for a horse to be microchipped.
He has rung up dealers to visit horses at 8am, but finds it impossible to get an appointment before 10 am. “We don’t have the same rhythm,” he says.
He now finds the horse auctions more satisfactory than individual sales. They are more professional and more cost-effective, and he gets a catalogue with all the information he needs. The horses all have to have their veterinary papers before sale at auction.
“The horses are well shown and are generally of a good quality, and the prices are correct,” he says. “You can have the choice of up to 200 horses.” This abundance is great for a foreign buyer.
He admits that when he started going to horse auctions people kept him at a distance and he found it difficult to be accepted. As a fan of the Irish cob, one of the horse fairs he’d like to visit is Smithfield, but he’s been told by people that it’s too dangerous.
Getting the quality is what makes buying in Ireland interesting. “The Irish are horse people,” he says. “The quality is there. They know horses and can winnow out the poorer-quality horse. I’ve seen horse events with 200 or 300 people. The same event might only attract 50 people in France.”
He’s seen children as young as six present their horses at auctions. “You’d never see that in France,” he says. “The Irish are better riders than the French. The French are fearful.”
The piebald, or skewbald, is a much-loved horse in France and is an ideal walking horse. “The temperament is perfect,” says Colin. “They are calm, not nervous; easy to maintain. We sell, for example, to women riders between 40 and 60 who don’t want too much excitement.”
The market is there, but intercultural problems persist. Colin can sell his horses over the internet but cannot buy them the same way. “If I buy 20 horses over the internet from Ireland, 15 will be good and five will not be so good,” he says. “So the money I make on the first 15, I lose on the five.”
He recently bought two Irish cobs over the internet. One arrived with a scar on its leg. “I wouldn’t have bought that horse if I’d known,” he says.
His problem is finding a broker in Ireland, someone who understands how rigorous a dealer needs to be to sell in France, someone who could keep an eye out at smaller horse fairs and choose horses. As it stands, Colin has to make the trips himself.
It’s hard to get Irish sellers to understand the demands of his market. To sell in France, the horse must be in perfect condition, microchipped and with its papers in order. “No French person will buy otherwise,” he says. “There are heavy fines.”
Ideally, Colin would like to buy 10 horses a month here. “Ireland could develop its amateur horse market. After all, it’s only Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Spain that produce sports horses in Europe.”
The Irish Horse Board estimates that the amateur horse-sale market in Ireland was worth €60 million in 2007. European buyers account for just 7 per cent of that market.
Some years ago horse prices became too high and margins too tight. Since the economic crisis, prices have come back down and Colin has been able to start buying again. But money is tight everywhere. “There is less money in France, too, than before,” he says.
