We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Anne Dolin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Anne below.

Anne, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

9 years ago, I was frustrated with the amount of toxins I was spraying around my horse-riding daughter and her pony. See, she was too short to groom the pony, so I ended up doing a lot of the work and started reading the labels. Then came an outbreak of a virus that was transferable to horses from their bits that were shared. The barn owner suggested Clorox wipes.

Between these two incidents, The Infused Equestrian was born. I started hand making the recipes that I researched with ingredients you could pronounce. It started with a fly spray, and as my daughter told me all she needed, they were made. I started using them at the barn, and soon enough; the barn Moms were asking for a bottle. It was a hit. Another person suggested I attend a local clinic – where a Big Name Trainer comes in for the day and teaches kids how to properly ride. That was my first “Outing”. I had no idea what I was doing and went home $35 richer.

Pretty soon, a lot of people were following our Instagram and Facebook. We developed a website, email, and thank goodness my husband and I have a background in Marketing and Advertising. I was making batches of bottles in my 12×12 office every day. I was selling out of the back of my car at small horse shows. Finally, a retailer took a chance on us and offered us a “pop-up” event and saw the response in how the consumers wanted our product. She was our first retailer and helped us structure pricing, taught us about margins, how to take good photos – the works.

Within 2 years, we were in over a dozen retailers, I was still hand-making product, changing bottles, labels, and running everywhere to all the horse shows. It was exhausting. A lot of people made fun of us – my daughter was embarrassed. We kept going. Within 5 years, we were in over 50 retailers, and our consumers knew us by name. Still hand making everything, we launched our most successful product on a whim. It blew up. I couldn’t keep up making it by hand anymore. We spent 6 months looking to reverse engineer my recipe and scale up with a manufacturer.

At 9 years later, we are still cautious about who we partner with – what retailers best fit our brand ethos. Our products are carried in over 100 retailers – all tack stores (where you get everything for a horse), FarmVet and Chewy picked us up two years ago. We manufacture 3 of our products outside of the home. Our long term goal is to have the whole line manufactured along with a distributor lined up.

I can’t imagine my life without this business, the business that just happened!

Anne, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m just a barn mom who wanted something different to put on her daughter’s horse that was safe. I created The Infused Equestrian – a non-toxic grooming company that manufactures equestrian products. Our line includes fly spray, mane & tail conditioner, hoof oil and we created the first helmet deodorizer and refresher on the market. Most people know us by that popular product: Noggin.

With consumers looking for cleaner, more natural ingredients in their homes, there’s no reason to skip the hobby either – and if the products that people are using have toxins in them, we shouldn’t be using them on our horses either.

I’m most proud of how we stuck it out. A lot of long nights, hand making 6500 units for a subscription box, and the challenge of Covid, we didn’t give up. Even when it looked like we should!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We depend on UGC (User Generated Content). I have never paid for a photographer to shoot the products, and rely heavily on our ambassador team. When I saw that we were stalling right before 10K followers on Instagram, I hired a social media manager to help take some of the load off from the every day challenge of posting. She pushed us to 13K in a few months time. It was a great investment, and allowed me to focus on more revenue making tasks.

Our ambassador team is curated from the best young riders in the country. We interview the applicants and once selected, I have them sign a contract once we have decided to bring them on board. They are required to attend a monthly zoom meeting and share original content. They are my eyes and ears on the ground at horse shows all around the country and our brand supports their brand too! We love to tag them in our social media, because we are proud of them like family.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

We built our reputation on being transparent. From our bottles being clear to our labels listing every ingredient, we are very open about our journey, our struggles and our successes! We don’t discount our products but a few times a year – we do not have a running promotion that cheapens our product. We also don’t give discount codes to our Ambassador team because that undercuts our retailers – they can’t offer 15% or 20% off sometimes so we honor them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.theinfusedequestrian.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theinfusedequestrian

Image Credits

Justina Reinhart