We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Melissa Kemp & Alana Stotts a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Melissa & Alana, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
Manhattan Riding Club was initially started by Melissa after living in London for a few years and belonging to an equestrian members club that offered her the opportunity to meet others sharing the same passion.
After moving to New York and starting a grassroots effort for the club we met on one of the first few MRC Rides. Both being lifelong equestrians, never having owned our own horses and having a hard time finding good riding while living in NYC, we shared the same vision!
The immediate reception from our first few riders was so positive and exciting we knew this was a great idea from the beginning. With NYC being one of the biggest cities in the world we knew there were many other riders like us looking for community and better riding opportunities.
We do offer a unique approach for our industry, most horse riding is booked in person or over the phone and we use a digital platform, our website to book and promote rides on social media. We like to think of ourselves as disruptors in the equestrian community.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Our club is different from other horse riding businesses because we do not own our facility or horses, we partner with different horse owners and equestrian businesses to create unique riding opportunities to offer our community. For example one of our partners offers unique open space riding opportunities and trailers horses to various locations and events, we have partners focused solely on playing polo, and who own specific breeds like Clydesdales and Friesians.
The thing we are most proud of is our strong community. Seeing our riders develop as best friends, roomates travel buddies and changing their lives because of connections they have made through Manhattan Riding Club is extremely rewarding.
We have a number of riders who had grown up riding, competing and having horses as their passion and had to take breaks as they started their careers and then found us and decided to pick their riding back up. We get the most amazing gratitude notes from our riders about how MRC has helped them find their way back to their passion and some have now even decided to buy their own horses and make riding a real staple in their lives again.
Since starting in 2019 we have grown to over 650 riders who have joined us on one of our rides, many of whom are regular riders that join us on a regular basis!
If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?
Up until 2021 all of our rides had been local one day events, in January 2021 we offered our first trip to South Carolina and we are now offering this trip annually as well as regular cross country intensive trips to Ireland and an annual Foxhunting trip to Ireland. We look forward to launching more destinations this year and definitely look at trips as a new revenue stream for us.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
Early on we forged a close relationship with the remaining tack shop in Manhattan, Manhattan Saddlery. This iconic location has been the backdrop for many of our social events in the city, bringing together equestrians to connect. Now they are also carrying branded Manhattan Riding Club Sun Shirts that we use for uniforms on some of our rides.
Contact Info:
- Website: manhattanridingclub.com
- Instagram: @manhattanridingclub
- Facebook: @manhattanridingclub
- Linkedin: @manhattanridingclub
- Youtube: @manhattanridingclub
- Other: https://manhattanridingclub.com/pages/press-links