A one stop shop for building a better baby

A gamechanger for the harness racing breeding industry was launched November of 2023 in the form of Standing Stallions, a new stallion breeding website.

Charles Taylor and Dan Brice built and manage the site and the social media. Both men are entrepreneurs with a passion for the sport and experience in the technology and telecommunications industry.

Charles Taylor started CT Stables in 2007 and bought the current stallion, Catch The Fire as a yearling in 2017. After becoming a Grand Circuit champion, and winner of such prestigious events including the Adios Pace, Dan Patch Invitational, and the Sam Mckee, Catch The Fire retired to stud duty. Catch The Fire introduced Taylor to the breeding side of racing.

Brice was introduced to Taylor when Catch The Fire was racing. Taylor offered to help him get involved in the business. Both men grew up watching the races at tracks up and down the east coast and wanted to find a way to unify and improve the industry, particularly for younger generations.

“Most of Catch The Fire’s interest wasn’t local,” Taylor says. “That really opened my eyes to what can be possible for breeding. We saw a lot of interest from outside the state of Ohio, where he is standing.”

“We want to show the entire story, not just the pedigree,” Taylor continues. “We want to post pictures of the babies and how they were successful and include quotes from trainers and owners and the story behind the good times and the bad. We want to create a more hands-on experience for everyone in the industry and, at the same time, attract people from outside the harness racing community.

“With the newer technology available at our fingertips, it was only a matter of time before we started to create a new level of evolution for the standardbred business,” Brice adds. “As other industries expand, we felt that harness racing in general needed to create new types of communication. There is a whole new audience that we are trying to reach.”

Standing Stallions allows easy access to stallions unlike ever before. Anyone interested can list their stallion on the site and receive support from Standing Stallions. Breeders can communicate directly with the farm to request more information or set up appointments to see the stallions in person.

Broodmares can also be booked via the Broodmare Application tab. That application goes directly to that farm if requested by the farm or can be managed by Standing Stallions.

“We’re working diligently and closely with these farms, so we’re well-versed in each stallion, even the ones we were just introduced to,” Taylor says. “We can tell you their pedigrees and backstories and help with any information for hypothetical crosses. We help with matching them up. We may not be able to move the needle for the pedigree experts, but we may become a valuable resource for new breeders or smaller operations like ours.

“As much as our industry needs and depends on the success of the larger operations,” Taylor added. “We also want to ensure and appreciate the value of the small farms and people just entering the business. We’re mainly a communication and knowledge source. No pressure or sales tactics involved.”

“I think at its core we started to leverage the power of social media marketing,” Brice shared. “It’s another approach to supplement the traditional marketing efforts that our industry is used to. As we tossed around the idea, we recognized there’s a few different directions it could go, but ultimately, we decided to launch it without having an end goal in mind.

“To us,” Brice added. “There’s a beauty in letting it organically pave its own path and find its own position within our industry without having the pressure of having to make it something specific.”

“Even though we have stallions ourselves, we don’t want to be perceived as competition,” Taylor says. “We get just as excited when someone approaches us to help them market their stallion as we do when we market our own. We’re not attempting to monetize the website. It’s not driven by financial gain, but more so connecting the people and strengthening the community, as I perceive we need all hands-on deck to grow our industry.

“We also need to ensure that our growth comes from new sources,” Taylor explained. “We need to expand and reach others outside of our existing community.”

Since Standing Stallions started a few months ago, Taylor and Brice have seen incredible growth. “Within a month, we had over 2,000 friends on the Standing Stallions profile page alone,” Brice shares. “We’ve reached as much as 15,000 unique accounts with a post. We’ve also received a lot of positive feedback from the community. We called the bulk of the people and have had some great conversations. It’s really helped us connect with the people and their stories. We’ve learned so much in such a short period of time.”

“The industry is so big,” Taylor shares. “If we all do our part to make sure each other thrives there will be plenty of opportunity for success. We enjoy highlighting some of the incredible achievements of the larger operations. All eyes are on them for a reason and it’s because they have done a great job managing their operations over time. Highlighting them might give someone in the next generation something to strive for.

“It’s also awesome to highlight the achievements of the small stables.” Taylor concluded. “We’ve been the small operation plenty of times in our life, so it really resonates with us when there’s success at the local level.”

To learn more about Standing Stallions, please visit www.standingstallions.com or follow @standingstallions on Facebook and Instagram or @standingsires on Twitter.

by Nicolle Kain, for Harnesslink