Following is an extended version of the interview with Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning that ran in the online-exclusive Fasig-Tipton Midlantic edition of the PR Special newsletter. To read the full newsletter and enter a drawing for a free Paulick Report baseball cap, click here.
No other North American auction house has had to do more gymnastics with its scheduling during the COVID-19 pandemic than Fasig-Tipton.
The auction company's juvenile sales in Florida and California were canceled for the year, three of its signature yearling sales were combined and moved to September in Kentucky, and the upcoming Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-Year-Olds In Training Sale is about to be held several weeks after its originally scheduled date.
Though there are no guarantees on the roadmap as it stands today, Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning found reason for optimism in the fact that there is a roadmap at all. Browning spoke with Paulick Report bloodstock editor Joe Nevills about the upcoming sale and navigating these historic times.
Q: This is a unique point in world and industry history. What has it been like for you in terms of managing Fasig-Tipton?
Browning: It's been a period of time for three and a half months unlike anything we've experienced. It's been difficult to plan and adapt because of the environment and the conditions changing so rapidly. I think we've prided ourselves for many years on being nimble and quick, and being able to adapt to virtually any set of circumstances, and we learned that this was a set of circumstances we really hadn't anticipated. We tried to communicate with our customers, both buyers and sellers, very openly and honestly, and we've just tried to adapt and make the best decisions we could under the circumstances.
Q: You'll be having your first sale back from the shutdowns away from Fasig-Tipton's central Kentucky base. What advantages and challenges does that pose?
Browning: We're used to conducting sales in various locations. We've been selling in Timonium for over 50 years, so it's not like it's unfamiliar territory. I don't think it dramatically changes the nature of the sale. It's obviously an easier time when you're sleeping in your own bed, but we're used to being on the road, and we have a strong local office in the Midlantic area, with Paget Bennett, Penny Woolley, Polly Mooney, and Anna Thorp. They've been on the sales grounds for training when it started last week, and they do a great job, so that certainly makes it easier for us coming from Kentucky.
Q: Supplies like toilet paper and disinfecting wipes have been famously hard to come by during the pandemic. Did Fasig-Tipton have any difficulty securing anything for the Midlantic sale?
Browning: I would say my Amazon order usage in the last 90 days has skyrocketed. We ordered more masks today to have more available for Midlantic, and we anticipate having them in Kentucky for the Horses of Racing Age Sale. A package came in today of stuff I'd forgotten I'd ordered, in terms of disinfecting wipes for surface contact. You try to be creative and turn over as many rocks as necessary to meet the challenges.
Q: We have a little data to draw from now, but with so many uncertainties, how do you begin to set your expectations for the remainder of the 2020 juvenile season, and the rest of the year?
Browning: I think you virtually can't have any expectations, and that sounds hard to comprehend, but that's the truth. What we get up every day to try and do is, whether you're recruiting horses or buyers, you make every effort to do everything possible to positively influence the quality of the catalog and the quality of buyers that you have on the sales grounds. We don't have any control over where the market is. I think our expectation is to make a 110-percent effort, to serve the market and adapt as best we can under the circumstances that are in place for each and every sale, and see where it takes us. I personally am probably more optimistic than most people. With the resumption of racing and the financial market recovering to a certain extent, I think there's a sense of some renewed optimism in people to get back to conducting business in a more conventional fashion.
Q: Fasig-Tipton had to cancel sales in Florida and California due to the pandemic. How did you handle reassigning the horses entered in those catalogs?
Browning: When we canceled a sale, it essentially made each and every horse in it a free agent for the owners of those horses to make what they thought would be the appropriate business decision, whether it was coming to Timonium, selling at another sale, or retaining them to sell privately off the farm. We try to communicate very consistently and very openly with people about what our goals and plans were. We initially moved the Midlantic sale back one week in May, and that obviously didn't turn out to be enough, so now we're five or six weeks later than we'd originally scheduled it. We don't re-assign them. We gave the owners and consignors the option to make what they thought was the best business decision for them, and worked hand-in-hand with them.
Q: How difficult was it to retain horses that were pointed for the original Midlantic sale in May once the auction was rescheduled? Were private sales common, or did most sellers have a “come hell or high water” mentality toward selling in this venue?
Browning: I don't think the world that we're living in, you can have a “come hell or high water” attitude. The struggle that we've had for some time was not knowing if and when we could resume activities and conduct sales in Maryland. It was a hard-hit region on the East Coast with a government that took the pandemic very seriously. I think if you look at the results that they've achieved, their actions were successful in mitigating the risk and spread of the disease, so compliments to them. But, the reality was, for a period of time, the conduct of horse sales and racing really weren't a high priority from a governmental standpoint, and we didn't have much information to share. That was the challenge, was the lack of information, because the circumstances were changing so rapidly, and this was a set of circumstances that anyone had ever experienced from a health, regulation, and safety standpoint.
Q: How does the Midlantic catalog look different today, as opposed to how it might have looked under normal dates and circumstances?
Browning: It's impossible for me to answer that question, since it's essentially an open sale, and we haven't inspected the vast majority of those horses. The composition of the consigning group has changed somewhat. There were some major consignors from the Ocala area who have traditionally been major supporters of the sale who made decisions not to participate in the sale this year. That'll certainly make an impact. We'll certainly look forward to the resumption of their activity in 2021, but recognize every person's situations and circumstances are unique and personal. In this environment that we're living in, everybody had to make what they believed what was the best decision for themselves and their horses.
I don't think we'll probably have the depth of quality that we would if the sale had been conducted as originally planned. I've had interesting conversations with consignors. There were horses that were sold privately off the farm that have traditionally gone through the public auction environment. It's impossible for anyone to quantify that, but if you're a consignor with a significant sum of money invested in horses, it's the middle of May and you don't know when there's going to be another sale, and someone comes along and makes you a legitimate offer for your horse privately, you have to think about it.
I had several consignors call me and say, “Hey, what do you think? Should I take this offer? What would you do if you were in my shoes?” That's where the relationships matter. I can't make those decisions for anybody, but there comes a point in time when you have to minimize risk in order to be a long-term participant in any market, and I know of several instances of horses that would have been sold privately on the farm that would have traditionally been involved in the marketplace.
We'll never get an apples-to-apples comparison for the 2020 2-year-old sales from year to year. As a matter of fact, we're not going to compare results for June 2020 to May 2019 as a result of that, and I hope to hell we don't have to compare results from May 2021 to June 2020, because I hope we're back to “normal conditions” in 2021, but all we can do is the best we can under the circumstances.
Q: What kind of discussions took place with the Maryland State Fairgrounds to get the sale rescheduled?
Browning: The Fairgrounds staff and team has been tremendous to work with. They've been anxious to resume activities when it was deemed appropriate by their officials, both at a state level and local level. They've bent over backwards to work with us, and to be in communication with us and on our behalf to make sure we create as safe an environment as possible while conducting commerce.
Q: Fasig-Tipton introduces online bidding for this sale. What was the process behind implementing it, and how did the pandemic affect the timeline?
Browning: I think like most sale companies, it was something that we had explored. We had evaluated and we'd done some research and some testing on that, but I don't think there's any question that the COVID-19 epidemic accelerated the implementation plan from our perspective, and particularly under the light of what we saw Inglis was able to accomplish under extremely difficult conditions for their Easter Sale. It was certainly a stimulus of activity for us to get it up and running.
Q: International buyers are obviously going to have a different impact than usual for this sale and events in the foreseeable future due to travel restrictions and health concerns. What have your conversations been like with those buying groups?
Browning: For this segment of the 2-year-old market, unquestionably the biggest factor there has been the significant reduction in activity by our Korean friends, because of travel restrictions and limitations that are in place. We will continue to try to work with them and through them to provide as much information as possible, to stimulate as much activity as we can between now and June 30.
There is no question that there is a significant buying group whose participation is going to be dramatically reduced in 2020 compared to 2019 in the Korean marketplace. We saw last year some significant activity, and we thought we were making some progress from some buyers in the Middle East. There were a significant number of horses that were sold to Dubai connections – not the traditional Maktoum family buyers, but the trainers and other principals involved in that region. That will also likely be reduced in 2020. There are still agents that are working, but it sure helps to have an environment where people feel more comfortable traveling, and more comfortable in terms of economic activity than we're going to find this year.
Do you see the online bidding component potentially expanding your international buying base in the future, being as though it loosens the necessity of being at the sale in person?
Browning: I think everyone's trying to identify and expand their buying base, whether it's in America, whether it's in Europe, Australia and so forth. I think everyone would say they sure hope the online bidding enhances the ability and improves the ability of folks that can't attend the sale in person to participate and feel comfortable in the process.
We live in a world where habits are changing. I think the behavior of folks in my generation and older is likely to be different than the folks in [younger] generations, and the comfort level a younger person might have in online activities would probably be higher than it would be for me and my contemporaries, but we view it as a long-term part of our sales activities. We'll learn from it. We'll look and see what we did right and see ways to improve it, but we certainly hope to create a broader marketplace with increased participation from people around the world.
The post Q&A: Fasig-Tipton’s Boyd Browning On Setting Expectations For The Midlantic Sale And Beyond In 2020 appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
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