Hey everyone! I have an important topic to discuss with you today - environmental awareness and our planet. As we all know, the Earth is a very important part of our existence — it provides food, clothing, shelter, gravity…all the basic necessities of life. It also gives us somewhere to raise our families, visit with friends and loved ones, ride and care for our horses, and go about our daily lives. There is nowhere else in the universe (that we currently know of) like our great planet.

Unfortunately, the Earth can’t survive with the way we humans are currently running the show. We pollute the air and water, waste valuable resources, and create waste products that sit in landfills because they are unable to (safely) break down and return to the environment. Every day more and more harm is done, and it gets harder and harder to repair what damage we have already caused. If we don’t take a step back and look hard at our daily habits, and seek out ways to reduce our impact, the Earth as we know it may someday cease to exist.

…But there is good news! Every day people are also coming up with new and innovative ways to help conserve our resources, clean up our acts, and repair our ailing environment. A really neat organization called 1% For The Planet (1% FTP) has been doing their part by encouraging businesses to pledge 1% of their sales to environment and conservation-based non-profits across the globe in an effort to give a little back to our great planet. To date, more than 850 businesses in 27 countries have given over $30 million thanks to the efforts of this group.

The reason I bring up 1% FTP is that we have a very special group of products called G.R.A.S.S. (Green Riding Apparel for Style & Sustainability) on our website. G.R.A.S.S. was founded by Kerri Kent, who is the creator of Kerrits riding apparel (I’m sure you’ve all seen their products on our site), and they happen to be a member of 1% FTP. In fact, the G.R.A.S.S. website is where I learned about the organization in the first place. Saddlers Row is a big supporter of environmental awareness and conservation, and we are very proud to offer the full G.R.A.S.S. line on our website. These amazing riding garments are made of bamboo, organic cotton, and recycled Poly Carbon (which is 64% Recycled polyester and 36% Biconstituent fabric comprised of 97.6% Poly and 2.4% carbon from bamboo fiber) and Ecolux (88% Recycled Poly and 12% Spandex fabric) which are both made with materials derived from recycled plastic bottles. They are amazingly soft, breathable, and durable. They are also great at wicking moisture, which I’m sure we can all appreciate right now in the middle of summer!

I strongly encourage everyone to go check out this fabulous, functional line of riding wear and maybe pick up a few pieces. It will help out the Earth in more than one aspect, and you’ll look great doing it!

Pessoa has released their full line of jumping and dressage saddles featuring their new X-Change/X-Change 2 system. The X-Change System feature color-coded headplates which can easily be switched out at home with a screwdriver to modify the size of the saddle tree. Saddles with the X-Change 2 System (ANKY and Baloubet Pro models) have a similar design, but the plates are not easily accessed at home and the saddle must be disassembled by a saddler to change them. The plates range from narrow to extra wide in width, and simply require the removal of 4 screws to swap them out and replace them with a new size.

We now have both the Pessoa A/O in grained and smooth leather with the X-Change System and the Anky Euro with X-Change 2 System in stock, as well as the X-Change plates themselves, check them out!

Hey, just wanted quickly to point out because they are hidden on the third page that we have added some brand new Stubben bits to the site! We will also have the ShowjumperClinic.com and ShowHunterClinic.com DVD series (to go with the FULL DressageClinic.com DVD series already on the site) on the DVDs page by the end of the day today.

ETA: The full ShowJumper series is now up, as well as the portions of the ShowHunter series that we currently have available. Enjoy!

As I’m sure you’ve seen by now, Saddlers Row keeps a pretty good inventory of dressage, close contact, and all purpose saddles on consignment by their owners. We regularly update our photos and listings in order to keep them as current as possible (there is a date at the bottom of the list that shows when it was last updated, but if you have any doubts you can feel free to call or email us at any time to make sure). We do allow saddle trials, as long as proper care of the saddle is observed during that time period. And just in case you worried, distance is never an issue with consignment saddles - If you see a saddle that you would like to try, we are happy to arrange a trial with you and ship it to wherever you are so that you can find something that works for both you and your horse.

Typically, a person sees a saddle on our site that they like, the person contacts us, and we verify that we still have the saddle in the store (at times they can be out on trial with another person, or very recently sold, and we want to make sure that we don’t waste your time with a saddle that isn’t even here!). If the person wants to arrange a saddle trial, we have them sign a Consignment Saddle Trial form and fax/email it to us. Once we have received that, we get the person’s credit card information, so that we can process the saddle. People trying out a saddle are charged the cost of the saddle plus shipping - if they don’t like the saddle and send it back (the person trying the saddle is responsible for the cost of shipping in both directions), we remove the saddle charge from their card. If they like the saddle and decide that they want to keep it, then they let us know and the process is done, and somebody has a NEW (to them) SADDLE.

I hope that this has been able to de-mystify the consignment saddle process a little bit. We provide this service because we want to help everyone locate the saddle that they want and need, whether it is from us or from another horse owner/lover. Until next time…

This weekend, one of our very own Saddle Experts Jennifer took ninth place riding in Open Preliminary A in the Maui Jim Horse Trials at Lamplight Equestrian Center. She was riding her own horse, a 9 year old Rhineland mare named Angelina, and we are all very proud of her!

Jennifer also tested out the Heritage Tackified Polo Glove for us this weekend, and this is what she had to say about them:

“These are the best gloves I’ve had in a long time. They are lightweight and have that extra grip that make them the perfect glove for cross country. The thin leather palm let me have a good feel of the reins, and even when I had to slip the reins a little I still had a good grip on the rein. I won’t ever do cross country without these gloves again.”

Thanks for being our guinea pig, Jennifer! Glad you got around well and had fun!

Hi everyone, welcome to Saddlers Row’s brand new blog! We wanted a place where we could communicate with our awesome visitors, so we decided that a blog would be the perfect addition to our recently re-done website (Have you checked it out, by the way? It’s a thousand times nicer than our old site, and it has SO many more items to help make life easier and more comfortable for you and the horse in your life). Here, we can talk about great new products, store and employee news, and anything else that we feel you might find interesting or useful.

Something that I thought was worth mentioning today is our Saddlers Row Birthday Club. The Birthday Club is open to anyone who would like to join - all we need from you is your first and last name, birthday month, email or mailing address, and phone number. Each month, we send out a special notice (either by email, if possible, or through snail mail to those who haven’t gotten around to establishing themselves online) to all the members who have a birthday coming up in that month, and those people get 15% off all regularly-priced merchandise during one day that month that they choose to visit us! Great, isn’t it? (As of now we don’t have the Birthday Club set up to work with our online store, but we’re definitely working on it for the near future.)

If you’re not a member of the Saddlers Row Birthday Club but you would like to join us, feel free to drop by our store, call in (It’s toll-free: 888-710-7171), or send us an email (service@saddlersrow.com), and we’ll get you all set up. Also, don’t forget to stop by our store website and sign up for our mailing list! We have some fun contests with really neat prizes heading your way, as well as reminders of our sales and other Really Big Events (like our annual Tent Sale Aug. 15-17! Don’t miss it, it’s crazy!).

Well, that’s all for now. Check back for more News You Can Use from Saddlers Row!