By Chris McGrath
Taylor had worked Saratoga one summer for the pioneering Lee Eaton and, as early as 1978, dipped a toe in the same water. A first seven-yearling consignment at Keeneland included a first stakes winner—since followed by 126 Grade I winners raised or sold, including 10 last year alone.
“It was a natural extension of what we were already doing: a lot of customers you boarded for needed to sell,” Taylor says. “And I thought, well, if Lee Eaton could sell a horse for $100,000 and make $5,000, that's more than I could get boarding a horse for a whole year. At that time people were charging commission for RNAs. They probably hated me but the first thing I said was, 'Hell, you can't take a guy's horse over there and run it through the sale, and it goes through for $200,000, and you want $10,000 when he didn't even sell his horse!' So we needed a minimum commission; and then if we sell, we get paid. Well of course our customers loved that, and now everybody does it.”
Success, however, brought its own challenges. Taylor remembers customers waiting in line at the sales, wanting to talk reserves, discuss the action on their horse. But he sought some expert counsel, and was told that Taylor Made—which had meanwhile also opened a stallion operation, starting with the arrival (or strictly the return) of Unbridled's Song in 1997—had developed in isolated “silos.” The solution they came up with was assignation of Thoroughbred Advisors to different clients, maintaining continuity across the board. “From problems come opportunities,” Taylor remarks. “Every customer now had their point person. And that was what allowed us to continue to grow, while keeping that family feel, that family touch.”
Even with such delegation, the brothers maintain a conspicuous front-of-house presence: if the help are wearing the tie and livery, so are their bosses. “We want them to share the kindred spirit of the family,” Taylor says. “We're not on any pedestal, we're in there beside them working. And the fact is we're not just one business owner but five of us trained by the same master, united so that when I win, Frank wins, Ben wins, Mark wins and Pat wins: we all win together.
“It's all about those innate, core values that have helped us, whether in terms of scale, or how we keep our dominance. We're always looking to get better, internally, externally, not because it's some big strategic plan but because it's in our nature to ask how can we do that better.”
First of three key values, he suggests, is honesty. “It's not that I never told a lie in my life, but if I ever did, I felt like crap after; beat myself up forever,” he says. “And then we want to care for our customers and their horses and each other like family. And the other thing is to always look for a better way, so that just because we're doing something now doesn't mean we'll be doing it two or three years from now.”
Fasig-Tipton photo
But while Taylor Made will unquestionably continue to absorb his ardor as it faces the future, it's up to the wider industry to heed some no less imaginative and dynamic input in doing the same. For Taylor is grieved by the obstinacy with which our sport resists the kind of adventure that has long sustained own business.
“I'm full of ideas,” he says, sounding rather exasperated. “I don't know if they're any good, but I've told them to every track executive I can and there's something about this business, people don't seem to use common sense.”
His opening premise is simple: purses go up when handle goes up, and that's obviously key to doing the best we can for horse owners. But too many racetracks have been so obsessed with becoming a casino that the core product is neglected, and offered with bad grace.
“Say we were in the popsicle business,” he says. “It's like we have the licorice popsicle stand and say: 'If you don't like our licorice, we don't want you as a customer. We're not going to give you cherry, orange, grape, we're not going to give you the flavors everybody loves. We're just here to sell our licorice, screw you, go someplace else.'”
Any novice who does try the track is bewildered. “It's like you need to learn Chinese or Russian to play the game, and it's going to take you too long to learn it,” Taylor complains.
While not a gambler himself, and therefore not presuming to design alternatives himself, he is appalled that the wagering product has basically remained unchanged for a century. “No bets for people who just want to bet and have fun,” he says. “They don't care about learning how to handicap. Like the slot machine player versus playing at the craps table: one is intellectual; the other is. 'Let's bet and have some fun.'
“And I'll tell you the problem with not being customer-focused. In 1890, Dan Taylor was born. That's my granddad. Everybody had a horse, everybody loved horseracing, that's the culture he grew up in. In 1924, Joe Taylor my dad was born: the car's just invented, but Joe rides a pony to school, and you go to the Hawthorne Derby in Chicago and there's 100,000 people watching. Everybody's still part of that horse culture. In '56, Duncan Taylor is born. And it's all about the damned car. Out of 100 kids in my class at Lexington Catholic, about four liked going out to the track. Go forward 30 years, and my son Marshall is born. And the kids in his class know as much about a giraffe as they do about a horse. As the horse's usefulness diminished, as a mode of transportation and an agricultural tool, so we have lost our competitive advantage.”
Taylor deplores a complacency he traces to the long years when horseracing was the only gambling game in town. “We're like the little kid at the table, whose mom always brings him food, never makes him work,” he says. “And he turns into a big fat kid who doesn't know how to do anything and can't get a job anywhere. With the monopoly we had, we got lazy and fat, we got a bad culture and never thought about the customer.”
Who, after all, is that customer? Not the horse's owner. “Because he's like the sports player, providing the talent,” reasons Taylor. “He's Wilt Chamberlain, he is putting on the show. The customer is the one who comes to the races, who's betting on the owner's horse. Yet we look down on him like he's a tramp and an idiot, we don't esteem him at all. And no business can treat customers like second-rate citizens and last very long.”
Taylor said he suspected that some people don't actually want to expand the sport's reach: that they don't want to build our industry into Mount Everest, but are happy just to be kings of the anthill. But he looks around the game and sees people of prodigious wealth and influence, amply competent to reboot betting technologies and run racetracks altruistically.
“I still think we have a great product,” Taylor stresses. “That's the thing, we have something so special. How much better to be around these beautiful horses, with a really good atmosphere, than sitting pulling a lever in some dungy casino with lights going on and off.”
According to Taylor, the person who has done most to evangelize our walk of life is Michael Behrens of MyRacehorse. “Those 60,000 people he signed up now have a reason to try and 'learn the Russian',” he said. “They have a hook. Our entry level to have horse ownership was way too high before. A percentage of those 60,000 will become millionaires, even billionaires. Who knows? One of them could be the next John Magnier.”
A new generation: Brooks Taylor, Logan Payne, Marshall Taylor, Katie Taylor, Joe Taylor, Alex Payne | Laurel Donnell photo
Or even the next Duncan Taylor. Happily, for Taylor Made, and for our industry, he isn't going anywhere. He'll still be in the office every day, mentoring his brother Mark in the role he has relinquished, and everyone else on the team; and he'll never stop aspiring, both for the good name of one business and for the viability of its trading environment.
“We're not perfect at Taylor Made, by any means,” he said. “I'm sitting here now, retired from being CEO, but I've a lot of thoughts how we can improve still. You know, I'm not the greatest horseman. I'm not the greatest businessman. I'm not the greatest anything, really. But I have a streak in me that I just try really hard, whatever I do, to keep focused, keep working. I think that's really been my gift to the company: I've always looked out for it, and always tried to keep the big picture in mind.”
But the real key, he emphasizes, remains the same as it was the brothers sought to live up to the example of Daddy Joe: doing things the right way, doing things together, sharing that Taylor-made family feeling.
“There are so many people that have worked with me through the years—customers, team members, vendors, family—that have been part of Taylor Made's success,” he says. “I am thankful for each one of them. The person I owe the most to is my beautiful wife Carol. She has been a lot like my mother, always putting our family first. She has raised five beautiful children, and that's worth more than all I have accomplished.”
As a new cycle opens in this remarkable dynastic tale, then, an apt final word is offered by Taylor's brother and successor as CEO. Mark Taylor recalls how John Gaines, such a pivotal influence on their father, celebrated Daddy Joe not just as the complete horseman but also as “an agronomist, builder, geneticist, caretaker, nutritionist, salesman, entrepreneur, executive, promoter, accountant, arborist, midwife, dealmaker, diplomat and handyman.” Joe, Gaines said, was “truly a man for all seasons but anyone who knows him understands that his real business is helping people.”
That was the template, and Mark feels that is exactly how his brother has presided over Daddy Joe's legacy. “In many ways, Duncan has been all these things and more for our family, our team members, our customers, and their horses,” he says. “Our plan is to free him of many of his prior duties as CEO, while harnessing his drive for customer service and innovation heading into our next chapter.”
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