Ten days ago, the Arqana sales company announced the launch of SirePower+, a tailored financing programme which offers breeders the opportunity to have 50% of their 2025 stallion covering fee financed by the Deauville auction house up until the offspring is sold at an Arqana sale.
The goal of the programme is to encourage breeders with good mares to reach a little higher to breed to the best French and international stallions, creating more commercially desirable foals. Both French and foreign breeders are invited to participate.
The produce will be sold at Arqana's weanling and yearling sales.
With the December sale fast approaching, we sat down with Arqana President Olivier Delloye to talk about the new programme.
SF: Basically, what you're doing is becoming a bank for breeders. Can you tell me how this idea came about?
OD: The idea came very naturally to us after talking with some breeders, particularly Eric Puerari from Haras des Capucines. We are all aware that sire power is a key success driver in any select sale, and we were thinking about how we could help breeders to increase the depth of the top profiles in our yearling sales based on the fact that Deauville attracts the top buyers every year. We're pretty sure that those people would be happy to buy a bit more at home if they find a bit more of the high-profile yearlings they are looking for.
SF: I have the impression that sales companies might have done this quietly in the past by extending credit and not asking for payment until the horse actually sells again. Are you the first people to do it formally in this way?
OD: That's a good question. I don't know enough about what sales companies did in terms of initiatives of that kind in recent years, but yes, it's quite unusual to market it as a financial product. It's really aimed at letting breeders know that there is something for them, and if they think that they have a really good mare, they can go the extra step in terms of a covering sire to produce one of those really, really sought-after yearlings. And we can help.
SF: Just to be clear, this applies to international sires, correct? You could breed to Dubawi, for example.
OD: It's open to the best stallions, and of course if we are talking about Europe, you have some in France, but there is obviously a bigger number in the UK and in Ireland. It's open to French breeders or non-French breeders, but we'd rather focus, at least for the first year, on people breeding in France. You can be living in the UK or in Ireland or in the US, but if you have some nice mares standing in France and you really want to offer them the best stallion and maybe a better stallion that you had in mind initially, then that's where SirePower+ comes in.
SF: How has it been received by stallion owners?
OD: To date, it has been welcomed very positively, both by stallion owners and breeders as well. We already got some nice applications–applications that are really, really in line with what we had in mind when launching this product, That's good news, and we also had a positive response in the way that it triggered a good discussion among the breeders in France about how to enhance the quality of what is produced in France. I think listening to the breeders can only help us collectively to launch other initiatives in the near future to achieve the same objective.
“We are wondering within Arqana what a sales company can do to help to make the whole French industry stronger.” –Arqana President Olivier Delloye
SF: Do you imagine it mostly being yearlings that are produced under this scheme or could it be weanlings or in-foal mares?
OD: It could be weanlings, but I'd say its primarily aimed at producing yearlings because France remains a real market for yearlings more than weanlings. Still, if someone has it in mind to produce top-class weanlings to sell in December here in Arqana, I would definitely support that plan, too.
SF: What would have to happen, say by the year after next, for you to say, `wow, this was a big success and we're going to build on it?' What would you like to see happen?
OD: I'd like to see an increased number of yearlings by what we know are or will be the stallions most in demand by those buyers that we do very much to attract here in Deauville.
SF: Is it becoming more and more competitive for sales companies to attract those very top yearlings, making initiatives like SirePower+ necessary to remain competitive? Will we see more and more of this type of promotion?
OD: What we really, really have to improve upon here in France is the depth we can offer at the top end of the catalogue. We need more Classic broodmares going to the best stallions. We need to attract more of those good stallions and keep them in France. The stallion ranks have been improving over the last years, but we have still some progress to make. Everything is linked, so you cannot pretend to have the best stallions in France if you don't have the broodmares and vice versa, so we need to work on both sides. That's why we are wondering within Arqana what a sales company can do to help to make the whole French industry stronger.
SF: Do you imagine people buying mares at this sale, thinking,` I'm going to take advantage of this offer?'
OD: Yes, very much so. The very last big show of the year in Deauville is this breeding stock sale, which has made huge progress over the last years, and which features a strong catalogue. On a very exciting Saturday, we are featuring a Classic-winning filly in the name of Sparkling Plenty, top-class mares, the dams of Unquestionable, Tamfana, and Metropolitan to name the most recent Group 1 winners, and a good bunch of very exciting racing prospects like Spanish Eyes, Grand Stars and many others. We also have some weanlings by the most exciting sires like Frankel, Sea The Stars, Lope De Vega, Siyouni and many others. It's a strong catalogue and I think we will have a good crowd coming from all over the world including a lot of Japanese, so we're hoping for a successful sale.
I do think that what we launched is a good incentive to buy a nice broodmare here, keep her in France and if you can have half of the nomination fee financed until the sale of the yearling, it can only help people be a bit bolder to buy some nice mares and leave them in France.
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