Tag Archives: Equestrian business

Palm Beach International Equestrian Center

Building a global future: iconic US venue set to benefit from new European partnership

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Global Equestrian Group, Waterland Private Equity, and Wellington Equestrian Partners join forces to invest in the Globalization of Equestrian Sport.

Andreas Helgstrand, CEO of Global Equestrian Group (GEG) and Mark Bellissimo, CEO of Wellington Equestrian Partners (WEP) announced an unprecedented partnership focused on developing international equestrian sport.  GEG, will acquire the Wellington, Florida based Palm Beach International Equestrian Center (PBIEC) and will invest in WEP equestrian lifestyle initiatives.  WEP’s largest partners, Mark Bellissimo, Roger Smith, Lisa Lourie, and Marsha Dammerman as well as Michael Stone will co-invest in GEG.  Mark Bellissimo and PBIEC have transformed Wellington into the world’s premiere destination for equestrian enthusiasts, with competitions and events across more than 40 weeks every year. PBIEC is home to the Winter Equestrian Festival, spanning 13 weeks and is the world’s largest and longest-running equestrian sports event. 4,000 families, 8,000 horses, and 250,000 spectators from 43 different countries converge on Wellington to compete for over USD 12 million in prize money.  A recent independent economic study highlighted the Winter Equestrian Festival’s annual economic impact on Palm Beach County of USD 279 million of total expenditures and 150,000 bed nights.  GEG is part of Waterland Private Equity, who manage a global investment portfolio in excess of USD 11 billion.

Palm Beach International Equestrian Center (PBIEC) was founded by Mark Bellissimo and Wellington Equestrian Partners in 2006 and has contributed to transforming both equestrian sport and Wellington, Florida’s position as the world’s premiere destination for equestrian enthusiasts. It attracts some of the biggest names in the sport and the team behind it are hugely respected as “game changers” within the industry.

PBIEC operates 16 competition arenas, 2,500 stalls, and provides participants and spectators with a variety of exclusive restaurants, shopping, hospitality areas, and other first-class facilities.  PBIEC management will remain intact with Mark Bellissimo continuing as CEO, Michael Stone as President, and David Burton as Chief Operating Officer.  The GEG initiative will launch major investments in all areas of the facility ensuring that PBIEC will continue to be the preeminent sport horse venue in the world with increased exposure in Europe, Asia, and South America.  The purchase includes an 11-acre expansion of the Showgrounds.  To ensure continuity, the WEP partners required a 50-year deed restriction on the venue that guarantees USEF and FEI sanctioned shows on the property.  USEF CEO, Bill Moroney, commented, “As always, we are pleased to see a continued investment in US equestrian sport. This significant commitment to world-class facilities, horse and rider welfare, and USEF and FEI competitions further validates the market’s demand, at all levels, for organized sport.” Andreas Helgstrand, co-owner and CEO of GEG added, “The Winter Equestrian Festival and PBIEC are fantastic brands within international equestrian sport.  Together, we will strengthen the offering and create a global market leader spreading our passion for equestrian sport and lifestyle to new markets.”  

Global Equestrian Group is the world’s leading equestrian sports group based on a partnership between internationally acclaimed Helgstrand and Ludger Beerbaum Stables as well as Palm Beach International Equestrian Center and private equity firm Waterland. The Group has 250 full-time employees. Outside of equestrian events the Group is active in other equestrian investments including Helgstrand Dressage, Ludger Beerbaum Stables, Helgstrand Jewellery, and the equestrian apparel and accessories company Kingsland Equestrian. At present, the total revenue of these combined is USD180 million. 

Jessica Springsteen
Jessica Springsteen, the daughter of Bruce Springsteen is a regular competitor at PBIEC and will be representing the US at the Tokyo Olympics this year.

GEG will now have event venues in the US, Germany, and Denmark. The partnership will benefit from knowledge sharing and a strengthened positioning of PBIEC within show jumping where Ludger Beerbaum Stables has a unique market position. Furthermore, the partnership enables the Group to leverage PBIEC’s experience and create a European equestrian sports event company.  ”Our goal is to enhance equestrian sport by providing superior venues and top sport so riders across the world can live out their passions and dreams. With the acquisition of PBIEC, we now have the perfect setting to do this in the US and with our current expansion of Riesenbeck International in Germany we will have two top professional and attractive showgrounds,” says Ludger Beerbaum, four-time Olympic gold medalist in jumping and co-owner of Global Equestrian Group.  Bellissimo added, “We are pleased to be collaborating with both Andreas and Ludger, whose passion and commitment to equestrian sport is extraordinary.  Opportunities abound to take the sport to a new level.”   GEG and WEP are evaluating further investment opportunities in Wellington including a new state of the art Global Dressage Festival showgrounds.”

The investment behind this comes from Waterland, an independent private equity investment group that supports entrepreneurs in realizing their growth ambitions. With substantial financial resources from the firm’s eighth fund of EUR 2.6 billion and committed industry expertise, Waterland enables its portfolio companies to achieve accelerated growth both organically and through acquisitions. To date, Waterland has made investments in over 700 companies.

Bellissimo will be announcing a comprehensive strategy and a series of investments to elevate Wellington as the World’s premiere equestrian lifestyle destination, thus strengthening its international appeal. “The acquisition of PBIEC establishes Global Equestrian Group as a true global market leader in equestrian sports with a strong financial foundation and exciting growth opportunities,” says Kaspar Kristiansen, Managing Director, Waterland Nordic.

Lucienne Elms and Mark Bellissimo Wedding

Equestrian power couple celebrate with marriage

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The Horse Scout Team is delighted to announce that our CEO Lucienne Elms has married her partner Mark Bellissimo, a notable American entrepreneur and CEO of Equestrian Sport Productions. Due to the circumstances this momentous moment occurred in a private ceremony held in North Carolina, US, with just a handful of witnesses, together with the couple’s two dogs!


Lucienne, an active 4* event rider and the founder of the Horse Scout Group has described the event as “a phenomenal chapter, I have married my best friend, and a man that shares my thirst for entrepreneurship”.


The happy couple will be celebrating properly in Europe 2021, with their friends and families from around the world.


Photos by Monica Stevenson

Lucienne Elms – British Equestrian Entrepreneur – So Far

FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailHorse Scout Group is the brainchild of just one woman: 36-year-old Lucienne Elms from Hampshire, in the UK. The idea spawned from a desire to connect the horse world at a professional level, in a way that had never been done before. Like so many great entrepreneurs, Lucienne has a colourful background story, full of trials and tribulations, which  is undoubtedly  the catalyst for much of her business and sporting success.

Her professional journey with horses began in 2002 when she started as a working rider for a local 5* Event rider, alongside completing Biology, Chemistry, Psychology, and English A-levels. It became her goal to reach the top of the sport of eventing, which she duly did during the years that followed. In order to fund her sporting ambitions in what is one of the most financially demanding sports of all, Lucienne set up and managed a successful international sport horse sales business, producing and selling hundreds of horses before her 25th birthday. Through this dedicated approach, she developed a network from all areas of the sports horse industry from sponsorship and industry needs to global sales pipelines. She admits to an unconventional childhood and recalls her father telling her in her teens, that the best thing he could offer was in fact nothing. “It kept me resourceful, self motivated and hungry” she smiles.

An intellectual curiosity and interest in science, prompted Lucienne to do a five-year degree in Chiropractic medicine. “I believed it would give me the autonomy I desired financially, while expanding me on a cerebral level. She became a practitioner, Dr. Chiro for several years, worked in a medical centre, ran her own private practice, alongside competing to CCI 4 star level eventing and selling at volume.

All these walks of life led to the beginnings of an idea. The often considered ‘behind the times’ equestrian industry, when it comes to the tech space and digital connectivity, Lucienne detected the gap in the market. “There was a definite demand by equestrian professionals for a means for them to expand their customer base and or revenue channels”. Horse Scouts’ first business venture was to be the platform which facilitated these connections, in a way that was not dissimilar to LinkedIn. Horse Scout Group today offers a leading international agency and equestrian services network, and investment firm, and a customizable homeware gift platform leveraging the boom in e-commerce. 2020 Horse Scout is expanding rapidly worldwide with a series of world class European and American relationships.

Lucienne continues the story:

“I had a vision that would actually keep me awake at night, so I started researching the tech world and spending time in start-up hubs like a born-again student. I was internally mapping out how the different offerings of social and digital business could leverage the multi-billion equestrian space. It was challenging to carve out enough time to put my business into action. That at all changed when I had a freak riding accident in 2012, sustained 16 fractures in my foot and ankle and was confined to a bed for 11 months due to reconstructive surgeries.

The writing was on the wall.  I became what can only be described as ‘obsessed’ with the idea of Horse Scout as a group entity, with multiple business pillars. It occupied my every thought. Looking back, I should really apologise to the friends and family who were around me because I became all consumed. As any founder knows you can only rely on yourself to make it work, and you don’t take no for an answer. I have always been motivated by negative feedback, tell me I can’t do something and I will not stop pursuing it until I can prove to the contrary. There is a fine line between tenacity and insanity!

In 2013 we secured a worldwide trademark for the brand. I took out a start-up loan with Virgin to tide me over and pay staff while rehabilitating, and planning my road map to venture capital. Rehab has been a big feature in my life, and I like to think it is a way of some other force reminding me to be grateful for every day of physical, mental health and independence. Like all riders I was back on board as soon as I could put my foot to the floor and by May 2014 I was back at an international competition. Limping, full of metal plates but grateful.

The drama didn’t stop there, in September 2018 a near fatal car crash. I punctured both lungs, broke 28 bones and woke up wondering quite what I had done to warrant the pain. As a former chiropractor I took one look at my spinal x rays and saw 16 rib fractures, and multiple transverse process breaks (the wings of the vertebral body that contains your spinal cord) and decided that my broken shoulder, arm, sternum, wrist, leg was actually a blessing, it could have been so much worse. I spent many weeks in Oaksey House Rehabilitation Centre, run by the Injured Jockeys Fund (IJF), an absolutely phenomenal facility. It was a dark but character-building time for me. I recall seeing others less fortunate than me in a state of paralysis. That sharpened me up every day and motivated me, despite indescribable pain. I hold the record for “Most bones broken in one person ever – IJF, Lambourne”. It might be a cheesy cliché “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” but I really believe in that mantra.

The Horse Scout user base is both amateurs and professionals. I found that a high percentage of users chose to profile their horses even when they were not for sale. You might ask why? Because the Europeans have a huge thirst to understand and validate their horses whether they are pets or professional competition horses, via breeding. It is no different to the racing industry and that familiar question “how is it bred?” This will always spark interest and communication amongst the community.

A small loyal bootstrapped team and I worked with Polish developers to create software that automatically connected the horses together by their bloodline lineage. In essence we had the LinkedIn of the equestrian world, with the intention that by 2022, we would have a second layer of authentication taking the verification of this from Wikipedia status (i.e. not necessarily accurate) to certified. We had British co-founders studying Retinal ID, and other Equi-lab concepts, who knew there were safer and more efficient ways to passport and identify horses in the long run. We have mechanisms in place which will build on the social connectivity around bloodlines which I look forward to launching. This will be as soon as we reach critical mass not nationally but internationally through our new strategic partnerships.

Alongside this we started Horsescoutagency.com. An agency to support professional athletes, equestrian events organizers, and brands needing help to test, validate, and launch into the equestrian domain.  I knew before the social influencer boom had really hit that micro-marketing was going to be a win for the equestrian industry. This was owing to its insane fragmentation: dressage, show jumping, eventing, polo. Owning a network of hundreds of thousands of users who have already told us their interests, made the ability to directly target product testers and individuals as consumers, a straightforward task.

By 2018 we had integrated social software to efficiently measure product sales against our agency client’s campaigns. Naturally, this was a great step for equestrian businesses. History proved that brands were lacking ability to prove their Return on Investment (ROI), a banner around an arena was no longer well spent budget unless it was tied to both a digital and social strategy. A win-win situation for the Horse Scout advocates too, as we plumbed in a success commission against products sold. Financial autonomy for professional riders is an area I am very aggressive to pursue. I understand that as a rider attempting to maintain an international presence, you become a slave to the sport, running on an eternal hamster wheel. Unless you are fortunate enough to be from a wealthy background, making money in horses is tough.

My business road map for all athletes connected to the Horse Scout network, will release a second salary to them based on performance. I have some new commercial platforms in build, set to launch in late 2020. The intention is to ‘give back’ to industry professionals such as equestrian artists and photographers, all the way through to world ranked riders. The world has shifted to an on-demand model in the last five years, gone are the days where you want to hold stock in warehouses.  The exclusive partnerships will facilitate fulfilment to Europe and the UK on all our customers products within the week, and generate cash back to our chosen charities, athletes, and commercial counterparts.

Fundraising through 2016 -2017 was a sport in itself. I attended hundreds of meetings all over the UK and Europe, developed a thicker skin, and was used to being told ‘no’, I learnt how to pitch by the end of it. It dawned on me that the essence was to value the customer first and foremost and not the nature of the industry. Try using the words ‘horse business’ to a VC fund and see how far through your presentation you get. I knew the global market expenditure for equestrian was around £222 Billion per annum in 2017, and every other statistic to match. So, I kept my faith that one day with enough business collaboration, and industry understanding, domain knowledge, and strategic partnerships would pay dividends. I could now prove an excess of 250 million equestrians expressed equestrian interests via Facebook. Our Horse Scout customer lifetime member value looked very high when compared to the other community platforms.

I slowly raised £700k via five unique European tech investors, to support a customer scale strategy into Europe. I was also targeting the US, with a well-defined 27 million rider market. In 2017 I applied to BlackboxVC in Silicon Valley. It’s a world-renowned accelerator for proven start-ups. I was one of only two British founders selected and sponsored to go after an eight-month interview process, it changed my life.

While at BlackboxVC I met some of the best tech entrepreneurs, and mentors none of whom placed any relevance on the equestrian domain but taught me how to identify my strengths. CEO Fadi Bishara stated “all good start-ups need three things, a hacker (tech), a hustler (front runner that can convey the vision), and a hipster (the one who can package it as aesthetic”.

I am wholly an extrovert, and a workaholic. I need people to converse with, expand with and form alliances with. I want to provide more synergy to the equestrian industry and operate with the most entrepreneurial, elastic, ambitious equestrian organisations.

This diversity of relationships from true tech to sports innovation inspire me. We have to look at the grassroots and enthusiast market who are the base of the pyramid. I look forward to working with and driving new partnerships and commercial innovation into and organisations all over the world.

The Horse Scout journey is in its eighth year. Despite a challenging economic climate, my shareholders still remain, and the fragmented equestrian market still thrives. On the side-lines, I still make time to get my ‘brain fix’ competing at 4* and I will aim for 5* in 2021 despite being 45% titanium, I remain optimistic that I will not rust or damage myself again, before I get there”.

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