It All Started With a Chewed Tail

Champion Tails began in 1985 on our farm in South Australia — although at the time, neither of us had the slightest idea that we were starting a business.

Our children had two little ponies, and one of them decided that the other pony’s tail looked rather tasty. With a show approaching, we were left with a pony whose tail had been chewed terribly short.

One day, while Kerrie was putting her own long hair into a ponytail, she remembered the hair switches women once used to add length and fullness to their hair.

Why couldn’t we do something similar for a horse?

Finding the horsehair for that first experiment turned out to be an adventure in itself. A family member obtained a horse’s tail from a knackery and posted it to us in the middle of an Australian summer.

Unfortunately, what had been supplied was considerably more than just the hair.

By the time we returned from holidays, the local Post Office was keeping our parcel outside.

“Mrs Koch, we have a parcel here for you,” came the phone call. “Have you been sent something that should have been refrigerated?”

No.

“Well… could you please come and collect it? It rather smells.”

It certainly did.

After a memorable trip home with every car window open, the parcel was taken well away from the house and the usable horsehair was salvaged. The chickens were delighted with what remained.

The hair then spent several days soaking in the laundry sink. We managed to make it considerably cleaner. The smell, however, was another matter.

It wasn’t a particularly glamorous beginning — but it was the beginning of Champion Tails.

Creating the Champion Tails False Tail

Kerrie approached a hair salon that specialised in wigs, and a wigmaker kindly offered to teach her the traditional weaving technique used to make human hairpieces.

After spending a day learning the craft, Kerrie returned home and began experimenting.

There was a problem.

The traditional construction was designed for people, not horses. Its long dock didn’t allow the natural swing and movement required in a horse’s tail.

So Kerrie changed it.

She adapted the weave and construction until the tail moved the way a horse’s tail needed to move.

From that first experiment came the Champion Tails False Tail.

More than 40 years later, some of our earliest False Tails are still around — proof of something we have believed from the beginning: make something properly, look after it, and it should last.

One Problem Led to Another

When we moved to Adelaide in 1989, our False Tails presented us with another challenge.

The raw horsehair available to us could be heavily stained with urine, dirt and grime. No matter how much we cleaned it, we couldn’t achieve the beautiful white we wanted for the show ring.

So we approached a product developer with a challenge: could something be developed that would remove those stubborn stains?

It could.

Soon our white False Tails were becoming beautifully clean and bright — sometimes whiter than the natural tails of the horses around us.

Customers began asking us:

“How are you getting those tails so white?”

When we explained that we had a specially developed product, they wanted to buy it too.

So we put it on the market.

Champion Tails Stain Remover was born.

And without really planning it, our journey into show presentation cosmetics had begun.

More Than Just Shampoo and Conditioner

When we decided to develop shampoo and conditioner, we weren’t interested in putting the Champion Tails name on inexpensive, ordinary products simply to add them to our range.

We wanted them to do something worthwhile for the horse’s coat and hair.

Our shampoo needed to clean effectively while caring for the coat, be formulated at an appropriate pH for the horse and help restore the natural oils that can be lost through washing.

That philosophy gave it its name:

Restoring Emollient Shampoo.

Our conditioner had an equally demanding brief. We wanted it concentrated so customers could adjust the amount they used according to the hair. It needed to soften and condition while helping maintain the oils and condition of the hair.

But for the show ring, that wasn’t enough.

We wanted it to give a tail body and bulk, leaving the hair beautifully soft, light and fluffy rather than heavy and weighed down.

That’s what we asked for.

And that’s what we got.

There was even an unexpected fan of the shampoo. One Sunday, a member of Brenton’s family was sitting in church when the lady behind her asked:

“What have you done with your hair? It looks amazing!”

The reply?

“Well, I’ve been using the horse shampoo!” We don’t include that in the directions on the bottle.

The Beginning of Champion Tails Make-Up

Kerrie had shown horses before she and Brenton married, and in those days exhibitors commonly used boot polish to enhance the naturally darker areas around a horse’s eyes and muzzle.

It could rub off onto clothing, and a product made for polishing boots certainly wasn’t something Kerrie considered ideal for use around a horse’s face.

She wanted something different.

The idea was for a colour that could be applied and then wiped back, leaving just enough residue to subtly enhance the horse’s own natural colouring. It needed to stay where it was put rather than transferring onto people’s clothes and, importantly, be developed specifically with the horse in mind.

Kerrie and Brenton worked with a cosmetic chemist interstate to turn the idea into reality.

Selecting the colours proved particularly interesting.

Kerrie would look at one sample and say it contained too much pink, another was too blue, and another simply wasn’t the right tone.

Eventually the people working with her asked in amazement:

“Can you really see that?”

Kerrie was equally surprised. She had always assumed everyone could.

That eye for subtle differences in colour would become invaluable not only in developing Champion Tails cosmetics, but in matching the many shades and mixtures required for our False Tails.

The first Highlight Make-Up was deliberately subtle. Blue Black was created for darker horses, while Red Black complemented bays and chestnuts.

It wasn’t designed to paint a heavy ring around the eye. Its purpose was in its name:

Highlight Make-Up — enhancing what nature had already put there.

And it is still used by exhibitors today.

Changing Fashions, Changing Products

Show-ring fashions change.

As exhibitors began favouring a much darker black finish, we developed Stayz On Black — a thicker Jet Black formulation with greater holding power, allowing the exhibitor to decide just how dark a finish they wanted.

For those wanting shine, our Clear Gloss could be applied over Highlight Make-Up.

Then customers wanted the colour and gloss together.

So we developed Coloured Gloss Make-Up.

But there was still the mess.

And the answer to that problem came from one of the least glamorous product-development laboratories imaginable:

our kitchen stove.

Kerrie was cleaning it one day with a stove-black product packaged in a tube with a sponge applicator.

She looked at it and said to Brenton:

“We could put horse make-up in these tubes. Think of the mess it would save!”

Brenton agreed.

That simple observation eventually led to the distinctive Champion Tails Make-Up Tube with its built-in sponge applicator — allowing the product to be applied directly, quickly and with very little mess.

That same no-mess philosophy continues to influence the products we develop today.

The Horse That Didn’t Have a White Sock

White Cover Crème has another very Champion Tails beginning.

Kerrie wanted something that could do more than brighten a horse’s existing white markings. She wanted a product with enough coverage to hide the colour underneath and produce a beautifully white finish.

When the first sample arrived, she brought one of our chestnut ponies out of the yard, tied it to the fence and began testing the new product on its leg.

A delivery driver who was also a horseman stopped and asked what she was doing.

Kerrie explained that she was trying a new product for white socks.

Looking at the finished leg, he said:

“Wow, that’s amazing. That sock is certainly white as white.”

Kerrie replied:

“Yes, it is amazing — considering this horse doesn’t even have a white sock!”

The product had covered the pony’s natural chestnut hair so effectively that the leg appeared to have a genuine white sock.

And that’s exactly why it became White Cover Crème.

Maximum Effect

Over the years, Kerrie had seen horses badly affected when harsh methods were used in an attempt to darken sun-bleached coats.

She believed there had to be a better way.

The idea was a semi-permanent colour that could restore the appearance of a faded coat. Kerrie and Brenton sought expert advice, then took what they had learned back to their own chemists and worked with them to develop the product they wanted.

The result was Maximum Effect.

We launched it at our next trade show — and it went on to win the Best New Product Award, competing against an array of newly imported equestrian products from overseas.

For a small Australian family business, that was a very proud moment.

Water Glaze — Shine Without the Oil

When we developed Water Glaze, we knew exactly what we wanted — and what we didn’t.

We wanted a beautiful shine without relying on an oil-based finish that could attract dust.

We wanted the product to help repel dust rather than collect it.

It needed to be an excellent detangler, making manes and tails easier to work through.

And with environmental concerns surrounding CFCs receiving enormous attention at the time, we didn’t want an aerosol.

We wanted a water-based product in a spray bottle that could give us the beautiful glazed shine we were looking for.

Hence the name:

Water Glaze.

The Stayz Range

The names of our Stayz products describe exactly what we wanted them to do.

With Stayz In Plaiting Spray, we wanted just enough grip to make mane hair easy to hold and control between the fingers while plaiting. Once the plait was finished, that same grip needed to keep the wispy hairs neatly in place.

But at the end of the day, when the plaits came out, the mane needed to feel soft again — without the little white flakes sometimes left behind by styling products.

And we wanted to achieve all of that in a spray, without needing a gel.

For Stayz Put Quartermark Spray, we had a different challenge.

Beautiful quartermarks, shark’s teeth and other coat designs can take considerable time to create. We wanted a product that would keep the hair put without making it sticky, changing its natural appearance or attracting dust.

Some of the nicest feedback we receive is from customers telling us their quartermarks were still there the following morning when they removed their horse’s rugs.

There isn’t a much better testament to a product than hearing that it did exactly what we designed it to do.

The Horsehair Range Continued to Grow

Our horsehair products continued evolving too.

Preparing and hackling horsehair for False Tails left us with quantities of good-quality shorter hair. Rather than waste it, an opportunity arose to make genuine horsehair Rocking Horse Mane and Tail Sets. They proved popular and remain part of our range today.

Our Mane Pieces and False Plaits came from another problem we regularly saw. Horses wearing neck rugs and hoods through winter could sometimes emerge with sections of mane rubbed away just as their owners were preparing for the show season.

We developed genuine horsehair Mane Pieces and False Plaits to replace those missing sections and restore the finished appearance of the mane.

The False Tail Wrap was created when we were approached after a show horse had tragically had its natural tail cut off during the night.

We developed a different style of False Tail that wraps around the remaining dock and is incorporated with small plaits, surrounding the natural tail with horsehair and creating a remarkably natural finished result.

Once again, the product came about because somebody had a problem — and we wanted to find a way to solve it.

Still Developing

That thinking continues today.

Our newer Spray-On Shampoo, Conditioner and Stain Remover carry forward the same no-mess philosophy that inspired our sponge-applicator Make-Up Tubes years ago: make show preparation quicker, easier and cleaner wherever we can.

And while products have changed and show-ring fashions have come and gone, one principle has remained constant:

If we’re going to put the Champion Tails name on something, we want it to do the job we created it to do.

For the past 26 years, we’ve also worked with the same chemists. Over that time we’ve built a wonderful relationship based on trust, experience and an understanding of what we expect from a Champion Tails product.

We’ve taken them plenty of ideas over the years — some straightforward and some decidedly unusual — and together we’ve worked through the challenge of turning those ideas into products for the show ring.

More Than 40 Years Later

From a little pony with a chewed-off tail on our farm in 1985 to Champion Tails products and horsehair being used by exhibitors around the world, it has been quite a journey.

Many of our products began with a problem we experienced ourselves. Others came from listening to customers or watching the way show-ring presentation was changing.

Again and again, the starting point was simply:

“There has to be a better way.”

More than 40 years later, Champion Tails remains a proudly Australian family business, and we’re enormously proud that products we developed decades ago are still being used and trusted today.

Kerrie & Brenton
Champion Tails Australia