It’s not only the Spring Racing Carnival that is in full swing at the moment. Some of the best stallions in the world have touched down and are currently standing in the Upper Hunter Valley for the annual Australian breeding season. And to mark the historical return of Kentucky Derby Winner Big Brown to Vinery Stud, Image & Brand Management have created a 30 second TVC that highlights what some say as “the greatest race horse of a generation”.

Most of Big Brown’s foals will more than likely find their way to the stables of Gai Waterhouse, who is hoping to emulate her stunning success by combining with another Vinery tenant, More Than Ready. To that end, Waterhouse is certain John Singleton’s investment in Big Brown will pay similar dividends.

“He puts his mares to the best stallions like More Than Ready and the results are phenomenal. “More Than Ready is a super sire and ‘Singo’ is on to another winner with his new stallion Big Brown.”

Click here to watch Big Brown’s TVC: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdxfiEt3RZU

Following on from major announcements regarding the additions of American wonder horse, Big Brown and Red Ransom’s son, Onemorenomore to our roster in 2010, Vinery Stud is pleased to confirm that it will once again be sponsoring the Group One $400,000 STC Vinery Stud Stakes on AAMI Golden Slipper day.

“Vinery Stud recognises that the AAMI Golden Slipper plays a central role in promoting Australian racing as the world’s richest race for two-year-olds,” Vinery general manager Peter Orton said.

“To be involved in such an important day’s racing gives us an opportunity to showcase our roster, our Easter yearlings and present racetrack performers.”

Vinery Stud resident sire More Than Ready has been responsible for the last two AAMI Golden Slipper winners (Sebring and Phelan Ready) and has a chance to make it three in a row via the Gai Waterhouse-trained colt Brightexpectations.

Since it was first contested in 1979, the Group One $400,000 STC Vinery Stud Stakes has been won by some outstanding fillies including Research, Slight Chance, Miss Finland, Hill Of Grace, Champagne and Shower Of Races.

“The Easter period is an exciting time to be involved in the thoroughbred industry, and I would like to take this opportunity to wish our clients all the very best of luck with their carnival hopefuls and those who have yearlings to sell at Inglis, Newmarket next month,” Orton said

Vinery Stud had been growing globally but the branding across its vast range of businesses was inconsistent. The company invested significantly in marketing but failed to leverage the power of its business and geographic footprint. To stay competitive, Vinery Stud decided on a comprehensive rebrand and to develop a new corporate brand strategy and brand architecture for its wide range of clients.

Our work over six years has resulted in Vinery’s brand becoming the core part of its vision, values and business practices, providing the foundation for all of Vinery’s marketing and advertising activities.

Currently three of their Stallions stand in the Australian Sires Top Ten. The website has over 4000 visitors monthly while their database of new clients has grown an average of 112% year on year. Vinery Stud continues to be a global brand leader in thoroughbred equine perfection.

“IBM brought a fresh approach and it was an advantage that they weren’t involved in the industry. Sharp, not boring, unique. Full range of services.” Peter Orton, Managing Director – Vinery Stud

For over six years we have partnered with Vinery Stud as their brand custodian.

SERVICES PROVIDED TO VINERY STUD INCLUDE:

Brand Discovery & Audience Profiles
Brand Essence – core of the brand
Brand Values – what the brand stands for
Brand Architecture
Brand platform & positioning strategy
Naming process
Logo, identity and livery
Brand implementation across all touchpoints, from collateral to signage systems
Brand guidelines
Website design
Marketing Strategy – campaign approach, sales based
Electronic & Web – website, banner advertising, email newsletters, SEO

Image & Brand Management builds Vinery Stud a new website not just for today, but for the future.

Vinery is proud to announce the launch of its new website from today at the existing URL - www.vinery.com.au.

The new site provides clients and visitors with a range of possibilities to interact with our team here at Vinery and to be informed of all Vinery news as it happens plus a host of new and exciting features.

“Communication is a vital part of our business and this is just another way that we can keep all of our clients informed and involved,” says Vinery’s Adam White.

“We conducted a comprehensive review of our site and while we have kept and enhanced the best parts, the addition of video viewing, Newsletter opt-in, more up-date to date news on Vinery and our stallions plus a link to our Facebook page, will make visiting the vinery.com.au a much better experience.”

Image & Brand’s management’s approach: We set out to build and provide Vinery with an engaging and informative website for its target audience to increase repeat visits and enquiries. The new website should become a key destination for prospects and clients to keep up to date with Vinery’s successes and information about the industry.

We conducted a comprehensive website review including initial user research, traffic and user flow analysis and best practice Information Architecture criteria. Based on our findings from the research we gave prominence to the Vinery news, the information to contact Vinery and showcasing the stallions. The farm itself is another unique part of the Vinery Stud. We created a background image for the site that showcased the beauty of the location with the aim to draw the user into the scenery and site.

We also replaced the existing content management system of the website with an established open source system in order to create more flexible pages and to incorporate modern features into the site such as a newsletter opt-in, video viewing, a link to a Facebook page and potentially a blog in the future.

Prospects and clients can sign up for a regular newsletter that informs clients about important updates on stallions and race results. The regular communication with clients and prospects will keep Vinery top of mind not only during the racing carneval.

The new Vinery site is search optimised and provides valuable content that can easily be accessed from the homepage. The site aims to provide a balance between showcasing the unique parts of the Vinery Stud and providing targeted information and features.

With another stellar season under his belt and a growing band of talented runners on the track Vinery’s More Than Ready is making it clear he is a title contender of the very near future as Brett Peatling reports.

There’s no doubt that Australian breeding has the Big Two – Encosta de Lago and Redoute’s Choice.  On the racetrack or in the sales ring, numerically and in  uality, these two are the dominant forces of the Australian thoroughbred. Definitely only the Big Two – no Big Three yet…..  Prowling just on the outer reaches of this pair is Vinery Stud’s standard bearer More Than Ready. With five crops of racing age,  lready in his career he has supplanted Red Ransom as Vinery’s principal sire. For a sire who at one stage was accessible for $15,000 (plus GST) that takes some doing.

Certainly it’s no news that More Than Ready is having a wonderful time of it, but with the season now drawing to a close, the significance of what he has achieved to  date is worthy of further examination. Particularly in the past two seasons, More  han Ready has achieved some ground-breaking results. With Phelan Ready’s Magic   Millions/Golden Slipper double, More Than Ready became the only sire to achieve  that double twice – in consecutive years no less after the triumphs of Augusta Proud and Sebring in 2008. Furthermore in the short 23 year history of the Magic Millions, he joined Zoffany (Clan O’Sullivan/Our Fiction) as the only sires to achieve the unique feat of dual Magic Millions successes.  Not ground-breaking, but   droughtbreaking is his sire son Sebring, the Slipper victor retired to Widden Stud for the oncoming breeding season. Sebring becomes the first non-Danehill line slipper winning sire since Tierce right back in 1991 – the 1997 winner Guineas became a sire momentarily until fertility issues saw him gelded and returned to the racetrack.

With six 2yo stakeswinners this season he has matched the performance of his debut year when he became the champion first season sire. In hindsight that performance provided more than an inkling of the sire More Than Ready was destined to become. No first season sire in the past two decades has been able to match let alone surpass that milestone. Not Danehill, with 4 stakeswinners, nor Exceed and Excel (5) last season or Rock of Gibraltar (5) or noted 2yo speed source General Nediym (4). With 10 individual stakeswinners thus far, only Encosta de Lago, Redoute’s Choice and Scenic have outdone him on that front this season. Significantly, although More Than Ready finished second in the general sires list last season, but is just fifth this time round, all other figures point to More Than Ready having a career best season. Last season, 61 little More Than Ready’s found the winning post from 138 starters as opposed to 92 winners from 191 starters this time round. The import of edging closer to 200 starters and 100 winners, is that  numerically it gives him a solid base that is verging on being comparable to the figures Encosta de Lago and Redoute’s Choice regularly throw out. Additionally he was represented by 4 stakeswinners last season, which he has more than doubled now, and has already earned more prizemoney than 2007/08. 2004 saw More Than Ready available at a service fee of $15,000, and the remainder of that racing season (04/05) would culminate in him becoming the champion first season sire.

Highlighting the rise in More Than Ready’s fortunes are the dams of two of his 2yo stakeswinners this season – Sunday Joy (More Joyous), Sunday Silence’s Oaks winning filly from the blue chip Denise’s Joy family and Regrowth (Colour), the stakeswinning granddaughter of the wonderful Easy Date (dam of Snippets etc). That John Singleton – Sunday’s Joy’s owner – determined More Than Ready to be Sunday Joy’s second mating after being covered by the incomparable Sadler’s Wells speaks volumes. In spite of the accolades and success that have come More Than Ready’s way, there surely could have been few higher compliments paid to him than this.

Coupled with memories of Benicio’s Victoria Derby victory – where he was easily the best stayer on the day – More Than Ready has been dropping a few hints that while he may enjoy a disposition towards naturally athletic 2yo’s and sprinters, he is anything but a one dimensional sire. With More Than Ready putting his cards on the table, he is beginning to engender a certain aura around his progeny. Nowadays scanning the race fields, and your eye picks up a youngster by More Than Ready, it instantly  commands attention.

Vinery certainly knew that he was commanding attention when they felt comfortable to thumb their nose towards the global economic downturn and instead raise his service fee yet again – against the trend of other stallions standing at $100,000 or more from the 2008 season. Vinery showed great faith in More Than Ready from the beginning, but their faith is now obsolete. After all, faith is no longer required when the proof is in front of you.

RACING LIFE – June 2009

Vinery’s More Than Ready is one of a few shuttle stallions to have established his name as an agent of class in both hemispheres. He has had more than 500 northern-named foals compared with about 400 southern-named, his northern wins and stakes winners have outperformed his southern squad by numbers, and his northern progeny earnings total a good $10million more than earnings of his runners down south.

But the perception he does better in the US than in Australia is way off the mark when it comes to the true measure of stallions’ value as a source of graded stakes winners. More Than Ready has had the distinction in the past two seasons of siring the $2m Magic Millions-Group I STC Golden Slipper winners Sebring and Phelan Ready, and two months ago Onemorenomore provided More Than Ready with his second Champagne Stakes victory. From a Group I standpoint, More Than Ready has had six individual winners from seven crops of racing age. He is still awaiting his first Group I winner from his Kentucky activities.

And the success level in both hemispheres is reflected in his stud fees in both regions: in Kentucky, he has just finished his 2009 season at a US fee equivalent to $57,700 (down by almost $20,000 on his 2008 fee); he stood his first southern season at $22,000, double it in 2007 to $44,000. But then he moved to a new level with not only a fee hike to $110,000 but over-subscribed, and this spring he will be the third-most expensive stallion in the land, at $148,500 and again his book of mare nominations has overflowed.

Broodmare owners aware early of the demand for More Than Ready had the option to try his son Sebring, who will stand this spring at an introductory fee of $49,500 at the Widden Stud in NSW’s Widden Valley. Such has been the demand for the best-performing son of More Than Ready, his initial book is closed already.

More Than Ready confirmed his reputation in 2000 as a high-class runner beating older horses in the Group I Kings Bishop Stakes (1400m) at the Saratoga meeting and Ready’s Image left his mark at the 2007 autumn meeting at the historic track when he won the then Group II Sanford Stakes (1200m) by four lengths, beating future Group I winner Tale Of Ekati.

THE AUSTRALIAN – Tony Arrold – June 29, 2009

Phelan Ready Wins Gr1 Golden Slipper

On the Australian track, Vinery Stud shuttler More Than Ready (Southern Halo-Woodman’s Girl, by Woodman) added a Gr1 triumph when gelded son Phelan Ready came from the tail of the field to score a 2.25-lengths victory in the world’s richest juvenile race, the $3.5 million Gr1 Golden Slipper Stakes (1200m) for 2YOs at Rosehill Gardens in Sydney. Phelan Ready (ridden by Brad Rawiller for trainers Bruce & Jason McLachlan) defeated the filly Headway  & the colt Manhattan Rain. Phelan Ready (a $150,000 yearling consigned by Kitchwin Hills at the 2008 Magic Millions Premier Sale on the Gold Coast) now has 2 wins (also including January’s Magic Millions Classic over 1200m at the Gold Coast) & 2 placings (including last start’s Gr2 Todman Stakes over 1200m at Rosehill on March 21 & 2008’s Listed Meynink Stakes over 1000m at Eagle Farm) from 5 starts for $3,248,500 earnings.

Phelan Ready Wins Magic Millions Classic

On the track, Vinery Stud shuttler More Than Ready (Southern Halo-Woodman’s Girl, by Woodman) added a feature juvenile success when gelded son Phelan Ready (More Than Ready-Nancy Eleanor, by Blevic) gained the verdict in a 3-way photo-finish to the $2 million Magic Millions Classic (1200m) for 2YOs at the Gold Coast in Queensland. Phelan Ready (ridden by Jason Holder for trainers Bruce & Jason McLachlan) scored by a neck from previously undefeated favoured filly Paprika with a further long neck to fellow filly Motown Lady.

BREEDING AND RACING – January 12, 2009