When a representative of Emma Freud, celebrated journalist from the UK, first contacted us last year about featuring our products in Emma Freud’s Horse Gadgets last summer, we were – to be honest – more apprehensive than excited. We’d had less than stellar experiences with the media, who we believe care more about cranking out incendiary articles as quickly as possible rather than accurately reporting the facts (see our response to the Horse and Hound write-up.)
Because we personally hand-make every product we sell, our business and products are very personal to us. So we became even more nervous when we found out that:
1) Emma Freud is the partner of Richard Curtis, my absolute favorite filmmaker who wrote “Love Actually” and “Notting Hill” which are in my top 10 favorite films. She even helped write some of my favorite lines from his movies. So I was worried that a bad write-up would ruin my favorite movies for me for good.
2) She is also the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, of whom the other partner of Wishpony.com (my sister) is a great fan. She has a bunch of his books and plans to go back to school for a second degree in psychology.
3) The Tatler is a major publication in the UK and is part of the Condé Nast company which also publishes Vogue, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker among many other popular magazines.
We couldn’t decide what to do, so we didn’t respond at first. Then a few weeks later, a member of Ms. Freud’s staff wrote us again to let us know they were going ahead with the write-up and asked for images, so we complied. But I purposely didn’t look up the article for over a year until I saw a referral from the Tatler website today. I nervously clicked on the link, found our Natural-Look Unicorn Horn™ photo on the page and quickly read the short description. To my relief, it was nice. Thank you, Ms. Freud.
I would, however, like to address a remark Ms. Freud made wondering why we invented this “odd” product in the first place. Well, we’ll be happy to answer this question for you, Ms. Freud, but to do that we need to go back … oh … a few years.
As horse-crazy kids, we grew up playing with My Little Ponies, which come in all colors and species (regular pony, Unicorn pony, and Pegasus pony). When we started this business, we tried to think of what we would have wanted had we been lucky enough to have a horse or pony as little kids. We had spent our childhood drawing horses, unicorns and alicorns (winged unicorns), and making twist-tie and yarn bridles and halters for our My Little Ponies and Fashion Fillies, so the Unicorn Browband™ was a natural conclusion. We sold the first Unicorn Browband™ in September 2005 and the rest, as they say, is history.
As for Ms. Freud’s other comment on why anyone would need our products, please check out our Customer Photo Gallery which represents just a small percentage of the thousands of Unicorn Horns we have personally made by hand over the past 10 years.
Companies and organizations that have purchased our Unicorn or Pegasus product include:
- Professional photographers
- Pony party companies
- Carriage companies
- Film and TV companies (including Universal Pictures)
- Advertising agencies
- Wedding event planners
- Horse rescues
- Magicians
- Trick horse trainers
And special occasions for which customers have used our Unicorn horns and Pegasus wings, not counting those who just want a Unicorn horn for fun:
- Pony Hunt Teams
- Birthday parties
- Halloween barn parties
- Costume (or fancy dress) classes
- Parades (4th of July & Christmas)
- Dressage exhibitions
- Weddings
- Trick-or-Treating
- Christmas gifts
- Wassailing
- Celebrating a little girl’s last day of chemotherapy
- Surprising a lucky little girl who asked her parents for a Unicorn for her birthday and got her wish (she also got her first pony for her birthday!)
We couldn’t come up with exactly 100 situations off the top of our head, but over the past 10 years, customers have proved that riding a Unicorn, Alicorn or Pegasus is very much in.
Thank you again for your nice feature of our products.