Inglis Celebrates Heritage, Future

As Inglis commemorates its 150th year in business, it has both plenty to be proud of in its heritage, and much to anticipate in its future. Year 150 will mark the closure of the company's headquarters at Newmarket in the Randwick district of Sydney, while a new state-of-the-art sales complex called Riverside Stables is being built adjacent to Warwick Farm Racecourse further out from the city. The Australian Broodmare and Weanling Sale on Apr. 10 to 12 will mark the final time the hammer drops at the historic Newmarket sales grounds, with that property set to be developed as the area grows as a health and education hub. In the first of this two-part series, we will look back on some of the events that have shaped Inglis's history.

While Randwick is now the home of one of Australia's largest universities, the University of New South Wales, and one of its biggest hospitals, this was not always the case. When William Inglis started doing business as a livestock and produce auctioneer on George Street in Sydney in 1867, Randwick was the city's core for horse business.

“All the houses and property surrounding Newmarket were actually trainers' stables, and they were walking horses through the streets of Randwick down to the racecourse,” explained Inglis's present-day Managing Director, Mark Webster.

The first yearling sale was held at Newmarket on May 1, 1867, but it wasn't until 1905 that Inglis began conducting those sales. Nonetheless that first sale, which comprised eight colts and one filly, produced the 1868 AJC Derby winner The Duke.

William Inglis did not live to see his company's foray into Thoroughbred sales, passing in 1896, and it was his son John T. Inglis who took the company into its next phase. The first Inglis Easter yearling sale was conducted in 1905, with 107 of 111 yearling offered sold. Inglis Director Arthur Inglis explained that Easter was chosen as the time to stage the sale because “that's when the country came to the city.” Inglis explained that when he started with the company in 1974, “we had the best racing for the year in Sydney, and a lot of country people owned and bred Thoroughbreds at the highest level. In those days a lot of people would just own a horse as a hobby and they would be amongst our big buyers as well. Now it's much more international and people from all over the world are buying yearlings from us.”

Five years after its inaugural staging, the Easter yearling sale produced its first Melbourne Cup winner when Posinatus was sold for 160 gns. The year 1923 also proved a pivotal year for the sale, with two more Melbourne Cup winners (Windbag and Spearfelt) selling, as well as future Hall of Famer and champion sire Heroic. Five years later, an Australian record price for a yearling was set when a syndicate of four came together to buy future stakes winner Dominant for 6,750gns–a record that would stand until the 1950s.

The 1940s saw the sale of a handful of horses that would make their marks both locally and internationally. In 1942 Flight was bought for 60gns, and would go on to become a Hall of Famer and one of the country's greatest-ever racemares and broodmares. Bernborough, sold in 1945 for 2,600gns, became a great Australian racehorse and influential sire in the U.S. In 1947, champion Shannon set a record for an Australian racehorse when he was auctioned for 26,000gns after the death of his owner/trainer Peter Riddle. Reports in the Sydney Sun indicate that even then, the sale of Thoroughbreds was a spectacle. The paper read, “Fashionably dressed women paraded by the ringside several hours before the bidding started…many of them wore elaborate furs…Shannon was wearing a blue and white bath towel.”

The year 1954 saw the first yearlings by the soon-to-be great imported sire Star Kingdom go through the ring, and in 1957 Hall of Fame trainer TJ Smith paid a record 7,000gns for a colt by that sire. Prices for Thoroughbreds at Inglis continued to climb through to the 1970s, when present-day directors Arthur and Jamie Inglis both joined the company. Both are fifth generation Inglis family members; Arthur is the son of John A. “The Boss” Inglis, who became chairman and managing director of Inglis in 1958, while Jamie is a son of John Inglis's brother Dick, who started as an Inglis director in 1951. Of course, with the nature of the family business, both Inglises were immersed in the company long before their official start dates.

“Growing up, livestock sales and horse sales were a big part of my life as a kid,” Jamie Inglis noted. “On school holidays I would travel with dad to sales, and I enjoyed that life and the culture and the environment. To be honest, if someone said to me today, what would I like to do if I had a choice, I'd say, 'I'd like to go to a sale.' Sales are in my blood; I just like going to sales.”

“Both Art and I have been in the company a long time, from those early days,” he added. “We've progressed to today to where we're directors, and now I'm a retired auctioneer.”

Arthur Inglis added, “We both started off in the 70s. I lived at Newmarket with my parents and family so I was in the environment of the horse sales. Probably 90% of the year the place was empty, but when the horses came in for the sales the place was transformed; it was an exciting time to be there. I started [with Inglis] the week after I left school at the end of 1974 in accounts, and I did university close by part-time. We were both in the business from very soon after leaving school.”

At the time the Inglis cousins started with the company livestock auctions still formed the crux of the business–“in those days we had a minimum of four cattle sales a week; quite often there were five,” Jamie noted–but Thoroughbred sales were continuing to grow. Jamie points to Easter's first A$100,000 yearling in 1978 as a memorable moment during his time.

“The first A$100,000 yearling, that came out of the blue and I remember that like it was yesterday,” he said. “The first million-dollar yearling also was sold at our Easter sale on a rainy afternoon, and I remember that very well.”

That milestone came 11 years later when TJ Smith spent A$1.2-million on a filly by Sir Tristram (Ire).

“That million-dollar mark, it's amazing how that captured everyone's attention,” Arthur recalled. “It was in every media, and was front-page stuff in business news. It was massive at the time.”

The Australian bloodstock business enjoyed a boom in the 1980s as it did in other parts of the world, with 1989 returning record sales as a result of tax effective schemes that were put into place for buying Thoroughbreds. In addition to the A$1.2-million Sir Tristram filly bought by TJ Smith at the 1989 Easter sale, fellow Hall of Fame trainer Bart Cummings spent A$13.6-million on 43 yearlings.

“Bart Cummings was buying for tax-effective schemes,” Jamie explained. “He was to spend A$20-million on yearlings that year in either New Zealand, in Melbourne or with us at Easter. Tommy Smith also was a major buyer, he was buying for a public company. His training facility had been floated so he was cashed up and buying. The sale was just unbelievable, it went through the roof.”

But as typically follows a boom, there was a bust.

“Bart Cummings's syndicate failed, and the accounting companies had the right to step away from it, which they did, and Bart was left with the debt,” Jamie recalled. “Later that year we had a sale called 'Night of the Stars,' where we sold all the Cummings yearlings again. There was about A$20-million worth of yearlings put back through the ring, and they made 50% of that money. We were left with a big debt. Cummings took the accounting firms to court with no avail, and we wrote off a considerable amount of money.”

“Those years are vivid,” he added. “They were very difficult for the firm; 1990 was the first time from when we started to pay dividends that we didn't pay a dividend because we were pretty strapped. Luckily our company carried very little debt so we survived and got through it, and all our vendors were paid of course. From there the Thoroughbred market took a bit of a dive and our interest rates went through the roof and things got pretty tough. That was 1991, 1992 and perhaps even 1993. And then the market got going again.”

Inglis's Newmarket complex is perhaps best known for its Moreton Bay Fig tree that towers over the sales arena, and Jamie recalls watching many highrollers bidding beneath it.

“The big Moreton Bay Fig, seeing Tommy Smith bid under the tree, and all the identities that have come to Newmarket over the years; there's a whole host of memories, of course the A$5-million mare [Milanova, bought by Coolmore Australia in 2008], then the A$5-million yearling we sold that was a half to Black Caviar [at the 2012 Easter sale]. All those sales really stick in my mind without any one big incident. There hasn't been one major incident that stands out over the others; just a whole lot of memories for many years.”

The list of legendary Australian racehorses and sires to have graduated from Inglis sales makes for impressive reading, and includes more recent heros such as Black Caviar (Aus) (Bel Esprit {Aus}), Choisir (Aus) (Danehill Dancer {Ire}), Takeover Target (Aus) (Celtic Swing {GB}), Fairy King Prawn (Aus) (Danehill), Forensics (Aus) (Flying Spur {Aus}), Miss Finland (Aus) (Redoute's Choice {Aus}) and Silent Witness (Aus) (El Moxie) in addition to past stars like Might and Power (NZ) (Zabeel {NZ}), Flying Spur (Aus) (Danehill), Rory's Jester (Aus) (Crown Jester {Aus}), Marscay (Aus) (Biscay {Aus}), Schillaci (Aus) (Salieri) and Naturalism (NZ) (Palace Music). Arthur Inglis nominated three-time Group 1 winner Samantha Miss (Aus) (Redoute's Choice {Aus}), a A$1.5-million Easter yearling in 2007 and A$3.85-million Inglis broodmare, as a highlight.

“She was bought by a friend of ours from the livestock industry [Ron Crogan],” Arthur explained. “He was good mates with my father and started off with Thoroughbreds racing horses with him, so it's quite a good memory for us. We were at the farm when she was first inspected before the sale and then she made very good money as a yearling. She went on to be the only horse to beat Sebring, and she was favourite for the Cox Plate and she won an Oaks as well as being a top 2-year-old. We then got to sell her as a broodmare when she retired from racing. She made very good money bought by John Singleton, so we were there at various stages of her career.”

Inglis has come a long way since the 1970s, evolving from a largely livestock-driven company to one of the world's most prolific seller of yearlings and Thoroughbreds of all varieties. Arthur admitted, “A horse sale is a horse sale, it fundamentally hasn't changed,” but some tweaks have been made to keep up with the times.

“My father used to sell every horse through the ring,” he noted. “We didn't have a roster of auctioneers. There were others available, but they weren't specialist horse auctioneers, so they didn't savour the opportunity of jumping up. Also in those early days we didn't sell horses in alphabetical order of dams. You'd see drafts quite commonly by sire, which is not something you get now.”

Arthur said the greatest advancements have come in the areas of information and technology.

“Way back when Jamie and I started of course there was no online pedigrees and form,” he said. “We had a team in the office who were dedicated to producing catalogues. A lot of those guys had a huge knowledge in their heads and they had to compile a pedigree page and send it off to a printer, and when it came back they had to proofread it and it had to go off again and sometimes be checked a second time. There were a lot of very knowledgeable pedigree people. We were at the forefront in this part of the world in a partnership to develop computer pedigrees, and now we don't need to have that role. What has replaced it is marketing and communications.”

“It used to be just put an ad in the various papers and now we've got a lot of touch points with clients in the online world and daily media,” Arthur added. “We have of course media releases, our own Inglis TV, we produce video and information content constantly, and we do a lot of marketing in various parts of the world, Asia, South Africa, mainland China, and there's a lot of time and effort spent on that. Marketing and communications has grown massively as a role within our company and industry.”

Jamie added, “And of course there's the digital input with online bidding, which has been very popular particularly with mare sales and racehorse sales where you're just looking at breeding or form. We've adopted change when it was required and necessary, and even this year we have a new sale [the Chairman's sale] for elite Thoroughbreds either on the track, or broodmares and weanlings.”

Both Inglises agreed one of the most important legacies of the company through its first century-and-a-half are its many great employees, past and present.

“We've had some phenomenal employees over the years,” Jamie said. “The industry now today is littered with people who started with our company. They're heading up Thoroughbred studs or they're bloodstock agents. In fact one bloke, Vin Cox, is now our opposition, the head of Magic Millions. He started with William Inglis. So we've had some outstanding employees. From my perspective, if someone said, 'what's the best thing you did while at William Inglis?' I'd say, 'just working alongside such great people.'”

Arthur concurred, “We've been very lucky to have long-serving employees and it's been wonderful to work with them. They've been the backbone of the company, and I think that's probably characteristic of the company right through from the early days. There's the family involvement, of course, but we've been well supported and the mainstay has been the outstanding staff. We're lucky in the industry we work in–it's an industry that carries a lot of passion, excitement and interest, and consequently we have a lot of people wanting to work within it and work for us. And when they do come to us, quite often they like to stay.”

In its 150th year, there is little doubt William Inglis & Son has come full circle. That was perhaps no better demonstrated than at last year's Easter yearling sale when champion trainer Gai Waterhouse stood beneath the Morton Bay Fig and lodged the winning bid of A$2.3-million for the sale-topping Snitzel colt–just as her father TJ Smith did on numerous occasions all those years ago. This year's Easter sale Apr. 4 to 6 boasts a star-studded catalogue with international appeal and plenty of relations to Inglis stars of the past, and the company will begin a new chapter in 2018 when it moves to Riverside Stables at Warwick Farm. Read tomorrow's TDN for Part II of this story on what the future holds for Inglis.

Historical information for this piece was sourced from a timeline compiled by racing historian Andrew Lemon.