Uniting the Horse community
Image of Maria Terese Engell instructing a rider.
After a long break from my childhood passion, horse riding, the passion for horses came sneaking back in my life in 2010. I found out that it was not any easy to get an overview of the options now than before. I was struggling to find a riding school when I was a kid, and now I wanted private lessons, it was even more challenging.
Looking at several websites of stables or instructors; however, the content seamed outdated or even confusing, and it did not give me confidence. I contacted a few places without getting a reply or response. It turned out to be rather a lot of work to find a place to learn horse riding. I started to wish for a global site where I could get useful information and overview of who and what was where in the horse community.
Live in the digital age, I was sure someone would beat me to the punch, but I started tracking and mapping the market to see if something was happening. Nothing happened. In 2015 I took the big leap and began working on pluvinel.com for real, full time. Without being known in the horse community, I was an outsider, and it was not a simple task to breakthrough.
But I do believe this is something the horse world needs. I have personally funded most of the project. In 2017, I sold my flat to be able to continue to work on pluvinel.com and luckily, I also landed an investor. I have been the CEO, product owner, creative director, UX/UI designer, sales, SoMe/marketing, copy writer, editor, support and everything you have to work with as a founder.
Today, we have over 1,200 users. Most of them in Scandinavia, but with users in USA, Russia, and New Zealand, I think it is safe to say we are global.