Managing Director of HorseIT gives you an insight into how it all started: HorseIT was started by Jane Skepper in Nov 1999. I have always been involved in the equestrian industry as my parents ran a Thoroughbred stud and produced yearlings for the sales as well as having a few horses in training. My mum had ridden a lot as her mother had started an Arab stud in the 60s and had since become an International judge. So I was introduced to riding at a young age.

Competition was a natural progression and I soon became an avid Pony Club member and later represented my branch in many teams. At the age of 16, I was luckily small and light! At the stud we decided to train a few Arab racehorses and I became the jockey.

I spent some time in Newmarket with trainer Ron Boss and learnt about riding in a race (there was no British Racing School then!!) - I learnt a lot there especially regarding timing . This later held me in good stead when I started doing a lot of eventing and three day events.

Race riding was a fantastic experience and we had several excellent placings and a second at Goodwood which was definitely the highlight. At this time I was still at school and decided to carry on to study for 'A' Levels. At the same time I began to increase my eventing from Pony Club events and joined the British Horse Trials Association in 1987.

It was soon made apparent to me that I only had the one year to make my mark in Juniors and so had to get on with it! In May I had been invited to the Junior Champs and I was hooked on eventing! This really determined the next 12 years of my career. I carried on eventing at Young Rider Level while studying Animal Sciences at Nottingham University and then went on to help run the family stud from where I based my eventing and selling competition horses.

In the summer of 1998, I was riding a horse at a Three Day Event and my tails (for Dressage) had been eaten by moths. At this late stage I turned to the Internet to look for a place where I could hire some dressage tails for the event. I found that there was nowhere to access such information and the search engines produced results on a whole range of unrelated websites.

When I returned from the event I decided to start looking into setting up a website that held equestrian information so that anyone could find anything equestrian from one single web address.

By November 1999, I (with the help of some friends) launched a basic site at the British Equine Event to examine the interest. The site was incredibly well received with just over 3000 business' registering in the business directory to get listed online.

HorseIT was the only website present at the Event. Now that the site had proved that it was a potentially viable business, I put together a business plan for development of the business. The company qualified and was subsequently registered as an E.I.S status company encouraging Angel Investors to become involved and the business plan was well received.

Within a month HorseIT was up and running with employees and work on the new enhanced site began.Initially, this work was outsourced and the office focussed on recruiting to the business directory and sourcing editorial for an official launch at the British Equestrian Trade Fair in February of 2000.

BETA (British Equestrian Trade Association) Trade Fair was a huge success with hundreds of business' listing themselves and interest shown for advertising within the site to this targeted marketplace. Beta also provided the foundations for the beginning of the eCommerce side of www.HorseIT.com which was later launched in July.