A few weeks ago a reminder letter dropped through my mailbox for the 2012 edition of the SA Turf Directory. This little book has become such an essential tool and industry bible that I haul it out on an almost daily basis (with apologies to my victims!), writes ROBYN LOUW.
With this timely reminder, I thought I’d ring up John Freeman and find out how it all came about.
All good stories start with ‘a long time ago in a faraway land’. 30 years is probably not all that long ago and Joburg probably isn’t all that far away, but it’s as good a start as any. So, about 30 years ago, John Freeman and his brother in law were running the Thoroughbred Group up in Johannesburg. One of the aspects they covered was insurance and in the course of their daily business, they accumulated quite a large database of contacts. So much so, that people got in the habit of ringing them up to ask for contact details. John tells me that despite having a 12-strong support team, the ladies manning the phones started complaining that a large portion of their day was spent simply looking up telephone numbers for people who rang in.
So as an innovative value-added service (with the happy benefit of stemming the daily deluge of calls), they started issuing valued clients with a photocopied list of the contact database. The initiative was met with enthusiastic feedback and John started sending them out on a regular basis.
What originally started out as a relatively small, manageable project that could be sent out as a photocopied list, soon grew and became rather too big for a simple office publication. So they decided to ‘do the thing properly’, and produced a printed and bound edition, which was sold at cost. The earliest one John could find when I rang was a copy from 1984 which was issued with a leather cover.
On a visit abroad, John spotted the English ‘Directory of the Turf’ and realized that what he was producing was in fact a South African version, and christened his publication the SA Turf Directory.
As demand increased and the publication grew, they added additional features such as the calendar and additional advertising. What had begun as a simple value-added gift, had grown exponentially and as it was printed and produced at a loss, it was becoming a rather expensive little project. When he moved to Cape Town approximately 20 years ago, John started casting around for a sponsor, but met with little interest, they cancelled the publication for that year.
The resulting outcry spurred John back into action. He approached Wilfred Koster (chairman of the TBA at the time) and he talked his board into getting involved. Then the RA came on board and these two organizations have been the two main sponsors ever since.
The directory has swelled to well over 8,000 contacts and approximately 10 years ago the SA Turf Directory went international. John tells me that there is huge demand from all the major racing countries – so much so that he was even approached by the Australians and asked whether they could copy the idea! Unfortunately they did not have the funding to publish more than one edition, but as they say, imitation is the best form of flattery.
The team are currently working hard on the 27th edition and have designer extraordinaire Michael Dunn over from Thailand doing the layout and graphic design.
As the content can only be as good as the submissions they receive, John is very concerned that a worrying number of letters have been returned as undeliverable this year. They are thus appealing for everyone to please check and respond to their mail out as soon as possible. You can do it by phone (021) 418 0566, fax (021) 481 0254 or email ([email protected]). The deadline for the 2012 edition is 31 October 2011, so please ensure that your details are correctly captured.
