The Story Behind Rodeo Producer
Background
When we're on a call, doing a live demo, or helping a client with features, we often get asked about our rodeo background — and what led us to create the Rodeo Producer. The first part is easy: we don't come from a rodeo background. Sure, we've all been bucked off a horse at some point. For me, it happened at my uncle’s farm — my cousins would put me on the young horse, give it a slap, and before long, I'd be hitting the dirt. Honestly, it was usually better to fall off sooner rather than later. But being stubborn, I always climbed back on.
Our own sporting lives mostly revolved around hockey (very Canadian of us!), baseball, softball and a bit of high school volleyball, basketball, wrestling, and track and field.
We developed a number of software products and sites in support of and in pursuit of our sporting passions including:
For recreation, we spent a great amount of time in the outdoors, hunting, fishing, and camping. But you are not likely interested in that part of the story.
Our Rodeo Software is Born
The second part of the answer is where things get interesting. Many of the people we've met in the rodeo world grew up in it, are still deeply involved today, and now have kids carrying on the tradition. Our path into rodeo was completely different — and not quite as long ago. It started in 2014.
Before rodeo ever crossed our minds, we were firmly rooted in website development. Our clients spanned from coast to coast in Canada and reached as far south as Texas. We worked across a range of industries — from commercial and industrial businesses to outdoor-focused clients like hunting outfitters and fishing lodges. One of those clients happened to be a rodeo association. The initial project was simple: redesign their website. But as the project moved forward, they asked us to add a few features so they could upload PDFs, spreadsheets, and text files for rodeo schedules, draws, results, and standings.
We were stunned. It felt like they were stuck in the internet’s early days — manually uploading and re-uploading files just to keep things updated. To help us understand, they gave us a demo of the rodeo software they were using. What we saw was even more shocking: a mess of data entry, re-entry, exporting, spreadsheet building, data loss, and endless rework — filling up entire weeks with little to show for it.
Building a new system wasn’t part of the original plan. But the more questions we asked, the clearer it became: there was a real opportunity to create something better. So, we sat down, mapped out the requirements, and got to work.
Throughout the process, one of our most common questions was, "Why do you do it that way?" The answer was almost always the same: "Because that’s how the software works." We dove deep into rodeo terminology, asked lots of questions, and slowly built not just a better tool — but a better understanding of the industry itself.
OurRodeo Software Goes Live
We continued building, from the front end to the back end, all the while planning out a system that we could eventually take beyond one customer. A web-based multi-user system with the ability to custom tailor the options.
We built. We tested. We revised. We built more and then in Spring of 2016 we went live with our first rodeo association. During that first season, we identified more tools, more enhancements, and found ways to make numerous functions easier to use.
Our Rodeo Software Goes To Market
After a first successful season, we began to contact other rodeo associations to tell then about the new Rodeo software. After all, it already had all the tools any rodeo would need. Development done. Add on another user and away we go. It wasn't long and rodeo association #2 was asking us to show them what the Rodeo software could do. They had questions like, "What about this feature?", "What about this payout formulas?", "What about these kind of events?"
We quickly learned, development wasn't done yet. Not fearing a challenge, we told customer #2, "We don't have that, yet.", and that has been our answer, to everyone.
Rodeo ProducerTM Plus Plus Plus
So we added new features, built new options, learning from each customer as they came on board. The key learning is that every rodeo association has something they do that is different, that is uniquely their own way. We have taken the approach that a custom feature for one rodeo association will become a standard feature for all associations. Then, when a future rodeo association needs that feature, or a current customer needs it, it's already there.
Looking back to that first set of requirements, in the 10 short years since our initial Rodeo software hit the market, we have more than tripled the number of features in the new Rodeo ProducerTM system. Now when we bring a new customer on board to the system and they ask "What about this?", we often already have the option or the feature built. If not, we go back to the early years (only a few years ago) and say, "We don't have that, yet, give us a few weeks."
Our Story So Far
We hope that this little peak into the story behind Rodeo ProducerTM helps you understand where we came from and our philosophy of always continuously improving our software. We believe that our story so far is just an early chapter of a longer story.