Contractors

Trackener Contractors

Aside from our full time team, we have worked with many wonderful contractors on a temporary basis to make Trackener the product it is today. These include a sportswear designer, hardware designer, equestrian textile manufacturer, web developers and interns.

Paula Keech – Equestrian Textile Designer for Trackener
   
As an experienced freelance sportswear designer, Paula helped us design and create the textile part of Trackener life (the bib and the girth sleeve) including a miniature version for our mascot Archer! It is thanks to Paula that our bib is as comfortable as possible for the horses with stretchability, breathability and additional comfort at the more sensitive locations. 
  
After learning to sew, nit, crochet and embroider as a child from her mother and grandmother, Paula went on to art school to learn all aspects of fashion. It was unsurprising that she was top of the class at everything and aced her exams after a painting made it onto TV when she was just ten years old!

Paula’s talent has grown ever since and she now has an incredibly impressive and diverse portfolio from wedding dresses and horse wear to childrens wear, lingerie, maternity, womens wear, sportswear and even toys! She now specialises in performance sports and leisure wear but is happy to turn her hand to anything. She even designed the riding cloth for Sophie Christiansen for the paralympics! One of her biggest achievements is writing her own book, titled “The Freelance Designers Handbook” where she discusses how to go it alone, covering what to expect, making sure you get paid, planning your time, keeping up with your accounts and compiling technical packages for garments. This is available to order here.

Paula joined Trackener when Pauline spotted her as a designer for Shires equestrian in November 2016. Since then, Paula has worked tirelessly with designs, fabrics and some furry models to create our wonderful Trackener bib and girth sleeve. Although not an equestrian herself anymore, Paula used to ride as a teenager and enjoys working for equestrian brands.  When not working or designing and making her own clothes, Paula loves swimming  (outdoors in the summer!), dancing, walking in the countryside and stand-up comedy as well as passing on her skills to her two daughters.

To see more of Paula’s achievements and work, visit www.paulakeech.com


Belvoir Rugs – Textile Manufacturer for Trackener  

Belvoir Rugs (pronounced ‘beaver’) run by Richard and Karen Ellis are our partners for the manufacturing of the bib and the girth sleeve. They are a small company based in the beautiful Vale of Belvoirth in the East Midlands and produce products that are a little bit different from others out there, yet made with the love and care that you would expect from a product that is designed and made in England.


The company began in 2014 when their daughter and her friends were unable to find suitable products for their horses that helped keep them clean and well prepared for competitions which were not just standard Black and Navy colours. With an in-house production team who make and produce products in their warehouse just 4 miles from the offices, the team have all come from a clothing production background and have too many years of experience to count.  Products are of high quality and fabrics and components used are only those that have been hand selected and approved. We certainly could not have made such quality product without them!

Their show hoods are loved by showing fans, eventers and any horse owners willing to keep their horses clean! They also do products for dogs too so be sure to have a look on their website www.belvoirrugcompany.com!



Richard Marshall - Xitex Limited - Hardware designer

Thanks to his extensive experience bringing successful electronic products to the market, Richard offers great expertise to Trackener's product development.

Throughout his career as an engineer, Richard has not only been a key player on the journey of several startups, but has also been working for major corporate companies such as Sony. His latest big success was the acquisition of Ubiquisys, a startup he founded, by Cisco for over $300m in 2013!
His broad technical expertise (from PCB and antenna design to certification) as well as his ability to quickly understand the challenges and find solutions to them, are extremely valuable to the development of a product like our device!

Richard joined Trackener after meeting Pauline through the London hardware startups community. With the help of a mechanical engineer and other field experts, Richard has turned our working prototype into a device optimised for use in equestrian yard conditions. We are very excited for it going into production in the coming weeks!
  

Dashbouquet – Front-end developers for Trackener 
Based in Belarus, the fantastic team at DashBouquet have been working with co-founder and software engineer Jeremie on Trackener’s app. Thanks to their expertise, our web app used for the pilot is becoming a native mobile app with great performances and as user friendly as possible! You can find more information about them here.


If you would like more information or to contact one of the team, don't hesitate to drop us an email. Alternatively, you can sign up to our monthly newsletter to keep tabs on what we're up to, follow product development and discover some cool findings from the device!