Zac Purton has a big race on his hands this week before he even gets to The Everest. It’s linked to The Everest, though, and Ka Ying Rising is at the heart of it, but Purton won’t be doing any riding and there’ll be no one running, except maybe across the factory floor. This race is against time, to get a batch of 60 Ka Ying Rising jackets made, packed and shipped to Randwick by Saturday.
It’s all part of Purton’s expansion beyond famous big-race jockey into the realm of widening fan engagement through accessibility and merchandising. Zac Purton and Ka Ying Rising are at ‘brand’ status and he wants to use that to promote the sport that has given him so much.
Purton has in fact been building on his record-breaking success in the saddle for a few years now. He has his own ZP sports clothing line: golf shirts representing his favourite off-track pastime, baseball caps, hoodies, all with the ZP logo. And since Ka Ying Rising’s ascent to being the world’s best sprinter, the champion horse features too: emblazoned on a ZP hoodie, printed on trading cards, all available at Purton’s website, zacpurton.com.
Then there’s the Ka Ying Rising jackets, inspired by the colourful Japanese trackwork jackets that have been turning heads in Hong Kong, Dubai, Saudi Arabia and at Arcs and Breeders’ Cups, wherever the Japanese raiders land, since the turn of the century.
Last week Purton arrived at Randwick for Ka Ying Rising’s pre-Everest barrier trial with a handful of jackets. He signed them and gave them away, three of them tied to a social media giveaway he staged. Now they’re in demand, selling via his website to the point that the stock is all but sold out.
“Nicole says they’re even selling to America,” Purton tells Idol Horse, his wife Nicole Purton alongside him. “After the success of the Ka Ying Rising jackets at the barrier trial last week, and how many people entered the draw, and how many people missed out, the ATC (Australian Turf Club) asked us if we would like to put the Ka Ying Rising jackets in their gift shop at the races at Randwick next Saturday.
“We’ve had to rush to try and get the factory to make more because we’re basically out of stock,” he continues. “And we’re against the clock to get them down there, to put them in their gift shop. But we can only get an extra 60 jackets made, it’s a small, limited run, so people are going to have to get in quick, but I’m sure they’ll fly off the shelf.”
The Australian ace, Hong Kong’s dominant champion jockey, points out that he’s not in the merchandise market for the money he can make. Like Japan’s champion jockey Christophe Lemaire, who has his own line of clothes and has branched into racing-inspired music production, and even has his own racing-themed boutique/cafe in Kyoto, Purton’s primary spur is fan engagement.
“The ATC doesn’t want to sell the jackets (to make any profit),” he says, “They want us just to put it in their gift shop for people to buy. They’re not making anything out of it, and to be honest, neither are we because of the late notice.
“We have to ask the factory to work overtime and things like that. So there’s no margin for us either, it’s just for the fans. It’s an option for the fans to be able to get a jacket and wear it on the day to support Ka Ying Rising if that’s what they want to do.”
Purton believes more could be done by those within the sport to engage with fans, and he sees merchandise as a great way to do it. He’s seen it work in Asia and believes there’s scope beyond.
“I think it is a little bit of an Asian thing,” he says. “They do love their plushies and their toys and their little gifts, so in Asia it is a very popular thing.
“In the western world you support your football team or you support your baseball, or NFL team or AFL, NRL, or whatever it is, but supporting sort of individual jockeys or players and things like that is probably a little bit of a niche market and unique,” he continues. “But, you know, you do get the names of football players on the back of shirts and things like that. So there is a market for it.”
His opinion and his move into creating racing-related clothing is formed from personal experience and the conversations and connections he has had with fans, particularly in Hong Kong.
“We were going through a stage where the fans were asking us why we didn’t have any merchandise,” Purton says. “There were people asking Nicole at the races why we didn’t have any. And then we thought, alright, we’ll test the water and we’ll make some, and if people like it, then we’ll continue on, and if they don’t, well, nothing lost, really. But it’s been well received. People have really enjoyed it. We get orders all the time.”
Recently he shared a video to his Instagram of himself opening a shoe box and revealing a pair of Nike Air Force 1 trainers. But they were no ordinary Nikes, they were customised, painted in the Ka Ying Rising colours of light blue, orange and yellow.
They were created and sent to him by a group of young artists and racing fans in Hong Kong who go by TKH Studio. They not only customise Nike shoes, but have also created a lifelike Purton figurine, which marked his 1814th win that took him past Douglas Whyte as Hong Kong’s all-time leading jockey by wins; they’ve done hand painted riding goggles too, and customised Labubu dolls and Zimomo dolls in the colours of Ka Ying Rising and others.
“They’ve been making stuff for me for well over a decade,” Purton says. “They tell me I’m their favourite jockey, so from time to time when I’ve hit certain milestones or broken records, they’ve done a number of different things for me, whether it’s a poster, whether it’s a set of goggles, shoes, just a range of different things.”
The TKH Studio crew see Purton in the way K-Pop or Cantopop fans would their idols; the sending of gifts is part of that culture.
“They wanted to do those shoes for Ka Ying Rising,” he says. “They’re fans that want to do that for me, so they do it themselves, they pay for the cost of doing it themselves, and they give them to me as gifts”
The group’s first ever gift to Purton was in fact a pair of the customised Nike shoes – they have created a new pair for each champion jockey title he has won, keeping a promise they made to him.
One of the TKH Studio became a racing fan when at age 18 – the legal age to enter the racetrack in Hong Kong – relatives took him to Sha Tin and Happy Valley and he became a regular. He first decided to make something for Purton after watching him ride four winners on the final day of a championship-winning season.
He contacted Purton through Instagram to offer a gift. Nicole replied and asked what it would cost. She was told it was free, a gift from fans. TKH Studio’s aim is to show that the racecourse can be about much more than just betting.
“Zac invited us to his home, and we found he had kept all our gifts in a cabinet. He said we were his first fans,” the group’s Keith Fung told Idol Horse. “The racecourse isn’t only for gambling. It’s also for chasing stars. Zac is a racing star, but he’s a pop star at the racecourse too.”
The longer-term ambition is to turn TKH into a studio making racing merchandise beyond what is sold in the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s racecourse souvenir shops, with a focus on bringing younger fans to the sport. They say any racing fan who wants to join and make artwork is welcome.
“They’re very talented and I’ve said to them many times that they should make a business out of it because I’ve had a lot of people ask me about the shoes,” Purton says. “I’ve had people offer me money for the shoes. They want them, but obviously they’re not for sale, they’re a one of a kind and I wouldn’t sell them because they’re a gift from those kids to me.”
There’s a lot of work that goes into customising the items the group has gifted to Purton, each one takes months to finish and is a gamble in itself.
“It’s like gambling. We have to start making the present half a year before the season finishes,” Fung said and noted that they do what they do because they want to create something that will have meaning to Purton.
“A painting is too ordinary. We wanted to put the artwork on something he would actually love, like an Air Force 1, and make it special,” Fung added. “Zac is rich. He has every watch. If we send him a luxury brand, it means nothing. What he doesn’t have is something handmade.”
Purton’s understanding of that kind of personal connection, of genuine fan engagement, was apparent in his Ka Ying Rising jacket giveaway at the Randwick barrier trial. And he believes there needs to be more of it in the sport as a whole.
“I think there’s a lot more we can do to engage the general public and try and get them a bit more interested in our sport,” Purton says. “At certain times it can be a little bit bland and stale, and to make it fresh, exciting, and interesting is something that we probably should be trying harder to achieve.”
The accusation of being bland or staid certainly doesn’t apply to the eyecatching Ka Ying Rising jacket the ZP brand has produced, which must meet the Purton quality test he applies to all of his own line of merchandise.
“The idea for the jacket was doing something unique and different, and something that clearly stands out,” he says. “And something that resonates with Ka Ying Rising, so there was no better way to do it than replicating silks to a certain degree, but then to add on the extra details to it as well, which has been nice. The jackets are very good, which was important: there’s no use making something where the quality’s not there, if people order it, they want to wear it so I wanted it to be something that feels nice, looks good, and people appreciate, and they do.
“Nothing gets approved without me approving it, so I am across it.”
Most of the ideas come from Purton and Nicole, sometimes a suggestion from elsewhere, and then they ask designers to bring the idea to life.
“Don’t worry,” Purton says, “there’ve been a number of things that I thought might be good and then I’ve seen it and gone, ah, no, that’s not gonna cut it, and then there are other things where I thought, that’s okay, but we’ll see if people like it, and they have, and it’s been more popular than what I thought. Everyone’s got their own style and likes and dislikes, and one thing is not gonna suit everyone, but if there’s something there that suits different people, well, that’s good.”
Horse racing doesn’t suit everyone, but what was once possibly the world’s most watched sport is continuing to slip down the scale of public interest in most countries. It needs new fans and it needs better engagement with the fans it has. Purton hopes his efforts, combined with his and Ka Ying Rising’s current raised profile, can do some good in that regard.
“It’s about trying to engage not just the general racing people, but on a day like the Everest there are a lot of people who for them, that might be the one day they go to the races,” he says.
“And, you know, if the jacket is something extra that they can take home from the races that they’ve enjoyed, or a momento or something like that, then I think that helps tell the story and helps to create a bit more interest.” ∎
