Just came across this site https://agadors.com/ the other day, wondering if anyone has tried any of these? Interested in some of the options for small mouths - prices seem almost too good lol
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Yes, I just received an order of two bits from their “used”/demo section. Very nice bits, accurately described, well-made, and came with a lovely note. They shipped quickly (from within Canada, as far as I can tell?) and the one I tried seems pleasing to the beast.
I have bought a few as well and have been happy with them.
I have noticed my blue bits has quite a few wear marks (as in the blue coming off) after only a few rides and I don’t really have chewers. But for the price, I was very happy with them!
Hi there! Owner here. We try our best to price competitively, because in our experience with our own horses once you start playing the bit game with specialty bits it start to add up fast. And then you can’t return them.
Our entire ethos is value for money. We try getting a variety of designs with decent quality to a larger number of horses so assembling the “bit closet” is more affordable. Because as we all know it’s never just one bit even if you just own one horse…
So how can we be so price competitive? A few things.
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While we offer a variety of them, we don’t use very expensive materials (e.g. titanium like Fager or own copper alloy like Sprenger or NS). There are currently three - german silver, blue sweet iron and stainless steel. They all have their advantages and disadvantages e.g. the blue sweet iron bits do rust and degrade faster but many horses love the taste. A very tiny minority of horses can be allergic to nickel that is a component of german silver, and stainless steel most of you know - it is just cold. So sometimes it’s not perfect and there are trade-offs, but if you are going to buy a very expensive bit might as well figure out which design works best for your horse and then go for that potential incremental improvement a premium material offers.
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Our margins per bit at least in dollar terms are almost universally lower than you’d see for the big manufacturers in tack stores. So we can’t discount as deeply or we end up losing money. However, a lot of our customers buy multiple bits so for what we don’t get in margin, we often end up making up for in volume.
- Our overheads are lower because we don’t spend nearly as much on marketing. We know what our cost to acquire a customer looks like and we keep a tight grip on making sure it does not cost us too much. Our products often speak for themselves and we get a lot of referrals within barns. Bits don’t take up a lot of space so we don’t need a massive warehouse. We currently ship all of our products out of Canada but have found a reasonably fast and cost effective option for shipping to US. And we are a family business where everybody chips in a little to make things happen.
Happy to answer any other questions!
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This thread is the first I’ve heard of this company but I’m intrigued - are there more pictures of the “tongue relief” shape? I can see the forward curve but I’m interested in how much vertical shape (ie how much of a port) they may have. I’m only seeing the one angle on the site.
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There is no additional vertical port on the tongue relief mouthpieces. We struggled with this decision a bit, since you can make an entire line with a variety of port heights and widths etc. Our decision to not offer vertical ports as part of our regular lines was mostly driven by business reasons since each variant is 4-5 additional stock keeping units that you must carry inventory for and takes away from your core design volume, which also affects pricing.
So we figured we’d just like that mouthpiece to be a cost effective intro into that design. If you figure that your horse goes better in this type of mouthpiece you can optimise the fit further with e.g. Myler bits.
That said we might come out with something if there is enough interest and are always happy to do a custom design but they do take on average 8-12 weeks from the day of order to arrive.
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Thanks! This is good info.
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