New Zealand Horse Bookshop Grows 901% in First Full Year

When Róisín Magee bought her first horse in New Zealand, she found herself thousands of miles from the knowledgeable friends who had helped her learn to ride in the UK. Online horse care advice was a confusing mess, and importing quality books one at a time cost a fortune.

So in April 2023, she opened Mangaiti Equine, a specialist equestrian bookshop in the tiny village of Ōhoka, North Canterbury. The idea was simple: import books in bulk to share shipping costs and give Kiwi horse owners access to reliable, quality-checked information.

Three years later, the numbers tell an incredible story. Revenue grew 901 percent in the bookshop's first full trading year of 2024. It jumped another 36 percent in 2025, with order volumes up 44 percent that same year.

The biggest surprise? Forty percent of their books now ship overseas. What Magee designed as a resource for New Zealand riders has attracted customers from Australia, the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, Denmark, and even the UAE.

Their secret weapon is their publishing arm. In 2025, Mangaiti Equine published its first book: an English translation of a revolutionary French riding method from 1842. It immediately became their bestseller, connecting them with a passionate international community of classical dressage riders.

The shop stocks everything horse related: rare collectibles, secondhand gems, new releases, self-help books, travel memoirs, rural history, fiction, and children's stories. Magee's philosophy is refreshingly open: if a method works for someone, somewhere, they want to make it available.

The Ripple Effect

Mangaiti Equine's success is breathing new life into its rural community. A neighbor recently launched Retro Reads, another online bookshop, and the two businesses now share strategies and support each other's growth.

The bookshop also represents a quiet rebellion against toxic online spaces. After years writing for New Zealand Horse and Pony magazine, Magee watched the publication shut down following legal troubles. She saw horse owners hungry for good information but drowning in unreliable social media advice.

Her solution? Return to old-fashioned paper books with traditional publishing quality control. It turns out people worldwide were craving the same thing: trustworthy expertise they could hold in their hands.

The business embraces whatever works, even selling through Amazon despite not being fans of the platform. This pragmatic approach has fueled their steady climb: current 2026 figures project 13 percent revenue growth and 17 percent order growth over 2025.

For a specialist bookshop in a small Canterbury village, reaching 11 countries feels wonderfully improbable, and there's no sign of slowing down.