About us

“Originated from a need: Animal Riding”

Our story

Animal-Riding was founded in 2008 in the Netherlands by a family with a passion for entrepreneurship and horses. The family’s oldest daughter was already riding real ponies all the time, and the youngest wanted to so badly… but she was really still too small. At the time, the parents couldn’t find anything else for their youngest but a stuffed horse that she could sit on but that didn’t move. Since they imagined that many other parents were facing the same problem, the following idea was born: a toy horse that you can actually move forward by mimicking a real riding motion.

The development

And so was born the company in which parents Jef van de Wardt and Désirée van Hoeve embarked on a long, intensive road of development. In Asia, they found a system that partially met their expectations. However, this was not optimally working, not yet a nice design and was amateurishly produced on a small scale. Jef in particular, who had previously led a technical production department at a leading company for 20 years, knew almost immediately how things could be done better. The years that followed were spent developing a beautiful high-quality product. Meanwhile, the assortment has been expanded with many other animals and every year many containers with animals come to the Netherlands to be distributed to many customers throughout Europe.

Animal Riding of the moment

Animal-Riding is a regular feature at the annual International Toyfair in Nuremberg, has won several awards and still puts a smile on the face of everyone who first encounters the product! Animal-Riding has already made countless children happy with one of the animals from the range!

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