18/03/2026
2026 update from Indigo Equipment Hire!
2026 is already shaping up to be a great year for Indigo Equipment Hire and I’m so excited to share some of our updates with you ahead of the upcoming competition season 🤗
Team Updates
Paul and I are still at the forefront of the business and we will still be out at shows every weekend over the summer, but we are excited to move into the 2026 show season with a much bigger team behind us - a team which we are immensely proud of and which means we are able to supply equipment to many more shows than has been possible in previous years.
Introducing the full Indigo team:
Bev and Steve Cox continue to work with us and already have a full diary ahead of them for the upcoming season! These two have been such an asset to our business and their ‘can-do’ attitudes and great sense of humour have proved very popular with all of the show managers they have worked with so far!
We are also very pleased to announce that Bev is stepping into a permanent role with us, as our administration assistant, on top of repping at the shows alongside Steve 🙂
We are so excited to also reveal that Gavin Betts will now be working with us on a full time basis, which has opened up lots of further opportunities for our business, including an expansion into a Midlands/Northern base 🤩 this has been something that we have been considering for some time, but which Gavin has now made possible for us.
Gavin joins our team as Regional Operations Manager and he will be managing and developing this new base for us. We are so happy to have Gavin as part of our core team, and we hope to make good use of his wealth of experience in the industry, which we hope will continue to help with the expansion of Indigo Equipment Hire. We also hope that this expansion will make our services more viable for some shows based further north in the country. We are already realising how popular Gavin is with the shows he has served previously and we are pleased to already be welcoming a number of them as new customers to us 🤗
Owen White has been working with us on an ad hoc basis over the last few months, supporting the Inspire shows over the winter. He has proved to be a fantastic asset to us and we are so pleased that he has agreed to take on lots more shows for us over the summer as well 😊 over the years, Owen has now been involved with all aspects of agility shows, so brings a lot of experience and proficiency to our hire team.
Reggie Lamb and Amber Coleman will be found providing on site support for most of our larger shows this year, alongside Paul and myself. This will be their second year of working with us, both with Indigo and Kelluki, and we are very pleased that they are happy to continue in these roles ❤️
Rhiannon and Dave Stonehouse have been part of our Kelluki team for some time already, but we are very excited that they will also be joining our Indigo team in time for the 2026 season 😍 Rhiannon and Dave already have a few shows lined up and are ready to assist with additional shows as they arise.
Jon Hallam continues to support the core team and has already agreed to be on hand to assist with equipment loading and unloading at a number of shows over the 2026 season 😊 We are really pleased that Jon has agreed to continue working with us again this year, as we would have been stuck without him at some of our larger shows last year!
Dave Blakesley and Gemma Steele have already been instrumental in the ratification of our business contracts and strategic planning for this year, but have also agreed to continue supporting the core team with on site support at a number of shows throughout the year. We are delighted to work with them both this year 🤗
John and Elaine Bostock have been a part of the Kelluki team since we started running shows and they have always been on standby for us, ready to step up and help whenever we have needed them. Since we started running Indigo Equipment Hire, this has involved repping for some of the shows, helping with setup and pack down, as well as driving the lorries on occasion too. John is also our ‘equipment maintenance and repairs’ man and he is always our first port of call whenever we need any help with fixing, building or adapting any of our equipment! We are very pleased that they will both be continuing to support us over the next year and John is already working away on some new ring boards for our increased capacity!
We head into April with 27 sets of hire equipment (15 sets of contacts) and a second 18t lorry! Thank you so much to all of the competitors and show organisers that have supported us and continue to work with us. We are so proud to have so many repeat bookings for this year and we value each and every one of you so very much 🥰
2026 Hire Equipment
We would like to reassure all competitors who will be using our equipment this year that we don’t plan to make any changes to our standard equipment for the 2026 competition season.
Whilst running an equipment hire business without manufacturing the equipment ourselves is an expensive way of providing hire, it does mean that we have the freedom to select the equipment which we feel is the best available to us and we therefore feel that this business model is better for our customers.
Dog safety has always been, and will continue to be, at the forefront of our business ethos. We founded this business in an attempt to bring the best equipment into regular use at UK competitions and we have been overwhelmed by the support that we have received from the agility community in our mission to do this. We are pleased to have remained independent from any alliances with equipment manufacturers and we feel blessed that our decision making processes have always been led by the market. We will continue to monitor the equipment which is available to us and we will always supply the equipment which we feel will best serve our industry and most importantly, our dogs. Since the inception of our hire business, we have selected the best products available from 8 different equipment manufacturers and we promise that we will continue to operate in this way. We will however give as much notice as possible if there is any likelihood of us changing the equipment that we supply to the competition market.
We have always done our best to consider the feedback that we receive from competitors and show managers and we have always acted quickly to update equipment in line with any safety improvements or improved suitability for our sport. Whilst we can’t please everyone in agility, we have always listened to the feedback we have received and done our best to act in the interests of the majority. For the upcoming show season, we are pleased to have changed some of the colours of our contact equipment, on the basis of feedback received from competitors last year. We will no longer be supplying any red contact equipment and we will no longer use contact equipment where orange is the main colour.
Whilst we do try really hard to keep up with current trends and preferences for equipment, please do bear in mind that we are doing our best, but we can’t please every person on the agility scene and all change comes with financial implications, which means that changes will inevitably come with some delays.
Bing Contact Equipment
Those of you who have been following our business since the beginning will be aware that my Belgian Malinois, Panda, was the founding reason for the business. Her size, power and lack of self preservation led to me looking into new, safer equipment options for our Kelluki shows and this soon expanded and evolved into Indigo Equipment Hire. We have always believed that Panda is one of the most well suited ‘product analysts’ for the business - given that she is likely one of the biggest dogs to be using equipment on the competition scene - and so she continues in her role as Chief Equipment Examiner. That said, we do like to trial new equipment with as many different dogs as possible before offering it to the competition market. This winter, Panda and lots of her friends at Company of Animals, have been testing out some softline contact equipment from Bing Agility and we are pleased to have developed a good working relationship with Bing UK 🥰
In 2026 and 2027, we will be providing Galican Softline 2.0 contacts to all shows as standard, but from August 2026, we will also have a couple of sets of Bing Contact equipment which can be requested by show organisers if they would like to use them.
That’s it for now, but we look forward to seeing you all on the circuit very soon!
