Draped in Derby Style 

B2B Casuals Dresses Horses in Style with Custom Thoroughbred Saddle Towels

Written by Laura Ross

For years, B2B Casuals, run by Liz Squyres, has served as the official saddle towel provider for the Kentucky Derby and the Breeders’ Cup World Championship races. Now, the company will also provide towels for the remaining jewels of the Triple Crown, the Preakness and Belmont Stakes. 

You could say she’s earned a Triple Crown of her own. 

“2026 has been a year of blessings so far. I can’t tell you how happy I was to receive that phone call,” she says with a smile. 

The horse owner and native Texan hasn’t accomplished the feat with her horses yet, but she has achieved it through her business. “We’ve always dreamed of providing the towels for the Triple Crown, and now we will. It was a fabulous feeling to learn that recently,” Squyres says. 

Liz Squyres and her husband, Jerry, didn’t start out as horse enthusiasts at all. They purchased a few horses in the late 1990s and one of them ran in a small stakes race at Lone Star Park in Texas. At that race, they received a saddle towel with their Filly’s name on it. “I took one look at it, and it was really crooked, and I thought, oh, I could do way better than that with my own sewing skills,” Squyres says. 

That idea launched a little embroidery and horse supply shop called Equine Depot, which was established in 2000 in Lexington, Kentucky. “We bought a couple of embroidery machines, and we were on our way,” she adds. They contracted with Keeneland and Del Mar to provide custom saddle towels and business grew exponentially. Running their other business, a busy cargo control company, from afar proved challenging for the Dallas-based couple. So, in 2004 they relocated the embroidery and logo operation back home to Dallas and rebranded it as B2B Casuals. 

Also in 2004, during a visit to Keeneland to run one of their horses, Squyres made a cold call to the Breeders’ Cup World Championship offices and wound up pitching her products to Breeders’ Cup executives. They were impressed with the quality of the B2B Casuals saddle towels and launched a partnership that still exists today. A short time later, Squyres’ team produced paddock vests for the Barbaro team at Churchill Downs and soon after, she landed the plum contract for Churchill Downs Racetrack.

“We truly want to praise Churchill Downs for the opportunities they have given us over the years.  They were extremely instrumental in our growth,” she adds.  

Today, their small, dedicated team creates more than 9,000 products per year for more than 40 racetracks nationwide and manages a growing commercial logo-wear business as well. B2B Casuals sells caps, jackets, logo wear, shirts and more. They can outfit an entire equine team or provide general business promotional wear across the board. They are proud to be considered a designer label in the competitive horse industry.  

Liz Squyres oversees a tight team of eight professionals and relies on her right hand, Jose Andrade, who manages production and design. The saddle towels are a functional and stylish look for the overall “uniform” of a racehorse. The rectangular fabric is made of a quality poly-cotton blend that holds color well, through weather, cleaning and the wear and tear that come from resting under a saddle and jockey.  

“Every piece we make is handmade,” Squyres explains, adding, “We roll the material off of rolls, we cut it and everything is matched to specific track styles and National Thoroughbred Racing Association color specs. Over our 20 plus years, we still get excited with every new customer.  Each of our customers gets the same great product and service.” 

The saddle towels vary in size, depending on how many sponsor logos need to appear on it. In general, most of the handmade towels measure around 36 by 48 inches. They are embroidered with the horse’s name and post position, along with any other specific track logos or sponsor information custom-added by Squyres’ design team. The towels are then carefully packaged in plastic bags to avoid any possible damage before they make it to the jockeys’ room.  

A modern twist in recent years includes special pockets sewn into the fabric to hold GPS devices. The GPS tracker chips are placed in the specially designed pockets and used to track data, position and location for the horses as they run their race. The data gathered helps racing professionals track statistical notes, build handicapping times—such as early and late speed—and provide details and accurate reports to owners and trainers.  

“We have customers from coast to coast,” Squyres relate., “We do Delaware to Del Mar and even Santa Anita. We have grown expeditiously in the last three years and have picked up a lot of new customers, and I attribute a lot of that to my team and the quality products they make.”   

B2B Casuals focuses on the saddle towel production, but also makes products such as jackets for Derby sponsors, jockey tees, paddock vests for grooms and other logo apparel. They also craft replica towels that are sold as mementos or gifts. Some memento towels are sewn into pillows and Christmas stockings for customers. Squyres notes that it comes in handy for gift ideas for a syndicate of owners, who all want an opportunity to have a special memory of a winning horse and race.  

“Our customers rarely meet us,” she explains, “but they rely on our product quality, presentation, and ability to deliver quickly.” 

The business moves with the agile swiftness of a Thoroughbred on the track. Given the up-to-the-minute scheduling and speed of racing, Squyres and her team work quickly and can often turn around custom saddle towel orders within 36 hours.  

Getting the orders right takes a bit of jockeying and sometimes mistakes can be made.  

“We don’t make mistakes anymore, but thankfully, in our earlier days, when we made a mistake, we always caught it before we shipped out the saddle towel,” explains Squyres. “We started watching, and on the saddle towels that we made a mistake on, the horses were winning. One year, we were working on towels early for the Derby, and we had flaws on four towels. We corrected those and sent them on their way. Later, all four of those horses hit the superfecta that year! Sadly, none of us placed that bet.” 

It happened again when a horse ran in the Louisiana Derby. There were multiple issues with a horse’s saddle towel that had to be fixed before the race. It went off with abysmal 100-1 odds and won the only race of its career.  

Was it the luck of the towel? Who knows.  

Being a horse owner herself, Liz Squyres knows what details count. Perfection in the look can add sparkle to the athletic prowess of the horse and rider and can help create lasting images of greatness. Someday, she hopes to see one of her horses wearing a B2B Casuals saddle towel in the Winner’s Circle.  

“In the end, it all works out,” she says. “Each one of our successes has made it all worth it. My bucket list would be to have one of our horses wear that Triple Crown towel, but right now, we’re having fun and that’s what you want to do when you get older in life. You just think, what can I do to make life fun? What is the saying about ‘Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life?’ Yes, we’re doing that every single day. I wouldn’t trade that.”