I have a friend that owns a small business in the equine industry. She has busted her butt, spent countless hours and dollars, and while she’s starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel - the growing pains have been rough.
One of the biggest things she runs in to is how to deal with awful clients. When she was first starting out, she gave away a lot of her product at cost just to promote and advertise it. I think a lot of businesses do this, or find professionals to “sponsor”. Countless times, she has been slighted when it comes to advertising by these professionals - they don’t tag her in social media, they don’t hashtag her brand, they don’t show any public gratitude for her generosity. She asked me what to do and I told her get a better contract and write these off as lessons learned.
However, she recently was in tears telling me about a trainer. For the sake of the story, let’s say my friend makes chaps (trying to protect anonymity). She made a trainer two similar pairs - different colors, different trim, different conchos - but overall similar. She sent them out and said hey - pick which pair you want to have at cost and I’ll send an invoice, just use the prepaid label I’m sending to return the other pair.
Trainer told her which she wanted, she sent the invoice and asked that the trainer put the other pair in the mail. Several weeks went by. Friend keeps asking, keeps inquiring, finally says - look either send the extra pair back by July 1st or I’m going to start tagging you in social media.
Yesterday, she receives the chaps back in the mail. The trainer has cut all of the fringe off the chaps, removed the conchos, and run sandpaper over the tooling - completely ruining them … and blocked my friend on social media.
I’m at a complete loss to provide my friend advice. She called me in tears. And here is where you, dear COTHer, come in.
What does my friend do in this situation?
There is part of me that just says file a civil suit for the damages and be done with it. But that’s more money to file and lord knows if she’ll ever see anything out of it.
There is part of me that says post that story on social media - that trainer is acting atrociously and needs to be called out. I know, as an owner, I certainly wouldn’t want to do business with anyone who acted that way.
And then there is part of me that says just let it go - because you don’t want a stain on the business’ reputation for talking about clients, and you don’t want to invest more time into this.
Thoughts? How do business owners in such an insular industry like horses successfully navigate things like this in this day and age? I feel like there’s a piece where you don’t want to be seen as dramatic, but there’s also a part of me that doesn’t want these people to do the same thing to others. We have so much success using social media to call out animal abusers, and hoarders, and situations like that - how do we use those same tools to call out unethical business owners, abusive trainers, etc. without facing backlash and lawsuits?
That kind of goes back to the folks who aren’t giving her credit either - she’s learning some basic business lessons and taking the flack that goes with it.