I did the same thing as a boarder - and when I boarded my horse at a place where it was one price with training and one price without, when I took my horse out of training I paid the training cost because I knew that the barn owner wasn’t making any profit.
I want to find ways for people to understand the costs better. To help barns become profitable if they aren’t. I want to improve the conversation between Barn Owners and Boarders, so I’m just exploring other ideas.
So…stop suppressing the price, and see how it plays out.
There are SO MANY ways to communicate and educate your clients on what value you offer, if you think that is the issue, other than line item billing.
As a boarder, what you’re proposing sounds awful for me. Again–why on earth would I want an itemized bill that I have to verify every month?
Which is a giant mistake, imo. When I’ve heard fellow boarders say stupid shizzle like, “Our board shouldn’t be paying their mortgage.” Or, “Do they really need to get dinner delivered so often.” I just shake my head. What the heck do folks think businesses are run for? To put food on the table. To pay the bills. But, boarders don’t usually understand that. Horse world is some freaky fantasy world where one half thinks their board fees go into some magical gold pot where they multiply and the other half tries to stretch those board fees to barely cover expenses let alone live 
I am doing no such thing.
Crikey. I don’t know how to say this any other way.
When I raised board, the other barns followed suit. I raised mine to $675 and within a year it was the going rate.
However, the real costs to actually be able to not only keep the horses but also improve a facility were closer to $850-1200 IF averaged.
So - in a year or two, that could probably be managed, but that won’t keep up with inflation.
Not my monkeys, not my circus. Just providing suggestions per OPs ask.
How else do you get boarders TO understand it?
How do you get other barn owners to run it as a business and to not subsidize?
The only thing I can personally think of, is to actually show them what it costs.
and this:
Do not add up to not suppressing the price. Your calculation showed you what the price should be and yet, you were charging a significantly lower rate.
The rate was initially $300 when I bought the property. The $675 brought it to “what it actually took to feed and care for the horses properly”. The $825-1200 would actually make improvements to the property.
Hope that is clearer. Pretty sure I’m surpressing nothing artificially.
You raised board, and a rising tide lifted all boats.
So:
Continue to raise board as needed to cover operating expenses.
You yourself have shown that it is possible.
Why do boarders need to understand it? They’re either going to understand it on some level or they’re going to continue living in fantasy land no matter how much or little they pay.
Other barn owners subsidizing is their problem. If they want to “compete” with you by running their businesses at a deficit that is their problem and sooner or later they will either run out of the ability to subsidize or will change their own business plan.
A YEAR OR TWO. IT TOOK A YEAR OR TWO.
That is not keeping up with inflation.
I’m NOT boarding right now. I closed my barn to make repairs because the prior barn owner did not make any because he tried the normal route of keeping things cheap for boarders.
This was a more general question as I see the industry die.
THIS!!! x1000
If you do want to reopen, and have made significant improvements (don’t necessarily need to be fancy improvements), you can reopen at a significant rate hike. And just don’t worry about it.
Again, my problem is NOT my own facility. I don’t know how to repeat this enough.
I may not even reopen.
I was literally cleaning stalls for my personal horses and thinking about how the industry is suffering. We’ve lost 6 barns in the past year in my area.
Barn owners all say that boarders demand too much, don’t want to pay for it, and don’t understand what it takes. So they either do it at great personal expense and/or burn out.
Boarders all complain (on this board and others) that their horses need care xyz and they aren’t getting it.
Board prices are low, and barn owners get tired and close.
So how do you bridge the gap?
You certainly don’t just sit there and say “well that’s the way the industry works, like it or lump it”
Maybe you do - but that’s not the way I work.
And a yearly increase does address inflation.
Other businesses change their prices, often far more frequently than yearly. People are given a salary bump yearly. “Running a barn like a business” WOULD BE doing a price adjustment every year.
If you think your clients need education on what all that includes, and why the price is changing, then tell them. But line item billing is a poor vehicle to do that, for all the reasons that have been raised in this thread.
Only if it had kept up to begin with. It’s well known that board has not kept up with inflation.
So raise the rate. You yourself have shown that barns CAN INDEED raise their rates. This whole circus of line item billing you’re proposing is just a vehicle for a rate increase.
The circus is unnecessary. Just raise the rate. Get it to where it needs to be, and raise yearly to account for inflation.
If the market cannot bear that, how you bill isn’t going to change that.
I’m not so sure about that. I’m really not. I am one person in one area. I can reopen and raise rates and be the canary in the coal mine (or whatever analogy you want to use) but that may not be in time to save the industry. If it were that simple, it wouldn’t be dying. Barn owners aren’t all running the barns as charities. There is a tension between consumer perception and very old ways of doing business. Barns typically do business more like agriculture and less like businesses.
So exploring different models, and putting pressure on consumers in ways that consumers would also find palatable isn’t a bad thing. Innovating in the space isn’t a bad thing at all. It’s been an industry surprisingly resistant to innovation.
I wasn’t asking for personal advice. Hope I have now made that more clear.
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