As a life long boarder, I would hate this because of the potential for errors and no ability for me to track. I am happy to pay ever increasing board because I know that things have gotten more expensive. I wouldn’t mind maybe paying extra for something like time consuming wound care or unusual requests.
Where I board, the staff has set hours, and those hours basically include some available time for smaller one-off things, or hosing a couple horses who dont sweat, and that works just fine.
I’ve been lucky to get good full care and as noted above, I like the company and the calm I feel when I pull into the farm.
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I always did this, but it made me feel like I was providing excuses. Didn’t seem to make people understand that me walking their colicky horse for 3 hours before the vet showed up had any value at all. I worked from home, so there was a double perception that I was just “available”.
Perhaps. I’m going to try not to make this a treatise, but in the interests of clarity I’m going to try to articulate my whole thought here, so bear with me if you would. Clearly I’m not good at shorthand 
I really am not in the least argumentative - but more inquisitive and trying to look at the rubix cube from all angles.
I’ve been in horses for over 35 years, sometimes as a barn owner, sometimes as a boarder, and sometimes as a barn worker. I’ve seen a lot, but for the first 30 of it it was in a small area - I knew who the players were and how it worked. It was definitely a reputation game.
Then I moved to a different area. A larger area with a lot more offerings. Many more players and many more horses. I started out as a boarder, and after interviews, picked a barn somewhat nervously. It’s not as easy to suss out who was any good and who was…not so good when you’re new to an area. And you can only rely on advice so far, because though something can look really good on the surface, often…it’s not. Or it’s only good through someone else’s eyes.
I was an easygoing boarder, because I’d managed a barn, owned my own place as a kid etc. and I know how hard it is, but simply chose to move rather than make any demands. So I got to sample quite a few barns.
At most of the barns there was something lacking in care. Turnout and hay were usually the two culprits. Once it was abuse from the barn staff.
One barn owner put all of her money into visual glow-ups but then did things like gave minimal hay (and locked it up claiming boarders were stealing it). Then I realized that she was going for marketing and perception. She could fill the barn despite having a 30% colic rate in one year because the people who could afford it wanted their friends to see that they had their horses at a fancy barn. That wasn’t my bag.
I did not board at the cheap barns, because I wasn’t into flooded pastures, barbed wire or strangles, but many do. I can’t really speak to the experience with those.
So - if you segment the population it seems like there is:
- A wealthy group that is competitive and wants fancy facilities and is willing to pay for care/training
- A DIY group who is horse knowledgeable
- A group that just wants cheap board
What I haven’t seen yet are barns that cater to that empty middle. Those people like me who were competitive (sorta) and wanted to seriously ride but were neither trust fund babies nor particularly cared what their friends thought about the boarding facility they had their horses at. The people who want great care and are knowledgeable enough to know what it takes, but maybe didn’t care that the ring is “just” sand and not GGT, or that the property didn’t have an indoor, or that the barn needed a coat of paint, or whatever. Those are the ones that have all closed here.
This MAY be a regional thing.
So how do you help market to people coming in that the service at $1200/mo looks the same on paper as that that they could get at $600/mo? That doesn’t seem like a viable position - people expect luxury experience at luxury prices, but the luxury experience with horses doesn’t necessarily equal the luxury costs UNLIKE when you buy a hermes bag and the whole thing is hand stitched by some craftsman and everyone knows it’s a hermes bag and what that means.
If you know enough to know better, you know when your horse looks good and feels good and is taken care of by someone quality, but man, that takes a lot of knowledge about feed & hay, which often puts people in the DIY category.
Because like most businesses, marketing & perception is king.
So maybe the middle way just truly isn’t viable anymore and it’s either the Hermes experience or the DIY barns that can make it, but aren’t there people who COULD afford a horse that maybe couldn’t afford Hermes but could afford…I don’t know, I don’t buy handbags so my analogy is falling apart…but something inbetween? that are too busy for DIY?
And I’m not sure I was any more clear laughing
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Yes, it’s regional.
You don’t know that people can’t tell the difference between a 1200/mo barn and a 600/mo barn.
If those two barns are identical–identical facilities, identical offerings, identical care, etc–then why do you think anyone would choose the more expensive barn? Explaining why it’s more expensive doesn’t get you those clients. If the less expensive barn is subsidizing their board rates somehow but offering exactly the same services, they’re the better value.
If there are, actually, differences in facilities, or offerings, or whatever, then:
So MARKET. Super duper granular billing isn’t marketing. Paint the picture of why your facility is worth more.
And this?
Sounds like a boundary setting issue. If you need an itemized price sheet to point to in order to set those boundaries, then do that, or something like that, but don’t blame the industry at large and call for industry wide change on your inability to set boundaries. And I say that with kindness. Setting boundaries IS hard. People will take advantage of you if you LET them.
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This works both ways - keep your prices low to keep a full barn, let the place run to complete shite from not having the money to keep it up properly, and watch those “can’t afford it” boarders all leave for more expensive places because they’ve had enough of reduced care/unusable facilities/unsafe fencing/broken stall doors, etc. <- not an extensive list lol
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The industry DOES have problems with it though! It’s not just me. I said no plenty - but man is it exhausting and wears you down. That was what the granular billing was to help to try to ameliorate.
Right - and that’s what I’m saying. I’m coming at this from a different angle - ignore the billing for a moment. Just ignore that. That was a muse and the conversation has WELL moved on from that.
So how do you market something “invisible” like the net effects of years of experience of a barn owner and the super care of the horses? I think that’s part of the problem. Were it software, I’d redesign it, but barn facilities are harder to do that with
That’s actually what happened to my facility before I bought it. Board was cheap, but the whole barn was basically duct taped together. Should we have bought it? I don’t know, but the location is brilliant. The facilities though…holy cow did he let things go to sh*t.
You don’t. You cannot compete with people who are willing to subsidize their customers’ hobby. You can put yourself out and say, this is what it costs, no apologies, the price of keeping horses is very expensive and I will not run my business at a constant loss as many other places do.
You can neither compete, nor can you force your ‘competition’ to increase their prices.
State your price. Put the work into taking care of the horses. You may be very surprised that people don’t shrink when you explain it that simply.
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Yup, I stuck it out at a place with ‘potential’ to be what it was built to be for far too long. Every year it got worse and worse and the upkeep got more and more neglected. I’m now in a ‘less fancy’ but more expensive place and I’m ok with it.
Word of mouth. Boarders talk. A lot! Word will get out.
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PEOPLE in the industry have problems setting boundaries. The industry as a whole does not have a problem. It’s a personal problem. You have to address that in yourself. (As do others, but it’s not a “disrupt the industry” issue.)
You tell them. Better yet, you show them. Think about effective advertising you’ve seen. It tells a story.
You don’t seem to be a marketing person. You’ve said repeatedly in this thread that you’re not conveying your point well. You’ve said you’re a data person. Which is all great, but it very much sounds like you need to find someone else who can paint the picture, tell the story, and sell your vision and offerings. If you decide to go back into boarding, perhaps you can find a person who’s really good at that to do that for you. A good website and a solid social presence run by someone who understands social interaction and brand management.
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Yes, I did have a lot of that. But - I was priced competitively, not twice market rate.
Maybe that IS the position. There are likely some people who would appreciate the frankness.
No - I’m not. I’m a CEO and former dev, but not a marketer by trade. I know marketing strategy well, but unfortunately in a completely different sector and the horse farm perception of value I might just be too close to as a horse-person. We all have our weaknesses.
I haven’t heard of a barn owner yet who has disagreed with any of my assertions with the exception of the billing helping. This DOES seem to be a universal problem, and the decline in the “middle class boarding facility” supports that. Is it always that barn owners have issues setting boundaries? Dunno. Maybe we’re all just too stupid to run businesses. Doesn’t seem likely?
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Continuing to revert to this is tiresome. You’re the only one saying this. It says a lot about what you think of your colleagues.
Then how is charging what you’re worth, or shutting down if the market doesn’t bear that, such a challenging concept to accept.
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People underestimate how much money it costs for maintenance and upgrades. I think this guy had a good heart, he wanted people to feel like they could own their horses for longer but wow was it bad.
In the first year we replaced the roof, water line, gutters, significant fencing and stall improvements and we cleaned…a lot. Second year we did the aisleway. There’s a lot we still want to do, but wowza the money flying out the door is significant. And so much of that is stuff boarders would never see at first glance. But it’s nice when your stall doesn’t flood 
The concept isn’t hard, not sure how you got that from anything I said.
But the market perception is. Which is why I asked a perception question.
Does it? I think the overly simplistic “just raise prices” and “barn owners don’t know how to run businesses” are more indicative of that than a sarcastic comment about us all being too dumb. Because again - that’s what I see time and time on the board. Either that or the assertion that we’re all raking it in.
Maybe I can make it even more clear.
When you’re trying to figure out a market strategy problem, price is only one of the levers. There are many of them. Perception of the market should not be through your own eyes. You get better perceptions by eliciting a LOT of responses from people and it’s not always the direct question that is illuminating.
So - again - I wasn’t asking for advice about my own business. Not now, not ever. I wouldn’t come to COTH with that, I’d go to people that know me. But I WOULD most definitely come here and ask a broader question to elicit information about general ideas and perceptions in the industry. But you can’t just ask things quite directly - to really get at new ideas, you have to get conversations going to get at the perceptions BEHIND the entrenched ideas. So you ask lots of questions. You put together different types of offerings and you ask about them. That’s market strategy, not copywriting.
It’s cool though - I appreciate everyone’s answers. I’ve learned from the people who gave me honest feedback about their preferences and why they like or don’t like specific things about offerings similar to what I was asking - as well as some useful and interesting tidbits about packaging.
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They are hugely profitable because there is profit to be had. If I’m kenneling my dog for a weekend, that is likely an irregular expense and due to a vacation. I would not be spending $300 a weekend, every weekend, for funsies or on the regular. Even something like doggy daycare is… an extra? Most people aren’t doing that and don’t /need/ doggy daycare. Most people who want to own horses do not have the land or facilities to keep them.
If, for boarding to be profitable, all the barns are going to have to charge $1k a month minimum, many people are just not going to have horses. Not just not in training, but not at all. I do think barns need to charge more to make a profit. HOWEVER, many barns (imo) are in poor condition and need revamping to attract anyone to an increased cost. And those barns don’t have the funds to do so.
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On the former, people spend $500/mo on doggy daycare for them to go play with dogs all day. So it’s double, yes, but…seems a horse has always been more expensive than a dog? And the dogs go home?
Agreed on the latter. Because as costs have risen facilities haven’t been maintained. It’s been pretty sad to watch.
Well, maybe for a small barn, like<10, parts of it might work but vanishing land has been consolidating barns for years now resulting in a larger barn population to manage.
Have been in barns that had a sort of menu of services, like a restaurant. All were small outfits with just a handful of boarders. I did not care for them because it was impossible to have an overall high care standard and if things were optional, people simply did not pay for them.
One reasons restaurants get into trouble is too many items on the menu which overwhelms the kitchen, the servers and slows down the turn time dragging the whole operation down. They try to please everybody but end up with customers unhappy with the service and food that is not the quality they want,
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This is true. It’s why restaurants that are more expensive typically don’t do special requests. There’s a perception that if the chef creates it for you, it must be good.
However, there’s also a huge market for “custom” things, and I don’t see that in boarding.
Yes, I suppose it wouldn’t work for a very large barn without considerable management.
Although - some of the facilities that appear to do it in CA (with some research now that I know it exists) appear large - which is interesting. They must have gone to it for a reason, and I’m guessing that an analysis made it profitable, which smaller barns don’t often do. Kind of curious there.
