Six suggestions that will entice customers to choose your barn as home for their horses.
By Kaycie Timm
When it comes to selecting a training facility, your potential customers face a multitude of options. First impressions can mean the difference between gaining a new customer and developing a negative reputation. So how can you create an enticing atmosphere that’ll keep current clients happy and attract new customers? Present a pleasing facility by making your barn attractive, safe and functional, and avoid common blunders by adhering to these simple standards.
We spoke with non pros, owners, and pros—Leslie Weibel, Lyndsey Jordan, Rick Clark, Patrick Flaherty, and Kole Price—to see what really matters when attracting customers to your barn and keeping them for the long haul. Here are the six top tips.
Part 1: Make Cleanliness a Priority
Part 6: Create Separate Spaces
Simplify the Layout
Why it matters: Complicated stall design and facility layout will turn away customers who value accessibility. Clark appreciates how NRHA Million Dollar Rider Shawn Flarida structured his barn to make it easy to find horses in clearly marked stalls.
“I can walk down the aisle, and there’s horses on the left and the right,” Clark explains. “The name of each horse is on the front of its stall.”
Easy access to arenas and other working areas adds an important level of convenience for customers. Especially in areas with frequent inclement weather, a nearby arena keeps horses and riders out of the elements before and after schooling.
Non pro observations: In Clark’s opinion, most non pros place great value in a simple layout for convenient access to their horses.
“I like a facility laid out where it’s easy to walk the aisle way and find your horse,” Clark says.
Duke shares a similar perspective, and finds the simplicity of her trainer’s barn extremely practical.
“It’s just a basic stall barn with an indoor arena, an outdoor track, and a walker,” she says. “Nothing fancy, but it’s very workable.”
Professional perspective:Patrick Flaherty, who owns and operates Flaherty Performance Horses in Scottsdale, Arizona, finds his clients appreciate the easy accessibility of his 1outdoor arena, which is located across from the barn. Warm temperatures in Scottsdale don’t necessitate fully enclosed stalls, so Flaherty uses simplistic-yet-functional 16-by-16-foot mare motel-type stalls.
“It’s the best way to keep horses for me,” Flaherty says.
Constructed of fully covered pipe rails, this alternative to traditional box stalls lets horses experience a herd-like dynamic and still allows easy access for Flaherty and his clients.
Read the rest of this article at the links above.
