In their latest press release, Equestrial Professional, the horse business website, discusses preliminary results of their ongoing yearly horse business survey.
Updating information about horse businesses
Equine Professional conducts a horse business survey every year, then crunch the data, put together charts, and compare the results of the current year to past results which enables them to provide an inside look of how horse professionals from a wide variety of breeds and disciplines are faring.
As many of you already know, we conduct a horse business survey every year in order to get information directly from horse professionals to share at our annual Rethinking the Horse Business Webinar.
We then crunch the data, put together charts, and compare the results of the current year to past results. This survey enables us to provide you with an inside look of how horse professionals from a wide variety of breeds and disciplines are faring.
Here are three interesting trends we are seeing at first glance:
1. Horse professionals are struggling to find properties and/or facilities that are close enough to their client base. We've suspected that equine land use would become an issue for some time. However, this is the first time it has shown up in our survey.
2. Horse professionals are finding it challenging to re-educate clients who have unrealistic expectations and preconceived ideas about horses and riding because they have succumbed to large marketing campaigns and Internet information about training horses. At the webinar we'll share some tips for how to combat this.
3. Horse professionals are having difficulty getting hobby riders to commit to more comprehensive programs i.e. following a successful and progressive learning track of taking regular lessons, moving on to leasing, then buying and (for some disciplines) onto competition. You'll hear our take on a proactive way to tackle this issue.
Perhaps none of these challenges come as any surprise to you. However, it is only the tip of the information iceberg that this year's survey is providing. We have over 450 responses so far and our goal is to hit 1200 survey responses. And, we need your help!!!!
State of the Horse Business Survey
In order to provide you with the most relevant information, we ask that you take a few minutes to complete our Horse Business Survey. We have been conducting this survey each year for the last six years and the ability to compare the changes over the years has proved to be very valuable to horse professionals such as yourself.
If you are a horse trainer, riding instructor, breeder, stable operator or professional rider, please take a moment to share your opinions! We will share the survey results in our annual "Rethinking the Horse Business" webinar: Date: January 19, 2015 Time: 5:30 pm Pacific - 7:30 pm Central - 8:30 pm Eastern.
We want this year's presentation to be the best! We work really hard to make this webinar valuable to you. Please take a moment and help us get the word out. Here is what you can do:
- Share the link to the webinar sign up page on all your social media platforms and/or in an email to your horse business friends http://www.equestrianprofessional.com/public/1645.cfm
- Forward this email to your friends in the industry with a personal note suggesting they participate in the webinar and survey.
- Add yourself to our FB Event Page and use the Invite Button to invite your Facebook friends https://www.facebook.com/events/893958690667033/?ref=22&;source=1