As an equine aficionado, you might have dreamed of running your own riding school for many years. Imparting your wisdom and helping new riders to hone their skills is a humbling and rewarding experience and can make for a very enjoyable career. With that being said, running a business as well as a riding school is no simple task and requires a lot of hard work and dedication to find success and provide the best possible experience to your students. To help you in this endeavour, we’ve put together five important tips for starting and running your riding school in the UK to increase your chances of success.
Finding The Right Location
Understandably you’ll likely be limited in some way with where you’ll be able to start your riding school, but you want to try to identify the best possible location you can within your limitations. Ideally, you’ll be able to open your riding school on land you already own, or at least neighbouring land that you can purchase and expand into. But remember, you’ll need to acquire planning permission if you intend to build it yourself. This means that you’re always available to care for your horses 24/7. If not, you should at least be close enough so that you can check on them easily. If you don’t have the space on your land for a stable, you might want to consider moving and living wherever you intend to build your new stable. When purchasing a stable, you’ll find that most have an adjoining farmhouse already.
Hiring The Right Team
Managing a successful riding school just isn’t feasible to do solo. There is so much work to be done, and it would become overwhelming very quickly for one person. You’ll need plenty of people to help you out, including other experts who are qualified to teach riders so that you don’t have to handle all of the lessons yourself. As well as this, you’ll need staff that can help you take care of the horses and help you clean the place and conduct regular maintenance. This helps to ensure that everything is running properly and that the place is up to standard. You can also accept voluntary work from the riders, as many youngsters will relish the opportunity to spend more time with the horses without having to pay for a lesson. This also helps to teach them about horse care and responsible ownership if they get their own horses.
Acquiring The Best Equipment
You’ll need to make sure that you and your team have access to quality equipment, as this will make work much easier around the stables and the yard. Proper tools such as pitchforks and shovels, wheelbarrows and even pressure washers are all important in keeping the place clean and tidy. A lot of work has to go into mucking out the stables and ensuring that the entire place remains clean. You can get many useful tools and yard equipment online from specialist retailers such as Equi Supermarket. They stock a wealth of useful equipment, including horse grooming gear and even useful storage equipment such as saddle racks and rug rails too. Anything that you can add to your stable and yard to improve the quality of life for both your team and your horses should be at the top of your list of priorities.
Taking Care Of Your Horses
There are many things to consider with keeping your riding school well taken care of, but let’s not forget about the most important component to all of this. Your horses require around-the-clock care, and there is a huge amount to think about when it comes to this, as you’ll be aware. Of course, you and your team will need to be well trained in horse care. However, that training can only stretch so far. You’ll also need access to specialists that possess important skills to ensure that your horses are as happy and healthy as possible. First, you’ll need veterinary support from a nearby vet who specialises in equine care. Horses are fairly complex animals and require dedicated, tailored care to ensure that they remain healthy. As well as a vet, you’ll also want the help of a local farrier who can attach horseshoes to your horse’s hooves.
Expanding To Meet Demands
When you start your riding school, there is something that you’ll have to consider, as with any business, and that is whether or not you intend to expand. Failing to identify new ways to increase the size and scale of your business may lead to business stagnation and not finding any more growth. Of course, this might be preferable to you, especially if you’ve never had the desire for your riding school to become something bigger than it is in the first place. However, a larger school means more capacity, which means more income. But to do this, you have to make sure you have the room to expand. Otherwise, you’ll be looking at places in which you can open up a new school elsewhere.
