Cost of opening a tack shop?

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apkelly01

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Has anyone got any clue of a roundabout figure someone would need to open a tack shop from scratch. Or even know of any wholesalers out there. Thanks in advance
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I do know wholesalers - the best way to explore the market would be to go to BETA next Spring, importers, wholesalers and retailers are all there.

as for start up costs - you ideally want to hold a small stock , one or two of things in each size and colour - with the scope to order in more on 24hour turnaround, any other way will need a massive investment. Remember you are competing with the internet, which is always going to be cheaper. The only way you can compete is with customer support and your specialist knowledge - do you have a market that would be prepared to pay for that?
 
Agree with Mother Hen.
My family run a tack shop and it is hard work.
Best contact for all suppliers/wholesalers is BETA (British Equestrian Trade Association). They can sell you a directory with all suppliers details in it.
Worth a visit to their trade weekend in February. All suppliers have stands. It normally takes us 2 days to get round all the stands.
Stock all general goods and then specialise in a certain market.
If poss get an online website, we are just going down this route to keep competitive and open up our options.
 
We had a saddlery shop and started with what I would say was a good stock level and we put £50k into it. That was trade prices obviously. We had all the main accounts like Weatherbeeta, Jeffries, Stubben etc and had a good range of stock. It is hard work and we found alot of people would come and view the stock and then order online or get it from ebay cheaper. We also found alot of horse folk very rude. We closed it in the end after getting fed up with the whole thing!
Would I do it all over again - NEVER
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We have a saddlery about 20 miles from us that I love to go to. Have tried some of the larger stores, and internet ordering and well I personally prefer the approach of the small local store. They are competetivley priced, you can get to see and touch before you buy and the advice is invaluable.

if these local stores go out of business due to the internet we will all be worse off.

I think the service is worth paying a few punds more and you are guaranteed to get what you wanted in a timely manner.
 
Thanks to everyone for your advice
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The area where I am thinking of opening doesn't have a tack shop. The agri shops hold an extremely small section but nothing else. There are plenty of Riding schools about and from the looks of the fields - plenty of horse owners.
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Basically I've got the 13 year itch in work and I'm looking for a career change. I've been to the bank, so just need to work out how much I need and to see if would be viable or should I just stay here to rot in a dead end job!
 
It is so, so, so much hard work. A few people I know have tried this and you will be working all hours for the first few years, every single day, and unless you can buy in bulk you'll have to charge over the odds to stay afloat, and then customers will complain that they can get it cheaper at the bigger shops. I would very, very seriously think about this and see if there isn't some specialist sort of way that you can provide something other tack-shops can't. If you can't, do background research and try to find out how many tack-shops on average make it more than a few years. I strongly suspect that you will find it excruciatingly hard. I don't mean to wish to sound pessimistic but my mother had two businesses that crashed and burned (hairdressers - not quite the same!) and it's utterly soul-destroying to put so much into a dream and get nothing out but a giant, heart-breaking nightmare. If you're not 1,000% dedicated and certain, hold fire.
 
The best most used tack shop near us also sells feed. People nip in for a bag of mix and end up buying a pair gloves, looking at the clothes and treating themselves etc.
 
be careful - I did this - had a large store - opened with £100k at trade of stock - all the major accounts. I found we were spending an enormous amount of time showing customers products so they could decide what they wanted - once they had the correct hat size, body protector size, rug size etc they would then go on ebay and buy it cheaper. Yes we sold on the web but we could not compete with ebay. I decided eventually to close the shop and sell all the stock on ebay. I made far more than I did through the shop.

Yes we had customers who loved coming in and discussing everything with us, to gain advice, understand items and find out about new products. But we had far more who wanted everything cheaper than on the web.

Check out your market - I opened up just before ebay went mad - great timing!!!!!! The irish market is very different from the Uk market - I know as I spent several weeks visiting all your saddleries from Wexford up to Kildare. Have you really truly got a big enough market to make it pay. You already have a couple of big ones up near Dublin and people travel miles to go to those.
 
Interesting to see some of the start up figures here. To give you a comparison - I helped at at a very large international horse event a couple of years ago. Just to fill a stand at the show for a week we took about £100,000 worth of stock (at trade). Yes, it was top end stuff but nevertheless this would be the minimum start up figure in my estimation.
 
I think we could use more tack shops that are personal and smaller and have specialist knowledge that the supermarket type ones don't have.

Think aswell second hand stuff is not utilised anywhere near as much as it could be. Plenty people have bits knocking around, the odd pair of boots bought the wrong size......E bay is fine, til you get your fingers burned once or twice from unscrupulous sellers...nothing better than being able to see second hand stuff before you buy.

This time of year I am always looking for new rugs and assessing last winters to see just what needs replacing.and I don't mind second hand at all as long as they are clean and in good condition.....think 1 place where 2nd hand rugs could be seen would be fantastic. I wouldn't want the headache or hard work of doing anything like this.......would would hope somebody else would. Good luck, hope it works out for you if you decide to go ahead.
 
We used to have a tack shop. You have to remember that you need to be ordering well in advance and not all suppliers will offer a 24hr turnaround. I would say that the minimum amount of stock you need would cost in the region of £75k. You also need to budget for signage, marketing, merchant costs, web design costs and staff costs - if you try and staff it yourself you will go mad! Would second the feed element - what you make on the feed is minimal but it does bring people into the shop more regularly than they might otherwise visit.
 
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