SADDLE BUYER
Who are they? Horseowners, horseback riders who want to have their own saddle to take lessons in, trainers, parents of child riders.
What is their age group? If buying for themselves 20s up to 60s then thins out due to less older people riding. Children ages 5 to 20 whose parents buy the saddle.
What is their annual income? $45,000 to $125,000+
Education level? College grad
Where do they shop?
- In their local tack store
- mobile tack stores
- horse shows
Where do they get their information?
- Fellow riders
- advice from their trainer
- social media
- online discussion forums
- magazines
- internet search.
Why do they buy used versus new?
- If buying a practice saddle to lesson on, used is a more affordable option. They also don’t need the custom features of the high end saddles.
- A rider who trains young horses. A used saddle that fits a range of horses saves money and if it gets damaged when a young horse does something unpredictable it’s not as much of a financial loss.
- Children outgrow their saddles and buying used saves their parents money.
- Riders who want a premium brand saddle but don’t want to spend upwards of $5,000 for one.
What problem are they looking to solve?
- Needing a saddle for a new horse.
- A saddle that fits their growing child.
- They don’t like riding in the typically low quality saddles that riding lesson stables use.
- To save money.
What are their pain points?
- Difficulty in finding the saddle they want.
- Lack of a local tack store.
- Have to visit several websites that provide varying degrees of information on the saddles.
- Difficulty comparing each saddle’s features from the need to search many websites.
- Websites are difficult to use if they aren’t mobile friendly.
- Lack of useful filtering, means they often have to scroll through many pages of saddles to find the one they want.
- On websites like Ebay, it’s difficult to tell whether the saddle is being sold by a tack store or an individual seller. Individual sellers typically don’t offer a trial period like tack stores do and many individual sellers don’t accept returns, leaving the buyer stuck with a saddle if they don’t like it.
What are their objections to using your service? Not having enough of a selection to look at.
How will buyers benefit from the service?
- Ability to compare saddles side by side
- Easy to use website with many filtering options eliminates the need to search through pages of saddles that don’t fit their criteria.
- Share saddles with friends on social media
- Favorites list – My Tack Room
- Search Filter: Brand, Size, Tree, Flap, Type, Price, Monoflap, Seat depth, By store.
- Save a saddle search and set a sale alert for it so all saddles that match the search will have an alert.
- New items that come in stock or come back in stock that match a saved search/sale alert will trigger a notification to shopper by email or Facebook instant messenger.
- Trending searches
- Recently viewed
- You may like
- New to our store
- Your favorites
- What’s selling now
- Blog
- Brand descriptions
- Reviews of Tack Stores on the website
- An easy path to purchase
- Consistently presented information
- Mobile friendly website
- Can use website as a resource to find saddle fitters in their area, learn more about the saddle brands sold and through published content on blog
TACK STORE OWNERS
Who are they? They range from small “mom and pop” stores to large online stores with multiple retail locations.
What is their age group? 30’s to 60’s
What is their annual income? Store income varies based on location, size of store and inventory carried.
Education level? Some college, college graduates
Where do they get their information?
- Industry trade shows
- Manufacturer’s reps
- Trade publications
- Equestrian related magazines
- Fellow tack store owners
Who are their customers?
- Riders and horse owners from the local area
- Trainers
- Parents of children who ride
- Online customers if there is a website.
- Customer type depends on the brands and products sold in the store.
- Ages from kids and teens with their parents and up.
- Customers are primarily women.
What problem are they looking to solve?
- Competition from larger stores like Dover Saddlery, an online store with an expanding retail network, and Smartpak an online store. Amazon to a lesser degree.
- Getting more traffic to their store and website.
- Don’t have time and/or technical skills to maintain their website.
- In the case of advertising their saddles on other websites, they lack the time to create ads, upload images and edit the ads and remove when sold.
- No time to market to customers i.e. email and social media
What are their pain points?
- Finding and retaining good employees
- Financial constraints
- Losing sales and customers to the big online tack stores
- Getting shoppers to see their saddles
- The amount of time it takes to sell a saddle
What are their objections to using the service?
- Cost
- Have to learn new technology
- That we won’t get enough shoppers on the website
How will tack stores benefit from the service?
- Will be able to reach more buyers than they could on their own
- No need to upload their saddle inventory onto our website because we will be able to crawl their website to pull inventory.
- Save time by not having to edit or remove saddles; everything is managed for them as part of their plan.
- Opportunities to have their store be a “featured store”
- Can purchase banner ads for additional exposure.
- Our service can notify buyers that a saddle they are looking for has been listed.
- Levels the playing field. Smaller stores will share the same space with larger stores.
- By having a link to the saddle’s URL on the tack store’s website, buyers will go directly to the website to complete their purchase and while there possibly purchase other items in addition to the saddle.
- Opportunity to have a live chat option allowing buyers to chat directly with their store.
- Increased sales.