What Happens When We Commoditize Riding?
There are significant changes taking place in the equestrian industry, both at the elite and entry levels of the sport. This week, I want to focus on a trend I'm seeing in lesson programs: the growing emphasis on structuring riding instruction as a scalable, recurring revenue business.
Subscription pricing, standardized curricula, group lessons and increased utilization of horses, instructors and facilities are all being promoted as ways to improve profitability. And it's easy to understand why. Horse professionals face high operating costs, demanding workloads and often very narrow profit margins. Finding ways to improve the financial performance of a lesson program is a legitimate and important business objective.
But there's a difference between building a more efficient business and changing the nature of what that business sells. When scalability depends on making instructors, horses and the customer experience increasingly interchangeable, we're doing more than improving operations. We're potentially changing the value of riding instruction itself.
What happens when we commoditize something that probably shouldn't be commoditized?
Experienced riding instructors do considerably more than deliver lessons. They develop an understanding of their students' abilities, confidence, challenges and progress. Equally important, they know the horses, their training, temperaments, limitations and how they're responding to the work being asked of them.
An instructor has to continually balance the needs of the horse with those of the rider. What happened in yesterday's lesson may affect which student should ride a particular horse today, what exercises are appropriate or whether that horse needs different work. That continuity of knowledge is part of what makes experienced instruction valuable.
This doesn't mean a lesson program can't have multiple instructors or operate on a substantial scale. But when instructors rotate without effective communication and oversight, important information about both horses and riders can be lost.
Lesson Programs Used to Offer Something Different
Historically, there was a fairly clear distinction between a lesson program and a rental stable.
At a rental stable, you purchased access to a horse for a period of time. You were assigned a horse, went for a ride and returned it. The product was essentially the riding experience.
A lesson program offered something different. You learned from a professional who knew you, selected appropriate horses, developed your skills and introduced you to the responsibilities that come with riding. You learned to groom, tack up and care for horses, to recognize their individual needs and to understand why those needs sometimes took precedence over your own plans.
You weren't simply learning to ride. You were becoming an equestrian.
That's why some of the changes I'm seeing concern me. From the customer's perspective, a modern lesson program can begin to resemble the old rental-stable model: purchase recurring access to riding, arrive at a designated time, ride whichever horse is assigned with whichever instructor is scheduled, finish the lesson and leave.
There may be sophisticated software, an organized curriculum and a well-managed business behind that experience. But if the customer experiences horses and instructors as interchangeable components of an hour of riding, something important has changed.
The School Horse Was Never Intended to Be the Entire Experience
A good beginner school horse has an extraordinary job. It may carry many different riders each week, all with different levels of balance, coordination and understanding of the aids. It must learn to tolerate considerable inconsistency without becoming confused or frustrated.
At the beginning, the rider often lacks the position and knowledge to communicate effectively with the horse. The instructor provides much of the direction, while the horse learns to be forgiving of mistakes and respond appropriately. Protecting that horse's training, confidence and willingness to work requires considerable skill.
But as the rider develops an independent seat and learns to communicate through the aids, their education needs to progress. They need opportunities to ride horses that respond to increasingly sophisticated communication and to develop the feel, timing and judgment that are part of good riding. It's neither realistic nor fair to expect a horse that must routinely disregard the unintended aids of multiple beginners to suddenly become sensitive and responsive to those same aids when a more advanced rider gets on.
Traditionally, that progression might lead to more advanced instruction, leasing, ownership, competition or other opportunities to work consistently with individual horses. The beginner lesson program was an entry point into something larger.
When a business is structured primarily around retaining customers in a recurring beginner-level experience, that progression can disappear. Customers may be perfectly happy purchasing an hour of riding each week, and the predictable revenue may appeal to the business owner. But are we developing riders and horsepeople, or simply providing a generic recreational experience?
Your Business Model Affects Your Culture
Every business model attracts a particular kind of customer, but it also influences the customers already there. What a business offers, what it expects of its clients and how it treats horses and professionals all help establish its culture.
Historically, lesson programs introduced people to the larger horse world. Students became interested in the horses themselves, spent more time at the barn and gradually developed greater knowledge and responsibility. Some went on to lease or own horses, compete or pursue careers in the industry. Others became knowledgeable recreational riders and lifelong supporters of equestrian activities.
That progression has value to an individual horse business because lesson clients may eventually participate in other parts of the operation. It also has enormous value to the industry, which depends on developing future horse owners, competitors, professionals and knowledgeable participants.
If we change what happens at the entry point, we should consider whether we're also changing where it leads.
When a Revenue Solution Creates Other Problems
I've worked with horse professionals who expanded their lesson programs to solve legitimate financial problems. They needed more predictable revenue, better utilization of their facilities or income that wasn't entirely dependent on their own time in the saddle.
Those are reasonable objectives, and expansion can make good financial sense. But I've also seen situations where the additional revenue brought operational problems that weren't anticipated.
Staffing is often one of the biggest challenges. Unless the owner teaches the lessons personally, they must recruit, train, supervise and retain instructors with the expertise to develop riders while protecting the training and welfare of the horses. That's a high-expertise job in a business where margins often make it difficult to offer compensation that reflects the responsibility involved.
As the program grows, so do the demands on management, horses and facilities. The owner who hoped to reduce their workload may find themselves managing a more complicated operation, with staffing difficulties, overworked school horses and changes to the culture of the larger business.
I've seen lesson programs improve revenue while creating considerable strain elsewhere in the operation. That doesn't mean expansion was the wrong decision, but the financial opportunity needs to be evaluated alongside the staffing, operational, cultural consequences, and brand positioning.
Business Models Shape Markets
We tend to think about business models in terms of pricing, staffing, capacity and margins. But they also teach customers what to value.
If instructors are presented as interchangeable, customers may begin to see them that way. If horses are presented as something assigned for an hour of riding, customers may begin to see them that way too. And if riding becomes simply another weekly activity purchased through a subscription, we shouldn't be surprised if customers treat it like one.
Applying a scalable revenue model to riding instruction may create a larger market for lessons, but I'm not convinced it creates a stronger market. We may inadvertently devalue the expertise of riding instructors, the importance of developing relationships with horses, and the knowledge and responsibility that have traditionally been part of becoming an equestrian.
None of this means lesson programs shouldn't grow or become more efficient. A large, well-managed program can provide excellent instruction, care for its horses and develop knowledgeable riders. But those outcomes require deliberate choices about staffing, progression, horse management and the experience being offered.
For me, the important business question isn't simply how to make riding lessons more scalable. It's how to build a financially sustainable lesson program without commoditizing the horses, the professionals or the education that gives riding its value.
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