As the autumn leaves begin to fall and the days grow shorter, many horse owners find themselves busy with other priorities and not really thinking much about their horse transport requirements for the next year.
As a result, horsebox repairs and sales tend to decrease in the last few months of the year and then dramatically surge in the early months of the new year.
This seasonal trend presents challenges for manufacturers, who would ideally like to spread orders over the year but find themselves filling order books to capacity in just the first few months of the new year.
This seasonal sales cycle offers a unique opportunity for those planning ahead for repair/refurbishments or even new horsebox builds.
1. Customisation Options
Ordering your horsebox allows you to customise it to your exact specifications, rather than buy something off the shelf that does not fit exactly. Compromise is always a poor choice!
2. Avoiding New Year annual price increase
Secure current prices before potential increases occur in the spring due to heightened demand and raw material costs.
3. Peace of Mind
Avoid the last-minute scramble when everyone else is trying to secure their horsebox.
4. Smoother Transition into Spring
With your horsebox secured ahead of time, you can focus on preparing for the upcoming season.
5. Production Build Times
Many manufacturers have longer lead times during peak seasons. By ordering in the last few months of the year you can ensure your horsebox is ready for the new season, as build times can vary considerably.
6. Manufacturing Delays
Manufacturing delays have become increasingly common over the past few years, with skilled staff shortages significantly impacting scheduling for new horseboxes, repairs, and refurbishments. To mitigate these issues, planning well ahead, allow for some spare time if delays crop up.
7. Supply Chain Ripple effects
Material delays can cause unforeseen disruptions to manufacturer scheduling. Again, planning well ahead, allows for some spare time if delays happen.
We asked Russell Blamire, who is General Manager at AHH and has 20 years’ experience of building horseboxes, for his thoughts:
At the start of each new year, we typically take on between six and eight months work in the first few months of the year. For the rest of the year, new orders come at a steady pace, slowing down towards November, December and then Christmas. This has some significant challenges that we try our best to plan around. Being a bespoke horsebox manufacturer, means that once our start dates reach out as far as late summer, few customers want to wait this length of time for a build to start.
Without doubt the worst point that effects customers are build delays and it would be nice to say we don’t have them. Unfortunately, global supply chain issues and labour shortages have been unprecedented in the last few years. These issues are something we are working on, and we are constantly looking to replace imported items with products manufactured in the UK and we have vastly increased in house training to combat staff shortages.
A well-chosen horsebox should be a long term investment in your equestrian pursuits.
Happy riding
This article was written by the team at The Horse Life
