Welcome

Hi Everyone! Welcome to Horses of Canada 4.0 - our 4th website innovation since 1999. I've spent a year listening to your needs and with Plainpeak Inc. we designed a new site and a new service that we think will be a hit! It has been a lot of work getting everything ready these last months but we are very proud of the result.

My basic thought in the beginning was that I wanted to provide the comfort of an Agent style selling service without the big commission price tag and with more flexability for the user. I think we have created the best of both worlds with our video service offer and the other supplemental services and features.

Many clients who called me and wanted to list their horse complained endlessly about the struggles of selling their horse on their own. One of the major complaints was having to send out horse videos all the time, the hassle and the cost of it and how many buyers didn't appreciate the effort they had to go through to get them a video...sound familiar? I've heard stories of sellers who had a buyer call and make a video request indicating they were very serious, the seller ran out and rushed to get the video done and couriered it out only to have bad experiences such as sellers not even calling them back, sellers complaining the video wasn't bright enough, or that it didn't show enough, the seller saying they were no longer looking or had just found another horse - I've heard it all in the last 7 years!.

What I came up with is that instead of using my time to be the portal for all the horses listed, I would give that responsibility to the sellers in exchange for not having to pay commission. I would use my time instead to focus on marketing the site and coming up with newer and better ways of doing business in this industry. Instead, for a small monthly fee, less than 1/3 of the cost of sending one video by courier per month, we would post seller's horse videos online as we do now and offer our great, thorough profiles and sellers would never have to send out videos again.

The beauty of having the videos online in such a forum is that you will only have informed buyers contact you rather than your inbox and voice box being innundated with emails of video requests, basic questions, picture requests etc. The in-depth profile answers 90% of the questions buyers have and the online videos and pictures they can access instantly fill in the gaps. It saves so much time in selling and presents the horse's full story - it is so much better than having to retell it over and over and over...

I wanted to also provide support for those sellers who needed or just wanted some guidance in selling their horse. I thought about this problem again, because although the horse profile is very comprehensive and the listing process guides sellers through posting the information that they need to disclose, it still isn't the full service my sellers were used to getting. The things that were missing were the video/photo production services, I decided these services were still very much needed and required by horse sellers, in fact we will be offering these services in the future over many different regions in Canada. Another thing that we were missing was the consulting, what if a seller or buyer needs help during the sales process or wants to feel some security? I decided to work as a sales consultant for these buyers and sellers for an affordable hourly rate, rather than the bulky commission fee.

Many buyers relied on me as a neutral voice during the sale. To compensate for this I decided to put together a Feedback System for buyers and for sellers too, where they can post references on each other. I want to help promote positivity in the horse industry which I think benefits everyone, especially the horses. The other idea I had for buyer protection was to offer to them the opportunitly to hire a horse evaluator come out to look over the horse they're interested in for them. I created several forms that are based on tangible answers so they are as accurate as possible and don't depend on someone's subjective opinion. The questions on these evaluation forms are very specific, such as how is the horse to be saddle, to be girthed, to be led, to have their ears touched etc. The answers are written and also each question is given either a smile icon, a neutral face icon, or a frown icon to indicate how the horse responded. Buyers can use these forms for example if they can't fly out to see the horse and sellers can also use this service as another way to provide security for the buyer.

We have several other new features such as changes to the Account and Horsebox, the Want Ads page, Download a HOC poster, Videoing in Germany and more.. and you can read more about these features in other places on the site.

I just wanted to give you an idea with this letter how my ideas developed over the past year and where my motivations came from. I am dedicated to making the world a better place for horses and bringing more positivity and trust to the horse industry.

Have a great day everyone and I hope to talk to you all soon,

Christy Sarafinchan