A puppy school for sale will be presented on enrolments. Twelve intakes a year, seven or eight puppies each, this much per head, here is the revenue.
All of that is downstream. The thing that produces it is somebody at a vet clinic reception desk putting a flyer in a new owner's hand at the six-week vaccination.
Establish the state of that arrangement before you spend an hour on anything else.
The three questions about the referral
Is it written? Ask to see it. Most of the time there is nothing, just years of goodwill. That is not a reason to stop, but it changes the price enormously and it changes the structure.
Can it be assigned to you? If there is an agreement, find the assignment clause. If there is not one, find out whether the clinic will sign a new agreement with you, before settlement, in writing.
Who at the clinic holds it? Referral arrangements in practice are usually held by one person, often the practice manager or a long-serving nurse. Find out who, and find out whether they are staying. A clinic changing hands or changing managers in the next year is a risk that sits directly on top of yours.
Then ask to meet them. With the seller, politely, before exchange. Introduce yourself, say you are hoping to continue the arrangement, and listen carefully to how enthusiastic the answer is. You are not asking for a commitment. You are reading the room, and the room will tell you more than the enrolment spreadsheet.
If the clinic is unwilling to meet a prospective new owner, that is your answer.
Concentration is the risk, and it is usually total
Ask where every enrolment in the last two years came from, by source.
If one clinic is ninety percent of it, you have a business with a single point of failure controlled by someone who does not work for you. Price it accordingly and structure for it: hold back a substantial share of the purchase price against the referrals continuing for twelve months after settlement.
If there are three or four sources plus some direct website enquiry, the business is much more solid than its size suggests, and it is worth more per dollar of revenue than a bigger school on one relationship.
The enrolment history, read properly
Ask for enrolments by intake for three years, with the class capacity alongside so you can see the fill rate.
Expect strong seasonality. The post-Christmas puppy wave fills January and February. Winter intakes are thin. Any annual average will mislead you, so look at the intakes themselves.
Then check the fill rate trend. A school running at eight of ten places for three years is healthy. One that used to fill and now runs at four has lost a referral source, lost a reputation, or gained a competitor, and you need to know which before you pay for the earlier numbers.
Ask for completion rates too. Puppies who enrol and stop after week two mean either the classes are not good or the scheduling does not suit, and both show up later as reviews.
If the school runs on Petboost, courses, sessions, enrolments and attendance are recorded per intake, so ask for the export rather than a summary.
The pipeline claim
A seller will often tell you the real value is the graduates who go on to buy other services.
Make them prove it. What share of graduates booked something else within twelve months, and what is a graduate household worth over three years. If they cannot answer, treat the claim as worth nothing, because unmeasured it usually is.
If they can answer and the numbers are good, that changes what the business is. It stops being a small course business and becomes a customer acquisition channel, which is worth considerably more if you have something to sell those customers.
Which raises the question worth asking yourself: do you? A puppy school bought by a trainer, a daycare or a grooming business is worth far more than the same school bought as a standalone, because the pipeline lands somewhere. Standalone, the economics are thin.
The operational checks
Vaccination protocol. Puppy classes accept dogs before their vaccination course is complete. That is the point of the class and it is also the risk. Ask for the written protocol, check it reflects current veterinary advice, check it is actually followed, and check the insurer has seen it.
Insurance. Get your own quote with your own qualifications and the actual activity list. Do not assume the seller's premium is your premium. Pet business cover is its own subject.
The venue. If classes run in a hired hall, at the clinic, or in a community centre, find out whether the booking is a contract or a habit. Ask whether it transfers. A school that loses its venue and its referrals in the same month is not a business.
The materials. Curriculum, handouts, assessment sheets, videos, website. Confirm the entity owns them and get any contractor-written material assigned in writing.
Who teaches. If the owner has run every class personally, you are buying their Tuesday evenings. Find out whether anybody else can deliver the course and whether they are staying.
Prepaid enrolments. Anyone paid up for a course starting after settlement is a class you run for money the seller has. List them and apportion them.
Walk away if
- The referral arrangement is verbal and the clinic will not meet you
- One clinic is nearly all the enrolments and it is under new management
- Fill rates have fallen for two years and nobody can say why
- The vaccination protocol is informal or nobody can produce it
- The venue booking is a handshake with somebody who is retiring
What to pay for
Be clear with yourself about what you are buying, because it is a short list: a referral flow, a curriculum, a name, and a set of graduates. Equipment is worth its second-hand value and the premises are usually somebody else's.
Price the referral flow on how secure it is rather than on what it produced last year. Hold back part of the price against it continuing. Ask for a transition where the seller introduces you at each referral source in person, and put that obligation in the contract rather than trusting it to goodwill.
The first ninety days
Run the course exactly as written. Puppy owners talk to each other and to their vet, and the clinic will hear about any drop in quality within a fortnight.
Be at the clinic in person, more than once, in your first month. The relationship is with a person and it now needs to be with you.
Start a second referral source immediately, before you need one. The whole risk in this vertical is concentration, and the only cure is another channel.
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