Profit and loss

24/05/2011 by admin.

It has always been important to us that our clients feel at home when they come into the surgery and that they have confidence in the skills of our Vets and Nurses, however in today’s economic climate that might not be enough. Everyone is struggling for money and prices just keep going up, we have no control over the increases in drug and food costs from the manufacturers and every time the new price lists come through the post we groan. We try to keep our margins down to a minimum because we know it is dreadful when your pet needs something and you can’t afford it, but on the other hand we all need to be able to pay our bills too.

So we were very pleased to hear from a new client last week that our prices are still very competitive, this is how we want it to be. He told us that another local vet had quoted £80 more than us to spay his bitch, almost 50% more!

We know that some vets have ‘loss leaders’ as supermarkets do where they sell some things at below cost in order to entice customers in and then make up the money on other things but that is not our way. We prefer to make our money ‘across the board’ so that whatever our clients come in for they know we are giving them the best price we can and that some clients are not getting a better deal at the expense of others. Fairness is very important to us.

Whether this is a strategy which will help us survive the recession remains to be seen, but we have come through the others in the past nearly 60 years so we have hopes that this one will be the same!

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