Hacking SmartPak: Barn Buddy Shipping

I thought everyone used this, but reading through the comments on a recent post by Amanda at The $900 Facebook Pony honestly surprised me.

I like SmartPak quite a lot. For me, they're a local upstart (as is Dover Saddlery, actually). I will grant that I am not the avid consumer of the latest and greatest in tack or riding clothes and that if I were I might search harder for deals, or selection. So while I like SmartPak, I get that there are legitimate reasons not to be their biggest fan, as many in the above post outlined.

Here's the trick to SmartPak, though: Barn Buddy Shipping.

If you've never heard of this, I urge you to check it out.

Essentially, if anyone in your barn autoships SmartPaks, or if your barn is registered as part of the Barn Buddy program (which is SUPER easy to do), you can get weekly free shipping to your barn of any item SmartPak carries. Order up to the afternoon before your barn's shipping date and it gets added on to the shipping order.

For me, that means that anything I order up to Wednesday afternoon is put on a truck on Thursday. Because I'm relatively close to SmartPak, that means it is at the barn by Friday afternoon. Easy as that.

There's no minimum. There's no requirement for purchasing specific items. I once ordered $7.95 replacement blanket straps on a Wednesday, and they were there on Friday. When Tristan was recovering from surgery, this was a key part of my planning. Some of the more specific stuff like Elastikon was not available locally. If I looked in my kit on Wednesday and thought "shit, I'm almost out," I would order more and it would be there on Friday. Ditto for vet wrap, gauze, betadine...you name it. I got weekly packages for like two months straight.

Here's how to get at Barn Buddy shipping.

Log in to your account and look along the left-hand side for your Address Book.

In your Address Book, you'll see the various places you can ship things, like any other online retailer. Here's mine: you can see that my barn is an option for shipping.

To add your barn, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Add a New Address."

You can then click on "Find Your Barn" and you'll see this page.

Here's an example of an executed search on longtime Area 1 eventing barn Hitching Post Farm.

Double-check the name and address of your barn, and then click "Choose This Barn."

Then you're done. The next time you purchase something, you'll have the option of shipping it to your barn. When you do that, shipping will be free and it will ship weekly on the specified day.

It's easy. It's fast. It's apparently not commonly known. The one catch is if you board at a truly private facility or if you keep your horses at home. Then, yeah, you're out of luck. But if you have any friends at a commercial barn - or you go anywhere to lesson regularly - then you can just put their information instead.

(Ummmmm, not that I do this anyway, but this was not paid, endorsed, requested by, or whatever by SmartPak. I just think it's an awesome feature and it didn't seem like people knew about it!)