When Should We Start Planning Our Stallion Service Auction?
When should we start planning our stallion service auction?
Sooner than you think, and probably not for the reason you think.
Associations usually assume the website is the long pole. It is not. We can have a new auction site up in under a week, and we have done it plenty of times.
The part that runs long is your stallion list, and that has nothing to do with us.
What actually takes the time?
Getting stallion owners to commit.
That is the whole answer, and every association secretary reading this just nodded. You need owners to say yes, and then you need the details out of them. Photos. Breeding fee. Any conditions on the breeding. Whether it is for the current year or next. Who to contact.
Every one of those depends on somebody else answering their phone, checking their email, or digging up a photo that is not eleven years old.
You cannot make that go faster by starting the website earlier. You can only make it go faster by starting the asking earlier.
What does a realistic timeline look like?
Rough shape, and every association is a little different:
Eight to twelve weeks out. Start asking stallion owners. Not a mass email, actual asks to the people you most want. The ones who said yes last year are your first calls, and they are usually easy yeses.
Six to eight weeks out. Chase details. This is the stretch that always eats more time than anybody plans for. Photos and breeding fees are where things stall.
Four weeks out. Lock your dates and your closing time. Get the site built and the listings loaded. This is our part, and it is the fastest part.
Two weeks out. Start telling people. Registration open, previews up, and get in front of last year's bidders while there is still time for it to matter.
Auction week. Reminders. Then more reminders than feel necessary.
If that math means you should have started three weeks ago, you are in good company, and it is still worth starting today.
Is September too early to be thinking about this?
No, and it is the most common mistake we see.
September feels early. Auction season runs into winter, so there is a natural instinct to deal with it later. But the asking part is what runs long, and the asking part is exactly what you can do right now, before anybody is busy.
The associations that raise the most are almost never the ones with the fanciest auction site. They are the ones who started collecting stallions while everybody else was still thinking about it.
What if we have never run one before?
Then start earlier and ask more questions, but do not talk yourself out of it.
A first SSA is mostly about your stallion list and your bidder list, same as a tenth one. The platform side is genuinely handled. We have been running online stallion auctions since 2007, and auctions on our platform have raised more than $11 million for associations since 2020, including $2.3 million in the 2025 season across 29 auctions. We do not take a percentage of any of it.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to build the auction website?
Under a week in most cases. It is not the constraint, and it has not been for a long time.
When should our auction actually close?
Most of ours close in the evening, around seven. Whatever you pick, publish it as a number and repeat it often, because the last few bids are where the money is and people lose track of dates.
Can we run more than one auction a year?
Yes, and it costs nothing extra on our platform. Plenty of associations run their SSA and a separate fundraising auction on the same site.
What if a stallion owner backs out late?
It happens every year to everybody. Which is a good argument for asking more owners than you need, early, rather than exactly enough, late.
Do we need everything finished before we open?
No. Get registration open and previews up while you are still finalizing. Early registrants are the people most likely to bid, and every day they are not registered is a day you cannot reach them.
Let us talk
If you are thinking about a stallion service auction this season, whether it is your first or your fifteenth, call or text me at 979-217-1544. Even if the answer is that this year is too tight, I would rather tell you that now than in November.
Tom Bruch has built websites since 1998 and is the owner of Big Sky Internet Design.