Practice Profile: The Peacocks Veterinary Clinic

When she graduated from Ghent University in her native Belgium back in 2002 and came to the UK to work in Scotland, opening her own practice simply wasn’t part of the career plan for Iris Kestemont.

Like many young vets, her main ambition was to gain experience, build relationships and hope one day to get an opportunity to buy into a partnership.

But Iris’ career took some unexpected turns, and a series of management roles in recent years opened her eyes to another possibility.

After starting her own family and needing to find a job that allowed her to work hours that fitted around her home life, Iris took on a role with Vets Now. It was a move that ultimately kick-started a management career that also took in senior roles with CVS and Medivet, and gave her the perfect grounding to become a business owner.

And while she did attempt to secure a partnership as planned, faced with the soaring multiples created by a renewed corporate buying boom, like many others Iris decided to go it alone.

Iris said: “When I left vet school my plan wasn’t to move into management or to run my own business; that is just the way my career seems to have taken me.

“I started as a mixed animal vet in Scotland and in 2005 I moved south to work at a practice quite local to here [Corsham in Wiltshire], and in 2012, when I had had two children, I went to do out-of-hours work for Vets Now as it suited me to be doing weekends and night work.

“Then I was offered a principal vet job in Salisbury with them, and then an OOH lead vet job in Swindon, taking on a more managerial role, and I quite enjoyed that.

“After that I went on to be clinical director for CVS at Highcroft in Bristol and then had the opportunity to become regional director for Medivet, which saw me leave the clinical side of things for a year.

“It was a roving role anywhere they needed me really, nationwide. That role came to an end about two years ago, and it gave me great experience about running practices and all the management side of it.”

Going it alone

Around the time her role with Medivet came to an end, Iris found her personal life becoming more complicated.

She added: “At that time, my marriage was breaking down following cancer treatment for my husband, so he had to go through that first, plus I had two kids at home so there was a lot of stuff going on.

“I decided to go locuming for a while then, and just park the career and focus on the home front, and I enjoyed being back in clinical work and being local and all of that, and that made me start looking at buying into a practice.”

But with a corporate buying boom back under way following a brief hiatus at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, buying into a practice is more expensive than ever and would cost far more than starting up on her own. The way vet practices are valued (based on EBITDA) also means that obtaining finance can be very challenging when corporate buyers are offering prices based on turnover.

Iris added: “I soon realised buying in would not be a realistic option for me and opening my own practice just seemed the best way forward.

“Starting up means a clean slate; I can start with the staff who actively want to join, only buy the equipment I need and know that I will use, and only enter into the service contracts I want to enter into.

“I had a lot of practice management experience and had the clinical background, so I just thought, ‘why not? Go for it’.

“I was very lucky I was able to access the money I needed from a family member, so there is no pressure there.

“The whole enterprise cost me between £100,000 and £150,000, which is a lot of money, but not as much as people might think – especially when compared with what it can cost to buy into a partnership.”

Gap in the market

Having lived and worked in Wiltshire for many years, Iris knew Corsham in the county’s north-west well. With an affluent population of around 20,000 people served by two branch sites operated by larger practices based elsewhere, Corsham seemed an ideal spot for Iris to strike out on her own.

She added: “I looked at the census details, because I knew the town was growing as there were a lot of new houses going up and lots of new buildings.

“There are only two small branches of bigger practices based in Chippenham, so no one really does the whole service of operations and everything in Corsham, so I knew there was a market for that.

“Then I compared it to another place nearby – Melksham – and there are four practices in Melksham, so I knew there would be enough work, and it also feeds into the other side near Bath.

“People don’t want to drive into Bath as parking is a nightmare, so I knew we would pick up business from those clients, too, if we opened.

“Also, most of the practices in Bath are now corporate owned, and I knew people would be looking for an independent and in all the villages around here, too.”

All systems go

As Iris’ plans began to take shape, however, another lockdown put the project on hold, but by last summer she’d found the ideal location in a former beauty salon in the heart of town.

The site is in the pedestrian area with ample parking nearby, and in such a “doggy” town, it’s the perfect location for picking up passing trade.

And despite some delay negotiating with the landlord, the lease was signed just before Christmas last year. It was then all systems go for Iris to get her practice open in time.

“I didn’t use an architect – I just got someone in to put a new heating system and hot water in, and near the end of the project I got some shop fitters in to help with the units, but apart from that, myself, the rest of the team and my new partner did it all ourselves.

“There was just some partitioning to do, and a lot of painting and stuff – I would come in on the weekends and get the work done.

“So apart from the electrics and the plumbing, and fitting the units, we did most of the work to transform the building and I really enjoyed it.

“I also worked with a really talented friend who designed the logos and the branding for the posters in the windows and things. She also advised me on dressing up the waiting room and things like that, as I wanted it to look really smart and nice, which is why we got the sofas into reception rather than just chairs.

“We have a reasonably affluent clientele around here and they have fairly high expectations, which is why I also deliberately didn’t price the consults cheaper than anywhere else. I want people to come to me because they want to come to me, not because I might be half a pound cheaper than down the road.”

The end result is a small, but well-appointed building with all the facilities one would expect to find in a modern first opinion practice, including a prep area, lab area and theatre, and two consult rooms.

Iris’ budget also stretched to digital x-ray and dental x-ray machines and ultrasound, while her lab has just the bare essentials – in this case, a centrifuge, an Epoc handheld analyser and a microscope.

It is not a huge amount, but it is enough for Iris to handle most things that come her way.

She added: “I have my emergency medicine and surgery certificate, but I am just an all-rounder, really; I just like doing my consults and talking to my clients.

“I don’t mind taking most things on, really, but for the big ops I get Rata [a visiting referral service] to send someone over for the orthopaedic and some soft tissue surgeries, so they can get done in the practice and I can offer that comprehensive service in-house.”

Gold standard

The practice takes its name from the fact Corsham is well known for the peacocks that roam free in the town, but Iris hopes her practice will actually make its name from the high standard of care on offer for both clients and their pets.

This boutique approach can place a significant customer service burden on every member of Iris’ small team, which is why she has only recruited proven talent she has worked with before.

“I got my team together by simply putting a message on my Facebook for staff, and I had seven applicants for the nurse and receptionist position each, and I needed two part-time people for each, so that was great,” she added.

“I recruited two receptionists who I had worked with at a previous practice and both had been there for about 15 years. They both knew what they were doing and were local to the area; they each cover five hours a day and they manage that between themselves.

“People know them both locally and they will come in to say hi, and that has been really good for building up business. The two nurses I recruited also both have really good skills and qualities to bring to the team, and they work part-time on different days.”

Since the practice opened its doors to the paying public for the first time on 15 March, business has been steady, if not spectacular, with client numbers now approximately 300.

But that was always part of the plan at Peacocks and Iris is happy to let word spread organically. She added: “People have come, clients are starting to build up, but it will take a little time as word of mouth is so important.

“People are actively spreading the word about us, as most of our clients have come to us as someone has told them about us.

“I think we will be breaking even and paying all ongoing costs out of what we are turning over in the next three months, and I actually want to be earning money properly next year.”

Big challenges

It has been – and remains – a lot of work for one person to take on, and Iris admits that the time she has had to spend on the project has taken its toll.

She said: “One of the biggest challenges at the moment is that it is taking up so much time; I am the only vet as I can’t really afford to pay someone extra to come and do just a bit of work, so I have to be here 50 hours a week. The rest of the time, Vets Now is covering me.

“That is taking a strain and I feel guilty for my kids; homeschooling and things, I haven’t done any of that – the au pair has been handling that as I have had no choice.

“Even in January when the schools were last closed, I was project managing this and I was here all the time, or on the phone or the laptop.

“My son is in primary, and that is fine as the au pair looked after him and they did all their stuff together on Teams, but my daughter is in secondary school and she was literally stuck in her room all day behind a laptop doing the tasks she was set and I felt really sorry for her. But that is a choice I make I suppose; at the moment I make do and I hope it will get a lot better. It is the role model I choose to be for my children. Everything comes with pros and cons, but I have no regrets.

“I don’t have any great aspirations of setting up a group or anything like that – I just want this practice to work for me and to be successful, and for my team and my clients to be happy.

“And if it earns me enough money to pay off my mortgage and do the things that I want to do then that is all I want. Sometimes being small is a really good thing.”

Not that Iris is ruling anything out for the future; she currently has a colleague who comes into the practice two days a week to perform complementary therapies, and this is something that could become more of a feature at Peacocks.

She said: “I have a friend I went to vet school with who now comes in to do just complementary therapies – acupuncture, herbal chiropractor things. She is really experienced with that and she has brought her own clients as well.

“So developing that part of the business would be really good and ultimately, bringing in new partners is also part of the plan. Sharing the load and sharing the responsibility might be something I would look at.

“But whatever we do I want to maintain our ethos and really focus on our strengths as an independent business, and the core of that is the continuity. Clients want to see the same vet; the same people, and they don’t want to have to go do the whole story of what is wrong with Fluffy every time they come in.

“With the corporates, there is so much flow of staff that it just doesn’t happen anymore. So we will continue to recruit in the right way and build slowly around the needs of our growing client base.”