How Do You Buy Corals At Wholesale Prices

[yardboy]

Quote: Jenn - I always wonder how etailers manage to unload their slow movers? Well, at least to the lfs I deal with here, the "slow movers" are just shipped and sold to you without asking. Often the owner has little idea what he's getting. He places an order and gets some of what he asks for and a bunch of stuff that he didn't. He takes "requests", I caveat that because the things I ask for makes the suppliers laugh - a purple plating montipora, a small colony of pink with blue tip table acro. I suspect these go instantly at the wholesellers on 104th st. I've heard of several e-tailers who claim to just go to all the warehouses there and "cherry pick". Must be nice. I really envy the aquarists in LA and thereabouts though. They must have a better choice than we do here. There's an extra flight of four hours or more between here and there, which cost that much more.
Oh wait, you said e-tailers,I was thinking wholesalers. Yea, I wonder how they do that too.

[yousuredo]

no the latter is not the way i way want to go ..............at all in fact it is what i want to help stop, i am sorry if i am asking the wrong question or the wrong way......remember i am still a consumer so my way of thinking isnt geared in the direction of wholesaler or retailer yet....i juat want to get a small propagation station set up..............and as far as wholesalers, i was mainley wanting to get DRYGOODS exc.from them and propagate the corals and inverts my self....

[JennM]

Hmm well I'm doing my best to answer two different people asking 2 different sorts of questions then. For dry goods unless you're ordering $300-350 or more in dry goods on a weekly basis, wholesale is not really the way to go, even for that. That's a whole lot of salt and supplements. Honestly, you can find some of that sort of stuff online at or near wholesale prices, no minimum order, no business licence and all that other sort of stuff. When I first opened up shop, after I got the initial $17,000+ worth of inventory in to stock the shelves, it was a challenge to create a minimum order just to replenish what I'd sold, for the first few months until I started selling stuff consistently, and earned the market to support that sort of quantity ordering. With dry goods wholesale, the more a store orders, the better overall pricing they get, and many have weekly or monthly specials on staple items. However, like I said, unless you're ordering in huge quantities, it's not worth the trouble - and again, none of the distributors (and I have or have had dealings with all of them in the Southeast), they require you to have a retail store front in order to do business with them. My main supplier is based in Florida, and their truck delivers to me each week, from their south Florida location, along with many of the other stores in the Metro Atlanta area. There are others too, a couple have warehouses in Atlanta, even though they are based elsewhere - Atlanta is a good hub, so they ship freight from their main warehouse, to Atlanta hub, and then send trucks out all over the area. None of them will deliver to a residential address.

Like I said - you can find etail prices that are comparable to wholesale list (much to my chagrin often times!), for a small scale home-based operation, IMO that would be the way to go.

Lots of hobbyists prop Xenia, leathers, some SPS, etc. One of my friends also breeds Banggai cardinals - mainly out of the pleasure of doing it, it's more work for personal satisfaction than monetary benefit, but she's quite adept at it. Many hobbyists do this to trade for store credit, or among other hobbyists, to help offset the costs of their hobby. It would have to be something very large-scale in order to profit from it, that's why there aren't so many doing it. Also, once the local market is saturated with Xenia or whatever, it gets harder to sell the fruits of your labours on a local basis. If you get into shipping, the cost goes up, mortality goes up... and so it goes.

Jenn

[JennM]

Originally Posted by yardboy

Quote: Jenn - I always wonder how etailers manage to unload their slow movers? Well, at least to the lfs I deal with here, the "slow movers" are just shipped and sold to you without asking. Often the owner has little idea what he's getting. He places an order and gets some of what he asks for and a bunch of stuff that he didn't. He takes "requests", I caveat that because the things I ask for makes the suppliers laugh - a purple plating montipora, a small colony of pink with blue tip table acro. I suspect these go instantly at the wholesellers on 104th st. I've heard of several e-tailers who claim to just go to all the warehouses there and "cherry pick". Must be nice. I really envy the aquarists in LA and thereabouts though. They must have a better choice than we do here. There's an extra flight of four hours or more between here and there, which cost that much more.
Oh wait, you said e-tailers,I was thinking wholesalers. Yea, I wonder how they do that too.

Yeah I think we had that discussion in another thread about offloading stuff... I get my share of brown corals but I expect that, and I have people that don't mind easy, beginner stuff like button polyps and mushrooms. I get my share of the good stuff too but that's because I don't buy from places that let locals pillage the new arrivals before they ship out. Yes LA has a lot of jobbers - if I went that route, I could enlist somebody in LA to go and shop the warehouses for me to cherry-pick, but the jobber needs to be paid too and that translates to higher retail prices... and we all know that cheap is the name of the game in this hobby, quality, method of harvest or capture be darned... but that too, is another post I could get started on a cyanide tirade... but I won't

Yeah the wholesalers have ways and means of turning over the less desirable specimens, retailers do too but I wonder what the etailer who gets half a box of brown corals with his purple acros, does with them? Sure they can order strictly from a list and get no extras, but that really limits what they are likely to get... of course a fragged colony of something spectacular can sell for more cumulatively than a single colony intact, so I suppose it all comes out in the wash - but then that comes back to chopping... I don't know.

I never explored the whole etail thing - I like doing business face to face.

Jenn

[Jeremiah]

I have a friend here in Minneapolis that runs an aquatics business out of his house. He can get pretty much anything and also has a pretty good selection of corals, fish and inverts that change about once a week. I don't know if he makes a lot of money or if he just likes to pass on the good deals to us. So it is possible to setup a small aquatics business out of your home. (don't know about getting rich)

I for one would NEVER reveal any trade secrets of mine, weather it was my supplier, how I setup my equiptment or anything other info that helps me run my business. I think Jenn has shared more information then I would have.

I also would think that if your looking for something to make money, probably a good idea to look into other more profitable business's other then aquatics. But if your just in it because of your love of corals and want to save some reefs and pass on some good deals to local reefers. I think that's great. But like Jenn said a few times now, I wouldn't think you would need to go the wholesale route to get up and going with some mother colonies.

Thanks for sharing your insights Jenn. It is really nice that a LFS owner such as your self is willing to share so much information with people looking into starting their own shops or etail sites.

[Flasheart]

I'm not looking for tax advice, but I've thought of starting a small home frag business to sell to local LFS's. At least I might be able to recope some of my expensess as business write offs. I've got perc's that are mating and certian corals appear to do really well, why not sell em.

[Jeremiah]

Hmm... That would be great to have any reef expenses be a write off. Let us know if you find a way...