Home based fish/coral shops

EDJFA

New member
The thread about the home based fish store over in IL made we wonder if you guys know of any other home based stores like that one.

I've not been there yet, but a friend from churuch goes to a guy here in St. Charles who runs a shop out of his house. The guy's name is Rommel Villadolid and his business is called the Coral Depot.

So, that's two places. How many others are there?
 
I've never heard of that one either. The only home based place I ever went to was Zoamania but Chad (GWA) bought him out years ago.
 
I've seen rommel on craigslist alot. I think he's just a hobbyist that frags out corals like we would and just decided to name it.
 
I was just at Rommel's actually. Really cool stuff, but yeah, it's not really a full fledged store. It's about 6 frag tanks that have taken over about half of his basement.
 
So is this the future of the LFS? lol

Will we all eventually get things from on line stores and and the neighbors house?
 
From a pure business standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. Part of the reason we pay bigger prices at our LFS is because there's a ton of overhead in any storefront business just in the triple net rent. Plus, like at Marine Solutions, they have employees that have to mind the store. Add in some of the other things like marketing, insurance, and the owner wanting a profit for himself and things get expensive quickly.

The neighbor who has 12 tanks set up in his basement just simply doesn't have to charge as much to make money. He'll probably not compete with the LFS on a volume basis, but on an ROI basis, he's way ahead.
 
Why do you think the economy sucks? So many businesses are going out of business. Sears and
k-mart are closing stores left and right. If you were in the market for a tv, you could go to American, ultimate electronics, and circuit city to shop. Now all of them are gone. Hopefully, the lfs can survive?
 
Big chain stores come and go all the time. I could make a pretty big list of stores that have disappeared over the years, but I do agree that we are seeing more lately.
 
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