bues0022
New member
I've been noticing a surprising number of threads lately with the basic fact being "I just picked up a pair of picasso percs from petco for $10-$15/ea". For this to happen once seems rare, but it's not impossible for fish to get mislabeled, right? However, in the past few weeks there have been a lot more of these threads popping up. Also, if you think about it, the people on this forum are actually a minority of the number of people keeping SW aquariums, so think about how much this phenomenon has happened that has been going "unreported" to us.
This leads to the question: How is all of this happening?
I have several theories (not all my own, you know who you are who suggested these to me):
1) store-specific mislabeling. This one seems hard to swallow because this would require a large number of individual events in which a store employee placed what should be ORA picassos into a tank with much cheaper fish. OR, when placed in own tank the label was incorrectly priced. If this happened once, I can stomach this problem, but many times duplicated around the country? It not only goes to one person per store, but all the other employees/managers at the stores have the opportunity to see the price problem and correct it...yet this doesn't seem to be happening.
2)Franchise-wide price fixing. This could be considerably more possible. Petco as a corporation has decided to (in at least some certain markets) drop the price of very fancy clownfish in an attempt to gain back some customers. Getting a smoking good deal on a $100+ fish could offset greatly the terrible reputation of a fish-killing entity. Getting a customer in the door is huge to s store. Once there, the customer is much more likely to purchase additional fish, dry goods, frozen foods etc. (i.e. places where prices haven't been slashed). Even still, wholesale on a grade A picasso is somewhere around $45, so that would mean Petco would be loosing ~$30 per fish (yes, some assumptions are used here). That is a LOT of frozen brine shrimp to recover this much lost money and turn a profit.
3) Incompetent worker at ORA. It is entirely possible for there to be a new, or uncaring, or just plain incompetent worker at ORA that is packaging the wrong fish. An order comes in for percs, and they go to the nearest perc tank and put fish in a bag - not caring if they are true percs or picassos. They get sent off to the store where they don't care about attempting to go through the red tape to either send them back for the right thing (who sends back something much better than they were supposed to get?) or change the price (might even have to go up to corporate because of inventory change stuff). Therefore, they get put in the tank just like a perc and just figure some lucky customer gets away with a really good fish at a GREAT price.
4) ORA is knowingly messing with the supply chain. Thes last two possibilities are much more of a conspiracy-theory, so bear with my craziness. ORA has basically perfected the picasso clownfish by now. After multiple generations they have so many breeding pairs of picassos throwing so many picassos their supply is way up, yet demand stays the same. Fish aren't like boxes, and take money to keep "in stock" through food, water changes etc. They are accumulating a surplus of fish and don't know what to do. They are turning into the DeBeers of the fish world by massing all these picasso fish. Are they leaking a few out here and there to keep interest high? Putting some out the door and a few people "get lucky" would up interest in them. Think of this. You get lucky and pick up a pair for $20. Your buddy also wants a pair once seeing yours. He looks all over and can't find any but to have his LFS order a pair from ORA. That is a sale ORA wouldn't have had unless they "brought the expensive fish to the masses" through this "leaking" method.
5) OR, is ORA putting so many picassos out there at such cheap prices in an attempt to flush out all the other breeders? By dropping prices so drastically, who would pay $200 for a pair when you can go to petco and get a pair for $20? This means that most other breeders won't be able to turn a profit by raising picasso clownfish anymore and will give it up, leaving ORA to be the sole provider of "fancy" clownfish to the public. They will then be able to price fix to their desire (DeBeers theory again in a way), and even though there was a short stint of cheap picasso clowns, the end result is a more expensive market.
I'm really hoping this is just an innocent mislabeling on the part of several employees at petco and I'm just being more than a little paranoid to report the other cases. However, don't you think it's more than odd to see so many good fish sell for an order-of-magnitude less than they should?
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1818757
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1812617
This leads to the question: How is all of this happening?
I have several theories (not all my own, you know who you are who suggested these to me):
1) store-specific mislabeling. This one seems hard to swallow because this would require a large number of individual events in which a store employee placed what should be ORA picassos into a tank with much cheaper fish. OR, when placed in own tank the label was incorrectly priced. If this happened once, I can stomach this problem, but many times duplicated around the country? It not only goes to one person per store, but all the other employees/managers at the stores have the opportunity to see the price problem and correct it...yet this doesn't seem to be happening.
2)Franchise-wide price fixing. This could be considerably more possible. Petco as a corporation has decided to (in at least some certain markets) drop the price of very fancy clownfish in an attempt to gain back some customers. Getting a smoking good deal on a $100+ fish could offset greatly the terrible reputation of a fish-killing entity. Getting a customer in the door is huge to s store. Once there, the customer is much more likely to purchase additional fish, dry goods, frozen foods etc. (i.e. places where prices haven't been slashed). Even still, wholesale on a grade A picasso is somewhere around $45, so that would mean Petco would be loosing ~$30 per fish (yes, some assumptions are used here). That is a LOT of frozen brine shrimp to recover this much lost money and turn a profit.
3) Incompetent worker at ORA. It is entirely possible for there to be a new, or uncaring, or just plain incompetent worker at ORA that is packaging the wrong fish. An order comes in for percs, and they go to the nearest perc tank and put fish in a bag - not caring if they are true percs or picassos. They get sent off to the store where they don't care about attempting to go through the red tape to either send them back for the right thing (who sends back something much better than they were supposed to get?) or change the price (might even have to go up to corporate because of inventory change stuff). Therefore, they get put in the tank just like a perc and just figure some lucky customer gets away with a really good fish at a GREAT price.
4) ORA is knowingly messing with the supply chain. Thes last two possibilities are much more of a conspiracy-theory, so bear with my craziness. ORA has basically perfected the picasso clownfish by now. After multiple generations they have so many breeding pairs of picassos throwing so many picassos their supply is way up, yet demand stays the same. Fish aren't like boxes, and take money to keep "in stock" through food, water changes etc. They are accumulating a surplus of fish and don't know what to do. They are turning into the DeBeers of the fish world by massing all these picasso fish. Are they leaking a few out here and there to keep interest high? Putting some out the door and a few people "get lucky" would up interest in them. Think of this. You get lucky and pick up a pair for $20. Your buddy also wants a pair once seeing yours. He looks all over and can't find any but to have his LFS order a pair from ORA. That is a sale ORA wouldn't have had unless they "brought the expensive fish to the masses" through this "leaking" method.
5) OR, is ORA putting so many picassos out there at such cheap prices in an attempt to flush out all the other breeders? By dropping prices so drastically, who would pay $200 for a pair when you can go to petco and get a pair for $20? This means that most other breeders won't be able to turn a profit by raising picasso clownfish anymore and will give it up, leaving ORA to be the sole provider of "fancy" clownfish to the public. They will then be able to price fix to their desire (DeBeers theory again in a way), and even though there was a short stint of cheap picasso clowns, the end result is a more expensive market.
I'm really hoping this is just an innocent mislabeling on the part of several employees at petco and I'm just being more than a little paranoid to report the other cases. However, don't you think it's more than odd to see so many good fish sell for an order-of-magnitude less than they should?
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1818757
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1812617
