Alright, can't believe I'm going to do this, but I've got to get this out. (Plus, this this is a rant thread.)
8ball_99 is right. Most places get shipments from 2-3 regular wholesalers weekly, but then they have other "specialized" wholesalers that come in usually every few months. It's very impractical (and virtually impossible) to label each and every coral. You can't expect shops to spend time relabeling 70-150 coral/fish on 30 different tanks and get good customer service. All the employees would be running around with markers the entire time. Shipment times are usually horribly sporadic, too. Sometimes they come in a 11am, sometimes 6pm. And trust me, when you've been there all day and you get a shipment at 6, unpacked at 7, acclimated by 8, 30 minutes to write everything down is a lot of time. A lot of work goes into shipments, assuming they are acclimated and organized properly.
One-priced tanks are usually not an option. You can't keep up with what livestock is where, which shipments sold and which didn't, etc. It's a real PITA when it comes to fish of course... Someone could steal frags in a one-priced tank much easier, also. And trust me, it happens much more often than you would think.
Wholesale prices can literally vary by week, as it is quiet competitive. Prices vary even more by "season". A piece that's $35 one month might be $55 the next. A $5-$10 difference is pretty typical from week to week. Plus, sometimes the wholesellers have sales, combo packs, etc which also change the prices.
Yea, I'm sure some places do "size up" their customers, but I for one can honestly say I never did. The price on the sheet is the price it sells for. Period. If anything, coral would be sold lower than priced if they had not sold in a long time.
The problem with price lists is that they change so much. I can remember a few times we'd get a shipment in say, a coral beauty for $35. We'd post that week's list up. Then next week we'd get a shipment in and a coral beauty for $40. The customer would say they wanted to buy the coral beauty, and then when they get up to the register to pay they'd freak out because they were told it was $35 last week and it's $5 more this. They don't understand that yes, it's the same type fish, but no, it's not the SAME fish. The mark-up would be the exact same, but the wholesale price was higher the following week. That's not the LFS, that's the wholesaler.
Another thing that's really annoying is the "price of what it's worth" excuse, so here's the clean-cut truth about it that I've seen. The majority of shoppers in the B'ham area have reefs, but are not reefkeepers. They have something that looks cool in their home, but they aren't worried about researching livestock, equipment, etc. The truth is, there is no real "price range". I've seen people say a beautiful 4-5" wide tricolored cynarina is over priced at $85, and then turned around and said a $35 colony of brown button polyps is a steal. Unless you do a lot of coral research, people see coral as a pretty colorful thing and will pay depending on how much they like it. Why so many people go into shops and claim things are "so overpriced" is because they are educated as to what the particular piece can be bought on-line or at frag swaps, etc. A lot of people will go in and buy those "so overpriced" coral and be perfectly happy, because they see it as worth the money.
There is a huge divide in the types of customers LFS's receive. On one hand you have the hobbyist, who is informed and educated in reefkeeping. The hobbyist usually enters looking for a certain type of coral with a certain amount of money to spend, just as mltmtascp said. If the store doesn't have the piece, of the piece isn't in the price range, they won't buy anything. On the other hand you have the customers that enter with X amount of money. They usually have no real specific piece they are looking for, they just know they have X amount of money to spend. If they find something that's cool and under that X amount of money, they'll buy it. It's somewhat of a premeditative impulse-buy.
Whew....
