Wholesalers for startup saltwater business

[Desert Sea]

If you have the finances that you can afford to lose and your heart is really into this venture, then go for it. If no one ever took a risk, just think of all the things we wouldn't have today. There's no reward without risk. The key is knowing how to manage that risk.

Best of luck to you!

 

[eder10986]

Some of you are real big ********!

Let the man do what he wants. You don't know him. I don't know him. His finances and time are personal and he certainly didn't ask for anyone's opinion - not mine either.

It's sad that such a great forum can make people like me who are incredibly patient upset.

Some of you have too much time on your hands to jump on here and judge.

Rant over.

Good luck brotha.


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[Ou8me2]

Sorry if I wasn't clear but I have a business liscence for my home address but the wholesalers won't deal with me so I won't compete with retail stores.

Let me ask someone I know who runs a business from his home and he is not a major $$ seller and by no means makes a full-time wage. He gets small amounts of fish and corals and sells them from his home. If he wants to share that info of course.

I remember at one point I thought I wanted the same thing. I talked with various vendors on running such a business and several of them are very successful operations today. It took them years before they made anything really significant as far as profit or being able to maintain an operation. It's a really tight market because so many others are doing the same. I would talk to other people in the business first and while some may give information others may not at the end of the day.

 

[codydemmel4]

Some of you are real big ********!

Let the man do what he wants. You don't know him. I don't know him. His finances and time are personal and he certainly didn't ask for anyone's opinion - not mine either.

It's sad that such a great forum can make people like me who are incredibly patient upset.

Some of you have too much time on your hands to jump on here and judge.

Rant over.

Good luck brotha.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I second this and as another young successful person in the financial world, I wish the OP much luck!

 

[2002RamAir]

I tried this and failed miserably. I had the idea in a town that had little to offer and it didn't work. The online markets are way to powerful and you have some huge buyers that spend 10's of thousands a week to get the best stuff there is. If you choose this route. I wish you good luck and hope you don't waste all of your money.

 

[jcjrogers]

Why not aquaculture your corals and try to breed your clowns? Most all of the cost would be in maintaining your existing hobby, and people like to buy tank raised fish and aquacultured corals. If you are making some money and the business grows, you will have a better idea of what the business entails and a better idea whether you might be successful going bigger. If you decide to go bigger, you could invest your profits in a more substantial business... inventory, store front, etc.

 

[SPR1968]

Hi Cuttleguy

I am in a different country (UK) and different business (Financial Services) but I started my business 20 years ago with nothing, took on all of the big names and succeeded.

If you want to breed fish or corals go for it but keep it simple and don't over expose yourself to costs. Set up a web site, breed the fish etc and them sell them at a better quality and cheaper price than anyone else out there. By not having a massive cost base like all of the big boys you can do it. I do it every day. If this is from you garage so what. just maybe start mail order and go from there and if it gets to the point you can give up your job then well done. If not then at least you tried and won't have lost much if any money. Don't get a shop with all the expenses attached to it until you need to and then only if it's essential.

And don't listen to the 'Nay sayers'. If your heart and business acumen say it might work then go for it or you will regret it later in life. If I had done what I was advised to do I wouldn't have been driving Ferraris for the last 14 years!

I appreciate that us older people have all the 'life experience' but I remember the hunger I had at 26 but which at 48 has now all but gone as I've been there and done that.

Anyway enough if my rambling and good luck to you.

 

[codydemmel4]

Hi Cuttleguy

I am in a different country (UK) and different business (Financial Services) but I started my business 20 years ago with nothing, took on all of the big names and succeeded.

If you want to breed fish or corals go for it but keep it simple and don't over expose yourself to costs. Set up a web site, breed the fish etc and them sell them at a better quality and cheaper price than anyone else out there. By not having a massive cost base like all of the big boys you can do it. I do it every day. If this is from you garage so what. just maybe start mail order and go from there and if it gets to the point you can give up your job then well done. If not then at least you tried and won't have lost much if any money. Don't get a shop with all the expenses attached to it until you need to and then only if it's essential.

And don't listen to the 'Nay sayers'. If your heart and business acumen say it might work then go for it or you will regret it later in life. If I had done what I was advised to do I wouldn't have been driving Ferraris for the last 14 years!

I appreciate that us older people have all the 'life experience' but I remember the hunger I had at 26 but which at 48 has now all but gone as I've been there and done that.

Anyway enough if my rambling and good luck to you.

this is some good advice to any young individual out there.

 

[d2mini]

IMO, you don't need the wholesalers to start your fish breeding venture.
Coral on the other hand, you will want wholesalers... but like it was said previously, that is going to be tough without being a brick and mortar store. And even if you do find some to work with you, you are going to get bottom of the barrel stuff.
For coral, i'd invest in the nicer boutique pieces for now and start growing those out while your main focus is on the fish.

 

[snorvich]

That's the thing: you don't understand how coral wholesale works even at a basic level. You can quadruple their minimums and they won't care, because they know that the home hobbyist isn't going to do that every week. The guys getting the stuff you want are spending $1-3k every week, and you can't "give away most of it" because, as I mentioned earlier, at that point you'd be paying significantly more than you would as a hobbyist.

I worked in coral wholesale for 4 years after having a coral store for 6 years, and still do consulting for some shops. Every other day people like you would call thinking they had a golden ticket, and the biggest reason wholesalers don't deal with home vendors anymore is because after the only order they'd ever make they would call and complain that it wasn't the quality they expected.





Being condescending to people with significantly more experience than you for not giving you the answers you want to hear kind of defeats the purpose of asking in the first place.

What he said. Trying to prevent some one's elses tragedy takes too much energy. Good luck.

 

[sick1166]

where are you located ?

 

[sde1500]

What do you have a for a personal tank? A lot of hobbyists start off growing out their own corals into frag tanks, and work from there. I suggested a place and they will certainly work to start up a little business, but are you just shipping in from a wholesaler to sell to the public? An order or two from them to get a decent stock wouldn't be bad, but I'd probably go the route of obtaining a bunch of nice corals at swaps and from other hobbyists or stores and grow them out to sell personally.

 

[snorvich]

Really? Ouch. I don't know how this helps anyone.

Keeps them from losing a lot of money.

 

[organism]

Here's something that tells you everything you need to know: all of the users complaining about how mean we "naysayers" are and how he should totally do it joined in 2016 except for 1 2014 who is strangely comparing work in finance to raising livestock. They lack even the most basic experience necessary to make an informed comment on the complex issue of buying wholesale corals, but will be all the OP listens to because he had his mind set before making the thread and just needed some people to tell him what he wanted to hear instead of what he needed to hear.

The users giving the OP a much-needed dose of reality each have an average decade of hobby experience. We know that corals are alive, the market is very tricky, and it doesn't parallel any other line of work that people without experience might try to compare it to. We've either been LFS owners and employees or talked to a hundreds of them about their struggle. We've seen a million of these threads come and go, all ending the same way because someone asking these questions in the first place has done no real research. They might as well have asked "I like food so where can I get wholesale food and be a restaurateur because my house is big and has a kitchen in it."

The OP can do whatever he wants, it'll be an expensive lesson just like it always is. Eventually he'll realize the awful naysayers were the only ones who cared enough to share actual knowledge with him.

 

[albano]

Here's something that tells you everything you need to know: all of the users complaining about how mean we "naysayers" are and how he should totally do it joined in 2016 except for 1 2014 who is strangely comparing work in finance to raising livestock. They lack even the most basic experience necessary to make an informed comment on the complex issue of buying wholesale corals, but will be all the OP listens to because he had his mind set before making the thread and just needed some people to tell him what he wanted to hear instead of what he needed to hear.

The users giving the OP a much-needed dose of reality each have an average decade of hobby experience. We know that corals are alive, the market is very tricky, and it doesn't parallel any other line of work that people without experience might try to compare it to. We've either been LFS owners and employees or talked to a hundreds of them about their struggle. We've seen a million of these threads come and go, all ending the same way because someone asking these questions in the first place has done no real research. They might as well have asked "I like food so where can I get wholesale food and be a restaurateur because my house is big and has a kitchen in it."

The OP can do whatever he wants, it'll be an expensive lesson just like it always is. Eventually he'll realize the awful naysayers were the only ones who cared enough to share actual knowledge with him.

Nobody wants to hear it...but, IMO/E, it's the sad reality!

 

[rtparty]

I won't pile on or side with anyone here. It's not needed.

What I will say is this: start small. Grow frags out in your house in a frag system and build a reputation. That could take years by the way. Buy top notch lines from the reputable people in the hobby.

Breed your fish and make them your short term cash cow while the corals grow to full blown colonies that you can frag every couple weeks.

I've watched hundreds, if not thousands, of reefers head down this same path. Almost all of them are no longer in the hobby. It becomes a job and a chore. It is exhausting maintaining that many tanks. I know, I worked at a LFS.

Do not, do not, do not make it your plan A for money. It needs to be plan C or D even. Invest your initial amount to get the tanks setup that you need and don't put anymore in if it's not from sales of the company.

A good frag setup will take a couple years to mature and be profitable. Do you really want to invest that much time into make it work? If so, have at it. This is NOT a get rich quick scheme. These are living animals that deserve respect and care. If you can't provide it, don't do it.

 

[LED Jack]

Yeah some of the info on this thread has been very misguided.

I am a former LFS owner and there are things out of your control that can shut your business down darn near overnight. To me that was when gas prices went through the roof in 08/09. All 3 of the LFSs in my town shut their doors during those years.

And there is not a financial/banker professional that would recommend getting into the selling of saltwater livestock. The margins are horrible, things die, and if they don't die you have to house and feed the livestock.

Believe it or not the internet has killed the LFS no different than Home Depot and others have killed the mom and pops.

Before when you wanted reef lighting you had several places to buy from at best. Now you have 50 places you can buy any particular light from. Even as an LFS I would sell high dollar lighting and protein skimmers on eBay and would have them drop shipped. And I never had this equipment available in my store because the cost was to great. Back in the day if I made $40 on a $350 ASM skimmer I sold online I would have been thrilled.

Not to mention how hard it is to get decent stock. You have 50 people lined up before the doors open at all of the big wholesalers in LA cherry picking things for the stores they buy for.

I could go on and on.......lol

 

[Desert Sea]

Here's something that tells you everything you need to know: all of the users complaining about how mean we "naysayers" are and how he should totally do it joined in 2016 except for 1 2014 who is strangely comparing work in finance to raising livestock. They lack even the most basic experience necessary to make an informed comment on the complex issue of buying wholesale corals, but will be all the OP listens to because he had his mind set before making the thread and just needed some people to tell him what he wanted to hear instead of what he needed to hear.....

Wow!.........Really?
That's quite an assumption your making there. Judging another forum members experience and knowledge based on a date they joined the forum.

Comments like this lead to threads getting closed.

The OP has heard both sides of the issue. The final decision rests with him. I wish him the best in what ever decision he makes.