Are We Getting Ripped Off? - How Much Do Fish Actually Cost For Your Fish Store
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
- Let's talk about what the fish in our local stores actually cost and get a better understanding of how fish stores deal with getting in fish for us.
Check out Fishtory's video here: • EXPOSED: WHOLESALE AQU...
Enjoying my content? Thank you so much for your time, if you'd like to support the channel more you can become a member: / @bentleypascoe
You can also visit my Patreon: bit.ly/2IvPC1O
Want to see more of my content? Check out my Instagram: bit.ly/2vNbjT2
Want to know what I use to make my videos? You can check it out on my kit page: kit.co/Bentley...
Paid link disclaimer: as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Music
"Envision" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommons...
Wow, Bentley, this was so eye opening! You put a lot of time into this one, thank you!
I am so thankful I have the Sacramento Aquarium Society local to me. Since joining a few years back, I hardly buy fish from stores. I buy many other things in my fav LFS to support them weekly. Thru the club, I get healthy fish that are bred in similar water as mine, by awesome local breeders.
I don't mind paying high prices from an awesome and reputable seller such as Dan's fish for example and I wish I could support them more, it's the shipping that kills the deal for me most of the time. For example, I only need to spend like $30 from Aquahuna and I'll get priority shipping for $12.99 no matter how many fish I buy. With some of the other suppliers I have to pay like $50 for shipping which is not really worth it for me if I only want to buy a small amount of fish. I hope more suppliers start offering lower shipping so that you don't pay more for shipping than the actual fish. Love the channel Bentley, please keep them coming 👍🏻
I wait until I need (ok want) a bunch of fish n snails/shrimp the order through flip aquatics and get a 40% discount on shipping. Aqua Huna is pretty great on shipping but sometimes the fish are hit or miss. More hits than misses but….. definitely wish there were more flat rates
It's a difficult situation, because for many small 'fish room hobbyist' sellers, the rates are different than someone like Aquahuna who no doubt moves a larger volume of fish/merchandise annually so has the ability to negotiate lower rates with a shipper. Then they can determine the average cost per shipment over a duration and then set that as a flat rate for all customers. I don't want to claim this is exactly what Aquahuna does, but it's a common and legit way to deal with shipping and make it more palatable for the consumer without losing money. For me personally, an average cost to ship fish is about $29 (mostly shipping 2nd day with the occasional next-day in extreme weather conditions). This means I lose money on some sales, but recoup that loss on others over the course of the year without me having to subsidize shipping at my own expense. I know, all of this kind of stinks, but most sellers try (I would hope) to set their shipping costs as low as they can without losing money, as lower shipping costs tends to equal more sales. But again, all of this depends on volume and what tier that puts you in with shippers.
I looked at getting some snails and shrimp shipped up, and was quoted $170 for the shipping alone. I'm sure a LOT goes into driving the shipping price up, but it is hard... I ended up going to pet whatever because it's the only option here and I just couldn't bight that bullet.
@@ashenwalls3558 $170 shipping is pretty extreme. If that's a legit quote that the seller got back from a shipping service, then the seller probably doesn't have a lot of a lot of experience shipping and wasn't using a third-party service to get better rates (ShipStation, Shippo, PayPal, etc.)
Same here. I would love to order from Dan's, but the shipping is so extremely high. I've placed about 6 or 7 orders with Aqua Huna, and the fish always arrived in good shape. I live in South Florida and they arrive within two (3 max) days from the day they ship. It's a shame that the Co op severed ties.
The shop I worked in was getting fish from the countries major supplier. Here the amount of fish can be optional and the markup is fairly high when looked at on face value.
But add power costs, rental, staff wages etc, etc the simple matter is if these markups were not applied you wouldn't last long.
Sure, we did discounts on the spot for regulars, but it's a simple fact that you can't sell for less than your costs, everyone knows that. Mind you all aquarium products are marked up, just like anything else that you buy.
We also sometimes got our fish from local breeders, they were pretty good to deal with and reasonable. What I did notice is that the prices were pretty similar with all the Local fish Shops, it's not price fixed, but you do look at other shops prices from time to time.
The only big difference is the big box stores over here, that charge way more than the locals, even though they probably get it cheaper.
We got a lot of customer loyalty, because we would spend time giving advice, taking interest in regulars setups and even, shock horror sometimes telling customers that they don't need this or that product that they were going to buy and giving them a cheaper and sometimes free alternatives.
That's my 2 cents worth, good video Bentley, well explained.
Very insightful and informative Bentley! Thanks for sharing.
Great breakdown! Very informative. Thank you.
Yeah, I think what got the whole discussion started was how much people are being paid to collect in the wild verses what we pay.
I right now am trying to help a newly open local fish store by letting him have my excess guppies but eventually once he starts becoming more successful I will for at least want store credit. Hopefully soon he starts becoming more successful 🤣
A nother thing to remember when you are a new customer . With a lot of suppliers is there are tears on how they fill orders. Top ter gets the better fish and fill rates. And Airlines will ship a customer that ship's every week first. If there forst to pull boxes off the plain do to over waght.
I worked for 4 years at a wholesaler .
Good explanation.
I get lists from my LFS owner friend for wild fish exporters( LFS takes a risk here mostly with diseases), transshippers (mostly Asian suppliers -Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, some SA) and US wholesalers (pick your own, delivery or shipment).
All have advantages and risks.
I find that most will give credit for significant losses but you are out of luck with shipping costs.
I heard Bentleys new fish store so now I’m expecting one lol
I am lucky to be able to buy from my city's major wholesaler because my friend worked there. The prices are actually ridiculous. Pennies on the dollar.
I can share pricelists if anyone needs lmao
@@RockulousRift we could totally talk about that on the next Livestream!
@@BentleyPascoe sounds good. I'll make sure I tune in!!
Great information Bentley!
It's very interesting to hear how different it is between different countries as well. I work in a pet store. The place we get fish from only sell to stores. As long as we order for a certain amount of money, we don't pay anything extra for the delivery or packing material. But. We do need to save the boxes they use when sending all the bags of fish, because they want those boxes back. On the other hand, the fish seem to be a bit more expensive here to start with.
And then we who are working in the store needs to get paid. And the store needs to be open 7 days/week. Where I live the staff gets paid double during weekends, have paid vacations and so on. And then there's the rent for the whole place where the store is located, fishfood, bags to use when selling fish (the customers doesn't pay for the bags), all the electricity...
And we also need to have a lot of fish in the store all the times, we have to guess what type of fish the customers wants and so on. We might think that one type of guppy will be really popular, just to find out that everyone wants something else. And if we have empty aquariums, we won't sell from the good aquariums either. If we have 20 aquariums for Bettas (yes, they have aquariums, not cups), we need to have 20 bettas, even if we just sell 5 or 10 every month. If we notice that our customers doesn't want that many Bettas, we still can't have empty aquariums, because the customers thinks that's not "looking good".
We have some fish that haven't been sold in a year(!) because we're a new store and customers haven't really find us yet. But still, we need to impress everyone that visit the store, otherwise they won't come back. It's really difficult to figure out what type of fish is the best for your store. We really don't make any money out from the fish at the moment. Even if every fish cost 3x as much as we buy them for.
Great topic/discussion/insight!
Good info. For most of us consumers, there are additional costs that fish stores need to add on like the building, water, electricity, medications, foods, bags for resales, employees, insurance, on and on and on. So, there is another tier of cost after the the store's purchase price, which is what we pay. It is easy to see why so many fish get harvested from the wild.
The fish store in my town closed. Albeit they were probably bad(looking back), the petsmart employees being better then and now.
You could at least get cool fish n shrimp aside from the generic petsmart ones.
Shipping cpd's at 12 bucks a pop and 60 shipping just isn't worth it. I'd have to drive 100 ~ 250 miles to even see a fish store
Betta's $5, Beta infrastructure $800 i.e. rimless tank, Fuval lighting, food, ich-x, antibiotics, Filter, Heater, emergency shutoff for heater failure, plants, plant food, aquascape, cleaning supplies. The money is in the pull through products for the store, not the fish per say.
One of my favorite fish is the rummynose tetra and i was buying them in bulk for pretty cheap, but was having terrible die offs in the first couple days.
Now i pay Dan to take the losses.
Dan's fish is quite pricey, but I tend to buy from them because you can trust you will get the healthiest fish one can possibly get. When I buy from any of the local LFS's near me, I then to lose like 1/8- 1/4 of the fish I purchase over the course of 6 months. When I order from Dan's fish, I never lose fish, unless it's my own stupid fault.
Thanks buddy! I wish I had done this exact type video attached. But not many folks watched the first one anyhow haha. But yeah I didn't mean to say " the retailer is getting screwed"... more like the collectors get screwed.
There are legitimate costs at every level, and every level of quality. 😊
I'll link this video to that one haha
Up until I talk to a friend I felt your video was perfectly fine and it was just there's a couple small details missing that might matter so let's put it out there. You know the friend... Still I think your video was great and I looked to it a few times with some other questions about fish pricing and stuff
@BentleyPascoe well I found out one of the lists I posted was someone I knew... and he wasn't happy about the video, because the prices at the low low end are fish traded at the massive rate between wholesalers and importers within sort of an OPEC union in Florida. So it is true and accurate, buuuut, there's context of favors...eating the cost of DOAs, growing out small fish often times...picking up 50k fry for example ( I don't think that is common, but he was trying to explain it as such). So I really wasn't going after stores at retail level, but rather pointing out some transshippers or people who want you to buy a fish and wait 2 weeks in a fb message... those folks are a step away from having their order die and then just not refunding money etc. And so on.
I breed my own so I dont have to worry about buying them and I only sell what I can breed.
Dope video very informative as usual. SHOT OUT PETE EURO FISH‼️‼️ KOI BOY Renton chapter‼️‼️CORY GANG GANG‼️‼️‼️🦐🐟🎋🌴😍🤙🏽
FISH FAM
*has a lot of thoughts on the subject* But it's bed time.
Even one snail is an outrageous price! Let alone any fish, with mind blowing shipping costs now! 😒👎🏻👍🏻
My local fish store feeds mostly frozen and live food. His fish are amazing but people complain because he costs more than the big chain pet stores. Some people just don't get it.
I would shop there in a heartbeat!
You get what you pay for! Most of us learn this lesson over time if we stick with the hobby.
In the store where I work, we also give frozen food :) Not "mostly", because I'm the only one giving that, my colleagues are giving flake food (of high quality), but still, we do our best to really take good care of all the fish :)
I think largely yes you are getting ripped off a lot of times... That's called profit lol. But another big thing to me is that the price has absolutely nothing to do with the value of the thing. And that's where we should be focused. Well that and people getting paid sufficiently for their work. I'd rather pay $5 for a fish from a breeder than $2 from a corporate store.
It's like when you see something that has been heavily manufactured and it's cheaper than the raw material there should be alarm bells going off in your head telling you that something is not right here. If someone has to touch it and do something to it the price should dramatically increase not decrease.
Yes i bought the same fish in vietnam for 1 dollar ...the same guppies here are 20 dollars!!!!! For 1 fancy guppy
I don't mind paying higher prices for quality fish. Here in South Africa the fish hobby can be expensive mostly due to water and energy charges. I can only imagine what it costs my lfs to hold fish for sale both to feed and keep healthy. I can always get fish cheaper every time I've got cheap fish i suffered the consequences
Just to add to my comment thank you for educating the ppl on the fish prices and why they are the way they are
£12 per corey or 3 for £30 rip off ...Scotland
Any update on your Novak kitty litter filter ? All those nitrates being magically sucked out yet??
Funny thing, it's not even handling the 2ppm ammonia yet. Can't say I'm thrilled with the results this far.
@@BentleyPascoe I forget, did you add any starter bacteria / media from another tank or were you trying for a completely clean start up? Please continue! Looking forward to the final results / video.
When creativity is given dominance it creates interest, when that creativity proves to create a profit creativity stagnates as supply and demand increase the likelihood that similar outcomes will occur,,,,, is this not a proven fact historically? KMT
gj