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It's hard to ship fish around the country right now with weather being as it is. A heater controller can prevent a tank overheating. You just plug the heater into it, if it hits a certain temp, it cuts power.

Yeah, that was unexpected as well. I had assumed 1-2 would be the winner.

I ran a survey this week online. Had 88 customersto take it. I'm sure more results will come in, but I'm limited to 100 participants for this free service anyways. Mostly wanted to gather more insight on the new store hours. From the results it seems like I need to be open till 8pm. Even though...

I found my clientele love donating to charities. I wonder if you could have on your contract like, we donate to charities, do you have a charity you like in particular we could donate to because of this job etc? People love to say oh blah blah does work for this charity etc. My sales record is...

Exactly, It's usually the neighbors that make statements like that house is always light up. They must be growing pot. Someone calls the police, someone shows up, and you show them unlimited aquariums. I'm not sure how forceful they'd have to be, but an entire room/building very well lit up...

Could only do outside ponds here in Seattle for about 4-6 months before it was too cold. Also you need to control the sun. At the farms in florida the crews change the shade cloth based on how sunny it is. Also you have to control algae. The reason plants run out of stock is because they are...

Right in the same senario, I purchase plants ahead of time. When all the farms are out of supply. No one has tomatoes. Just like no one will have the plant I want to sell. The mcdonalds down the street from you doesn't then set up a personal farm, to make sure that never happens again. They...

This is the direction most people try to go in with growing their own stuff. The truth is that if you're growing it yourself you're losing money. Lots of companies have come and gone with the intent of growing their own and selling it. Shrimp and Plants. What could go wrong? Demand far exceeds...

This is already too true. When you use that much power at home for even just aquariums you get visits from people wanting to make sure you actually have aquariums... not not giant grow rooms.

Yeah, I'll be doing something to figure out how to incorporate a pre-order or out of stock area etc.

Well the way I like to run it is. Buy plants, list them for sale, sit on them for a week or so, so they grow a bit, then ship. That way it's not shipping for 2 days, then tank for 24 hours, then shipping for 2-3 days, that can be hard on the plants. I basically use 3 plant suppliers. One of...

Right, no reservation system. There are plants that far exceed demand. Say I order 50, I get shipped 5, they sell out in store the first day. Also taking pre-payment isn't an option because they not be available for 6 months to years... I can do a notification system when it's back in stock...

In general the plants will be purchased. The volume of plants that are moving will far exceed growing them. At least it's definitely this way at the retail shop. In theory online should be even more sales than in store.

I'm wondering how I should handle my inventory from the public's view. Should I have it display out of stock items and allow people to put in their email to receive a notification when it's back in stock. Or only show them what is in stock? There are also plants that are hard to care for/can be...

So the problem stems from live goods. The opposite is kind of true for live goods. Instead of oh my god I want it right now! It becomes, I need you to ship it a week from this Thursday, to not my paypal address, but my work address. Then on top of that, if it say arrives on Saturday, instead of...

So currently I own 3 .coms. One is for my store's website. One is the Local Fish Forum. The last one is a forum dedicated to a subsection of fish. The new one I'm launching will be an ecommerce site. The goal is to be able to sell goods online with impunity to the retail store. This allows me...

I use a milage ace for my milage. GPS logs, basically a tattler for yourself. Makes milage super easy once you train it places you normally go that are and aren't business related, then you fill in the gaps outside of that. The Mileage Ace - GPS Mileage Tracker For Business

I have a cam on the 360 gallon custom tank. We are freshwater specialty only. As far as shipping. I used too but inventory management on live goods became near impossible. I'm now setting up a different facility to accomplish this.

Not as much. I'm more into fish breeding. Don't get me wrong I'm a certified Master Aquatic Horticulturalist as well. But in general I don't enjoy constant pruning required to maintain aquascapes like you'd traditionally see. I prefer to scape with slow growing plants like anubias, crypts...

I'm open 7 days a week because I don't feel closing down a week day is better than being open less hours per day. Often times I end up stealing my competitors customers because they are closed and we are open that day. As for forums etc. I own the local forumI'm active on the local facebook...

Here are my two closest competitors hours: MON - TUE CLOSED WED - FRI 1PM - 7PM SAT - SUN NOON - 6PM He will also be closed from July 3rd till the 18th for a family vacation.. Other guy: Sunday - 11am-8pm Monday - CLOSED Tuesday - CLOSED Wednesday - 1pm-9pm Thursday -...

Most transactions start as, I'm here to get X. X being food or chemicals for their aquarium. Then they see fish they like and it expands from there. Most people who have jobs don't need a lot of time because they do their research at work lol.. It's the soccer moms who need the hand holding in...

We chose to go with 5% down conventional. After a similar situation. We paid off all debt which wasn't that much. But Saved 19k cash in 4 months for our down payment. When looking at saving up to 60k, to be able to put 20% down on a 300k home. Vs what will the interest rate be in a year when we...

I'm saying that the outside parameters of interest rates going up, or houses being cheaper are not the biggest factor. In my opinion you're better to jump in and start paying it off than being as efficient as possible. Some people will buy a car with 0 down, and then invest money in the stock...

I should mention. On top of that. 50% of my overall revenue comes from Saturday and Sunday sales. And even then, it's between noon and 4pm. With Sunday staying busy till 6pm. I often hear we are the last stop for people cause we were staying open the latest. That's convenient for them. But not...

So my shop is near Seattle. The big companies run different hours. Big employer are Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing. All of those don't run 9 to 5 jobs. Because traffic is so bad here, most get off around 2-3pm. And run staggered shifts etc. Also run different days off. Not uncommon for people to be...

double post

Had a big post written but my phone ate it. Just moved in to the new house and internet isnt setup till tomorrow. So ill retype it then.

I personally think this is a bad way to buy a home. Treat a home as a consumable object. If you buy a house with no intent of reselling, you'll come out happy. Everyone I know who has ever bought a house to resell, is just unhappy. They are unhappy that it hasn't appreciated faster, or they...

Yeah totally. I think it'll work to gauge interest on a new type of fish I want to try out in the store.

The sold out sign is brilliant. The more I think about it. Any item I want to test out. Just put a Item xyz sold out. Inquire for when they are coming. If a bunch of people ask for the date. I know to bring them in...

Very interesting on running the specials on the days my competitors are closed. Typically I would run them on the week end to try and get people in. I also hadn't thought about putting sold out signs. It's an interesting concept. I'd tell people oh we just sold out of those, whether we had em or...

Been neglecting this thread. Was super busy buying a house. Now that I've got that out of the way. I can come back and complain about this insane weather we are having! I've been calling it the 6 month summer! This year I brought in Pond fish in April when Pond season technically starts May...

All the wiring that needs to be done is in the ceiling. So he didn't show up today and is saying they'll do it Wednesday now from the attic. If he doesn't show on Wednesday. I'm telling him not to come back and not paying him. Getting out of hand.

So hardwood guys came back and replaced the board and refinished. Looks great. Next problem is this: Hired guy with good yelp reviews to take down the wall prior to hardwood guys. Should have been finished beforehand. Well he was "done" but most of the electrical doesn't work. Which was...

They were out today. removed the board and patched in a new one and refinished it etc. I'll see how it looks in the morning.

So my floors are done. They look amazing, except for one spot in the old master bedroom. The board is like flaked up, and the jagged parts totally catch your shoe, would catch a sock and maybe even stab into your foot. I hired this company because they have great reviews, as they put it are in...

Yep. Join us in the home improvement thread. Congrats though, most of the bullshit is over with. Now you can deal with people in person who are doing any renovations.

Odds? See that's where you're going wrong. There are no odds. They are going to fuck it up. You forgot they have 10 other fires to put out today. Until you make them put out your fire, they'll be dealing with someone elses. Literally I feel the whole industry puts 1 employee with 30 clients...

Floor guys started today. Can't wait to see it once I'm off work to pick a stain.