Adventures with Corndog: Corndog's Fish Store

Tarrant_sl said:

The 22nd? Who the hell is your provider?

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There are only 2 options here. Comcast and Frontier. Frontier bought out Verizon. Honestly I was shocked the date was out that far. Now they've gotten it back to the 16th...

aychamo_aycono_sl said:

I've a question about fish tanks from local fish stores. I was interested in a saltwater tank a while back and there's a specific quality all in one tank I wanted, and the local fish store had it, but it was $75-$100 more than I could have bought it online shipped for. My buddy (who is in sales) mentioned that it would have seemed wiser to price the tank competitively to get you to buy it, so that you'll turn around and buy fish from them to stock the tank with, and all their other shit (live rock, sand, corals, etc.) So I guess my question is do you sale tanks for little markup, and do you lose a lot of business to the internet?

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Well in general the LFS should be able to compete on price. It's typical that a fish tank gets a 30% or less markup. 15 or more years ago it was common place to sell the tanks for less than cost just to get the extra equipment/fish sales. Part of the problem is retail space has gone up in price a lot and it just costs more to have tanks sitting there at very low markup.

I'm only gonna have 55 gallons and under in stock and just offer great prices on tanks larger then that. It takes a max of 7 days for the tank to come in stock. Another problem is petco has been doing a $1 a gallon sale every other month for the last 2 years. So much so that customers just wait for that sale. Most stores I've talked to say it's almost not even worth carrying tanks at this point unless it's a nano tank.

To answer the question. Local fish stores lose a ton of business to the internet. But not so much on tanks. It's still kind of difficult to ship glass tanks. Usually a store worth it's salt is cheaper that internet on the aquariums.

In my professional opinion. The way of the local fish store has to shift to a sell what you can't wait for market. Fish meds, low cost items like fish food, heaters, filters, frozen fish food and live fish. I'm confidant that there will always be someone somewhere on the internet that can get a warehouse space cheaper than me and ship it cheap enough on almost any item. Amazon sells basically every fish dry good on the market with free 2 day shipping. So I'm best to invest my money into things they can't compete on. Quality fish, meds, live plants, live foods, frozen foods etc. Now what does this mean? It means I need a smaller store. Instead of 2000 sq ft to sell all aquatic goods. I'm using 950.

My rent is $850 a month. I'm friends with some other LFS stores. The one I used to manage way out in the sticks with a town count of less than $100 is paying $1350 a month in rent. Another competitor is paying $4700 a month in rent. These stores are larger, and are stuck with dry good items that aren't moving. Theres nothing worse than paying an employee to go dust your dry goods because they aren't selling.

Tarrant_sl said:

Ah....yeah Frontier is pretty shitty and Comcast business class is overpriced.

Bummer, was hoping I could have helped ya.

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I agree with both of those statements. I think $80 a month for fios and phone with a $65 install fee and free $500 apple giftcard I can sell on ebay outweighs the comcast $100 a month with $200 install fee...

aychamo_aycono_sl said:

Thank you for this reply. It's very interesting. And what you said about Amazon is absolutely true and a very great insight. I frequently just purchase shit off Amazon because I'm too busy or just don't feel like going to Walmart or Lowes because of my work schedule. Like you said, with the free two day shipping, anything that isn't needed stat can be bought online easier. I'd imagine in the fish business there are lots of customers who just like to chat with you and will still buy all their other stuff from you too.

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This is actually a huge problem for all retail stores today. I was reading an article in a pet retailer magazine about "show rooming" which is the term for people touching and feeling the item in your store then buying it online. The only way to combat it is to lower the price. The problem is, if a customer doesn't ask you to price match, then you're going to lose the sale. When they pick up a $200 canister filter for an aquarium and look at it and play with it etc. Then put it back. They could just be looking to purcahse it on payday. Or didn't like it, Or going to buy it online. But if you swoop in and start lowering the price, you'll never make any money.

The problem is, it costs money to have a product sit there for people to touch, break, steal parts etc. If you're matching the price of the guy who has it sit in the slums of a warehouse in the middle of no where where rent is 20 cents a square foot, you'll just loose money. The article says to just price match the internet even if you wont make any money. Because statistics show that if someone is buying 1 item, theres 50% or greater chance they'll buy something else also. Where you could make some more money.

Heres 1 example I just looked up.
Lee's 25' Gravel vac kit.
My wholesale: 23.93
Amazon Price with free shipping: 32.29
Price I should Sell it for: $45

Another Example Hikari Mini 8.8oz Cichlid Gold Pellets
Wholesale: 3.95
Amazon:8.75
Retail at Petsmart: 11.99
My store: 9.99

3rd example. Cascade 1500 Canister Filter
Wholesale: 139.41
Amazon: 143.25
Retail: 200+

So do I choose to carry all 3 items and price match? The canister filter seems like I'd be losing money before I ever even brought it in. The gravel Vac kit, I can probably sell because it'll be an impulse by when I tell people their tank is dirty and that's why the fish are sick. The food. I can actually match amazon if I want. I will sell food.

A huge problem is, most people just assume a local fish store will be more expensive than a petsmart or petco. On top of that, they assume a petsmart or petco is more expensive than online. A lot of items never even get compared based on assumptions. So like the food example. Most people won't compare the price of ordering a food online for $8.50 vs $9.99 in the store. Chances are they'll just do 1 or the other without comparing. Either they need the convenience of buying it on the internet or buying it on their lunch break at a retail store.

There's basically 2 camps right now. 1 half says, you have to carry everything in retail. Any time you customer leaves your store to find the item you don't have you could lose them forever. The other camp says they are losing their asses on theft, broken goods, show rooming basically and not selling nearly enough of it to pay for the square footage it takes up. The problem is, both these camps already have hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in dry goods and a clientelle that does rely on them for dry goods.

So for the ones who are losing money they'd love to drop a lot of stuff. The problem is they'll also loose the customers that were buying dry goods from them. In this economy people can't give up a single customer. Also it's not just as simple as drop the dry goods, you'd have to move(be out of a lease) or fill it with more live goods which is very costly to setup. To have it make any sense.

So I'm going for option #3 and setting up with items I can compete with online, or people don't want to buy online. Live Fish, Frozen Foods, Meds, heaters, quick grab items etc.

Zolek_sl said:

Competing on dry goods for a fish store is just impossible in some locations based on taxes right now too. I'm in TN and 10% sales tax + slightly higher baseline means that free shipped stuff from amazon just crushes the LFS on price. Which sucks because it is a nice store and I'd like to support it, but there is no way I can justify spending 35% more for food etc. Just using your Hikari pellets example its 8.75 from Amazon and 11.00 after taxes if you were here (26%). I can't imagine myself ever buying items like a canister filter at a LFS because of this honestly.

Couple questions for you:

1. Are you planning to sell and ship fish via a website? I have no idea if there is money to be made here honestly, but there really aren't that many places online to order rarer fish online and have them shipped. For example I'm looking for aspidoras pauciradiatus right now. This is a 2-3$ fish and yet I can't find it *anywhere* right now. Keeping an updated online stock list + charge the correct amount to cover your shipping cost / effort seems like an easy way to get some sales?

2. Where is your store again?

As a side note having a red cherry shrimp breeding tank in the back somewhere seems like a license to print money to me? I see these for sale for 2-3$ all day long here and they breed like rabbits.

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Yes I plan to sell online. I already ship a lot of fish out all over the country through Aquabid. WHich is just the ebay of fish if you weren't aware. Aspis can be hit or miss lots of time they're seasonal as not many people actually breed them. But I plan to have lots of more common stuff in stock in the smaller catfish range. I've got hasbrosus corydoras, pygmy corydoras and panda corydoras in stock waiting to be sold once my tanks are put in.

I'm located in Washington State. You might checkhttp://www.wetspottropicalfish.com/index.php/fishThey are the most likely to have them come in stock. They're also a fish wholesaler with a retail store. 1 state lower than me. They're the big boys over on the west coast. I'm just looking to do something similar to that except without african cichlids etc.

Chaotic_sl said:

I think this is very interesting and I can offer some insight. I consider myself somewhat of a fish enthusiast, I have two large tanks (75, 90 gallon) and a nano tank for shrimp. I drive 45 min to my "LFS" because they beat online prices, on everything. Period.
They carry awesome rare fish, and have an absolutely tremendous showroom (easily 100+ tanks) they update their stock via facebook bi-weekly, and their fish prices are absolutely insane as well. Examples;

6" Gold Nugget Pleco, $35. $80 for 3" at another store.
2" Roseline sharks, $3. $10 other store etc etc

They will also special order absolutely anything you want , and have staff that has sat and explained to me all kinds of things and as a result legitimately sold me on fish without actually selling me (And also responsibly dissuaded me) I read about them when searching online for places to go. Word of mouth on the internet is huge, that brought me there and the reasons above kept me there.

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This sounds like a good store. Good stores are always worth the drive. The experience you describe is what I'm looking to provide to my customers. With time I may be able to match anything. Just depends how much volume you do to get prices down. What is the name of that store so I can like em on facebook and observe them?

BrutulTM_sl said:

What's your theory on selling meds? I have always felt like if you're a half decent fish keeper and you're buying fish from a good store you should never need any meds, but it sounds like as a fish store operator they might be one of your best moneymakers. When my cousin's fish were dying she complained about it on facebook. I got in touch with her and she had been to the LFS and they had given her some stress coat and related BS but after I talked to her she had no idea that she needed to do periodic water changes and her tank had only been up for a month so it probably wasn't even cycled yet and that bullshit was going to do nothing for her.

As an experienced fish keeper this pisses me off, especially since her kids are crying over the fish dying and she's blaming herself and all she needed to do was do some water changes, but nobody told her that. The LFS can't make any money telling her to do a weekly water change but they can make money selling her replacement fish and shit to dump in the tank.

She also had 3 goldfish in a 10 gallon tank, so obviously they hadn't given her any advice on what to put in her tank either. When I was a beginner I made the same kind of mistakes due to bad advice from LFS owners. My first tank was four 6" goldfish in a 20 gallon tank. The water got so dirty you couldn't even see the fish. The second time I tried I bought two 1" long red belly pacus which the fish store guy told me would be fine in a 20 gallon. Needless to say in a year they were both 10 inches long and splashing water out of the tank every time they got startled and I had to euthanize them. Now I pretty much tell people that all LFS owners are full of shit and you shouldn't listen to anything that they tell you. I know not everyone is like this, but in my experience it's the majority.

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I'm of the opinion that meds are very seldom needed. Mostly for new fish. I use meds because I tend to keep a lot of wild caught fish. My puffer for instance had to be dewormed when he was young as he had parasites from the wild. Basically ALL puffers do if they're wild caught.

The mantra I started when managing a store before opening my own. When in doubt, change water. When I say change water, I always mean gravel vac. My customers NEVER wanted to hear that. If they knew enough that they were already doing water changes enough, that wasn't the problem. The people who didn't do water changes, that was like asking them to give up sugar for a month!

Meds are for 3 situations really. New fish be it wildcaught, or stress from shipping. And meds are for dumbasses. They aren't cleaning enough, or are using feeder fish from petco etc, there are people that wait for fish to get sick. Then clean the tank, Meds are then needed as damage control. Or your heater breaks and you don't realize it until you see Ick.

As for the wrong fish for the tank size thing from store owners I've never gotten it. I don't practice it and I don't understand why either. LFS are money hungry and want to make a sale wherever. It's so easy to help the customer make the right decision instead of being lazy. In the case of Pacu. Why not sell you silver dollars if you were sold on that body shape? Or if you wanted piranha type fish which is why most people buy them from a petco/petsmart etc. Then steer them towards a puffer or needle nose gar etc. There are so many species in the world that you can find fish that everyone will love for any situation. No need to sell them a pacu that is a vegetarian when they wanted a predator.

My philosophy has been. Keep lots of cool fish in stock. If you come in wanting to buy a fish. And I can't put a fish that you like into a suitable tank you own. I have probably failed. There are people who only want a specific fish for their 20 gallon etc. These tend to be 15-20 somethings that their friend has a jag in a 20 gallon, and so can they etc. This is where the necessary evil comes into play. If your heart is dead set on 3 oscars in a 20 gallon tank. And I've explained why it wont be a good choice, the problems you'll run into and your options to put in there instead and you STILL want 3 oscars. I can either say no, and watch the $15 walk out the door. And they'll just stop off at petco/petsmart on the way home and buy 3 anyways. Or I can take their money and hope it keeps me open to help people who want help making the correct decisions.

So I just explain everything on why it's not a good idea etc. If at the end of the conversation you still want to go against it. I'll take their money. At the end it's better that I get their money than another store who won't try to do the right thing first.

So I have a new problem, I've never had before. Anytime I'm not working on the business I feel guilty. Like playing league of legends. Even if it's only for an hour. I feel like I shouldn't stop trying to improve the business somehow each hour I'm awake until I've at least "made it". As I view this as a once in a lifetime opportunity. Any other business owners go through that during their start up?