HUGE shipment of BIG fishes at Big Al's in Richmond
 

Dropped by there this afternoon, they just had a big shipment of fish. Lots and LOTS and L O T S of display size fishes!!! Quite impressive display of fish however the posted prices for the marine fishes were quite on the high side (ie Clown trigger $198, emperor angel $249). A lot of the fish prices weren't posted yet and I saw one and only very nice 4.5" powder blue and asked the price. The guy didn't know and guessed at around $49. The blue was already eating nori and the guy fed it some food which it attacked...... now I'm a proud owner of a very nice PBT that had a very cheap adoption fee! :lol:
If anybody's around that area, take some time drop in to see their fish... they are also in pretty good shape.... and no I don't work for them :biggrin:

those are very reasonable prices for display sized fish, buy yourself a plane ticket to the solomons and figure the size of box required to ship such a fish and compare it to the ammount of space a person takes up on a plane..... 1 display fish=1 approx 20"x20"x17" box..... sometimes much larger

Kyle,

You beat me to it. I can't believe people think $250.00 is unfair for a large fish. 7 or 8 years back our show Imperator and Blueface use to retail for $400 to $500 dollars and the retailers would be fighting over them.

The only North American places cheaper than Vancouver on fish that I know might be L.A. or Miami. Hobbiests have it really good here, and I think alot of the new guys don't realize it.

The prices were dirt cheap in Virginia and Florida when I lived there.Come to think of it Illinois had some pretty reasonable prices too.I just assumed like many other things in Canada , fish cost more here.

Opps
 

Well I guess we are lucky in the Lower Mainland to have good competition amongst the lfs and I guess i'm also lucky buying fish now and not 7-8 years ago. :lol:
I hope I didn't offend anybody with my opinion on the prices.

no offense taken by anyone Im sure....

We understand that some dont realize the logistics of the "pretty" fish in their tank......

I remember my wholesale costs on fish 5 years ago were higher than you can buy them for retail now, personally I think this is a bad thing , and it has nothing to do with the fact that Im in the business......

It seems that fish prices have been driven down, and coral prices have skyrocketed over the past few years....

so were fish stores selling at a loss 5 years ago? I paid and average of about 30% less 5 years ago for my fesh water fish not more.

Steve

Hypothetically........

5years ago fish cost me $5, I sold that fish for $10
Today same fish cost me $12, I sell that same fish for $14


Profit marging has gone the way of the Dodo bird..... the prices are abit higher for the retail customer, the prices have skyrocketed for the wholesaler/store, except for the big money fish such as display specemins, where for some reason the market has driven the price down, I think they should be $400+ again, mabey then some folks would take better care of them.....

Could the wholesaler's margin have gone up instead? I've read that the collectors hardly make any money on their catches so the profits are going somewhere.

no....It covers their costs but hasnt gone up a ton, I used to wholesale....when I was setup for it, dont want to get into wholesaling again....


A large portion is the rise in air freight costs...

yeah Box cost is a HUGE part of it.them little buggers cost alot to get across the water. My wife worked for a LPS up till 6 months ago. I helped with the SW section. The store is now basicly a joke as all worthy help has left. But in her time there i got to see alot of how the sale of SW fish works.

Here's something I've been thinking about. Ok maybe profit margin has come down a bit. But demand has gone up. You can see that more and more people are getting into the hobby and I believe profits are increasing even though margins are going down. This is due to the increased demand and supply. And when both supply and demand goes up, the result is that profits go up too (generally).

The reason I believe this is because there are now way more selection (in terms of stores, stock, and inventory) than ever and the livestock are turning over at a fast pace (often, something I see 1 week is gone the next week or 2). Fresh water stores are now carrying reef animals (Finomenal, Aquariums West, Perky's, King Ed), stores that stopped selling marines are now selling again (Paul's). New stores are popping up (Aquafanatics, Denman Pets, Ocean Aquatics, Hidden Reef,Aquatic Kingdom). Big Al's in Richmond has expanded their marine section by about 30-40% and now has more selection than ever. If it was true that Vancouverites were cheap and that profits in marines are going down, then these situations would not happen. Instead, you would see stores folding, and you would see Big Al's reducing the marine section. Yes, Vancouver reefers have it good here but it seems that the retailers are having it good as well.

Ok, I can believe that margins are down. But I believe the margins in the aquarium hobby are much better than other luxuries such as cars, electronics, computers, etc. It appears that the business side of things is healthy. Business seems good right now to me and it appears that profits (earnings) are up (not for all stores, but in general).

Wholesale price list
 

I was doing a search and I came across the following price list from a Bali wholesaler. http://balimarine.tripod.com/pricelist.htm
I don't know anything about their reputation and i can't interpret their freight rates so I don't know how much it will come up to for a minimum $500 order and nor am I going to try to itemize and break down the costs of doing business to try to determine the profit margin.
But if most wholesalers' prices are like this, its no wonder the collectors are hardly making any money. On top of that, I wonder what type of lifestyles the collectors are living and what measures they take to catch these fish? In all likelihood, indirectly we are supporting some sort of underpaid "collector" sweat shop.

Vancouvers aquarium market has ruined the Interior aquarium market.... The low prices on the coast have been answered with your populations high demand, our low demand and low population has made it not worth bringing in anything because of low volume sales with low margin...


example.... hypothetically all fish are $5 wholesale $7 retail....

vancouver store sells 5000 fish @ $2 profit= $2000

kelowna store sells 50 fish @ $2 profit= $100

and dont say to raise our prices.... without exagerating, I have seen people drive 200miles to save those $3



this results in almost no selection, no nice equipment, the stores here cant afford to maintain the same store with such low volume sales....

the only way I was personally able to survive when I used to bring in alot of fish is by baseing my business from home, and haveing alot of holding tanks enabling me to buy direct from collectors in volume thus keeping my costs low, and then charging a fair retail price to the customer...

if I start bringin fish again, this is how I will operate again, its the only way you could even cover your expenses here...

if you ask almost any reefer in the interior, they drive to vancouver, or purchase through mail order, I hate the way the business has gone in vancouver, so do alot in the industry, I prefer the livestock being more expensive, it leads to less flushed fish(there will always be ones who dont care but it would weed a few out) if you go to stores located in LA that dont even pay the extra air freight we do, they pay alot more than we do for their fish....

vancouver has ruined the industry in my opinion, my rant is over, time for some oreo icecream..... :mrgreen:

Re: Wholesale price list
 

fish have never been expensive, its that bag of heavy water that costs a fortune!!!

you got it. The box charge kills any cost on fish. think how many show sized fish can you fit in one box from fiji with water? lets say you can fit say 6 show sized fish in a box with the water and packing. the box cost is in the hundreds. for 6 show size fish. the fish are cheap but until we teach them to swim over on demand it will cost a small fortune to ship them over.

just for fun call a shipper and ask how much it would cost to ship a box of water 2x2x2 (Lets say it only has 10 gals in it at 10 lbs a gal) from fiji to here in a plane that has a heated pressurize holding compartment. It must be shipped next day air as well. I bet it will come in over $300-400

Now add in the fact that you are paying someone to swim out to a reef and catch that fish. then for the holding tanks that put them in and the overhead that comes with it.

It's no wonder why the cost on those show sized fish would be as much as they are. Its alot of money from Marshal Island to your tank. Just something to think about.

The cost of the box is in the hundreds, and you certainly won't get 6 large show fish in a box. Generally 1 or 2 with some chromis for filling in the spaces. At least that's what I've seen when the boxes come in to the LFS...

yeah im just guessing at the numbers. I dont think people really know what is involved in getting these animals to us healthy.

:biggrin: Typo. You meant $10,000. (5000x2) :biggrin:

I'm trying to understand why fish is any different than other goods. Is it different for a particular reason? Wouldn't this type of behavior be the same whether its cars, electronics, dogs, cats, etc? Or is there a fundamental difference between fish and the rest of the goods? I mean, I'm a bit confused as to why Vancouver as a city is being blamed for the fall of the tropical fish industry in cities outside Vancouver but other industries are unaffected. What is it about fish in Vancouver that is so unique that it doesn't follow basic Economic principles?

I would not say it is just fish. Its more the exotic pet trade. I am also very in reptiles. same can be said for it. herps sell for much less here than back east. maybe the people here are just less willing to pay as much? not sure.

people who spend money on corals/fish are called reefers, they are fanatics and act in fanatical ways, ask the average person how much they spend on maintaining their cat every month(wait for what the heck are you talking about look...) what other industry has soo many variables?(animal health, price, varitey....) majority of freshwater fish folks are not like us either, they glance at the store tanks and drop their jaws when they see the crazy expensive $15 cichlid.....

thanks for the math correction,,, lol, a little off....

vancouver is close to kelowna and reefers research their hobby, they know mail order saves them money, and the population here is not large enough to loose its core buyers and stay afloat...

there are 2 business in kelowna that carry reef stuff that are worth going to, one is in the front waiting area of a mechanics shop, the other is in a basement in an average neighbourhood... the reason they stay afloat is because they have almost no overhead for what they do.... if either opened up a seperate reefing store, they would go under, we cant support a store with vancouver so close by offering things at rock bottom prices.....