Victoria LFS for sale

[GrimReefer]

Blue World Aquariums in Victoria is for sale. This is a great opportunity for a hobbyist who wants to take it to the next level. Please send me a PM if you are interested.

[Aquattro]

All items for sale must include a price

[ponokareefer]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

All items for sale must include a price

Agreed

[apexifd]

so… which category should this be under?? livestock or equipment?

mod.. please move to correct section

[KevinK]

Less than 5 years ago, blue world started as a bould idear of hobyists,

In the 5 years thy wiped out 2 of the 3 Local fish stoors on the island that have reef stuf.

Some hobyists prefer not to shop there, as less is offered on the island as they wiping out 2 competitors resulting in prices going up.

Now after wiping out 2 ( progressive reef and safari pets) leaving not much choise for hobbyists, thy are exploring to walk out.

Offering the store to other hobyists to pick up the mayhem.

I might be critesised to put it this way, but having the right to express myselve, i find this kind of practise verry, verry concerning.

Wiping out easteablisht stores, and then walking out

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by KevinK

Wiping out easteablisht stores, and then walking out

And, you have no idea what you're talking about -lol

Progressive was an over ambitious attempt to take a market that doesn't exist here. It was left to the care of a manager that didn't know much about business and had an absentee owner.

Safari had their lease come up at a huge increase, so owner decided that after 20 years, he wasn't into signing up for another 5 and retired.

Spencer's ambitions lie elsewhere, so he is aligning his priorities in that direction.

Nobody wiped out anyone. There is no secret agenda or underhanded practice going on. Just an adjustment in the current local market.

[Reef_Geek]

I would love to see the math behind this exercise.

Methods of small business valuation:
http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/sel...zvaluation.htm

Originally Posted by Aquattro

All items for sale must include a price

[Reef Pilot]

Small LFS is a tough, tough business..., no volume, hard to maintain a decent margin, can be expensive overhead, and lots of work (cleaning tanks, etc). Anyone that can stay in business for any length of time has my utmost respect.

[Reef_Geek]

Agreed. I grew up in a family aquarium business. Each sale's contribution margins are good, variable costs are manageable, but the problem is the labor + overhead. I think folks can be surprised that the mark up on livestock can be 5x to 3x the cost, but it's the overhead of utilities, labor effort, lease & property etc that is not apparent. If there's not enough volume of sales/transactions, the overhead is not spread out enough on a per sale basis to keep each sale in the black.

In a city of about 80K people, it would be a very small niche market that would be marine focused. I'd think for any aquarium store to be sustainably profitable in such a small city, they'd have to be an overall good aquarium shop with lots of freshwater & specialty items to realize the life time value of each customer as they go from a starter 10 gallon freshwater tank... to their 3rd & 4th tank... to conversion to SW etc...

[GrimReefer]

To be clear, I'm not planning on shutting the store down. I do not want to abandon our clients who helped build the business, many of whom I consider friends. I would like to find a hobbyist to take the reigns and do well with it. It's not like there isn't room for improvement either. I just simply don't have the time anymore to balance Blue World, Bluefish, and family.