Victoria LFS for sale

[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.

[The Guy]

Originally Posted by 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.

Agreed Walter, prime example: Oceanic Corals, way to go guys.