Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
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yes
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no
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not sure
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Change Page: < 123456 > | Showing page 2 of 6, messages 21 to 40 of 110 - powered by ASPPlayground.NET Forum Trial Version
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013 11:14 PM
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If you ship FEDEX, and when I shipped out of town, that is the way we did it, and your organization ships a lot, you can get a rate that is 1/3 of or even less than the normal shipping cost. There is a volume that must be charged to your account to get that rate. It doesn't matter whether you are shipping from home or half way across the country. An MBI Co-op could generate enough shipping to have such an account. I don't think a warehouse is a good idea, because of the expense, the need to staff it, and the risks of caring for someone else's fish. People are the most expensive thing. Plus, you would not save any money on shipping since the fish have to get to the warehouse somehow. My thought was that the website would catalog the fish that are for sale from a variety of breeders, the buyer would select fish and numbers desired, and either a human or the software itself would contact the breeders to ship the fish, generate the shipping label(s) to send to the breeders, collect the money, pay the shipping company and pay the breeder. The breeder ships the fish to the buyer, and gets paid. There would be intermediate steps in there to confirm that the buyer accepts the charges, the breeder still has the fish to sell and can ship on a specified date, etc. Each breeder can name his price, which will be posted on the website, but he is in competition with the other breeders also posting their prices. Each breeder has to pay a little into the fund, perhaps as a yearly admission fee to cover the website and server charges, and the website developer for his or her time. But they should more than make up for that charge with increased sales.
check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website: http://kathysclowns.com Captive bred clownfish and more (Wholesale to the trade.)
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013 11:39 PM
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I like most of your idea Kathy....all with the exception of individual breeders setting the price. I don't want to start an internal bidding war within the co-op. I really like the idea of attaching it to the MBI, that would give us immediate credibility. I think prices should be set by the co-op and if there are excesses of some species on hand, we could ask those breeders about the possibility of running a weekly special on that species. We should probably have MBI boxes made so that everyone uses the same boxes for shipping. I would really make it look uniform. We would have to alternate orders between breeders with the same species or if different sizes, break them down by size/price. This could work nicely.
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013 11:45 PM
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 Originally Posted by reeflover
I like most of your idea Kathy....all with the exception of individual breeders setting the price. I don't want to start an internal bidding war within the co-op. I really like the idea of attaching it to the MBI, that would give us immediate credibility. I think prices should be set by the co-op and if there are excesses of some species on hand, we could ask those breeders about the possibility of running a weekly special on that species. We should probably have MBI boxes made so that everyone uses the same boxes for shipping. I would really make it look uniform. We would have to alternate orders between breeders with the same species or if different sizes, break them down by size/price. This could work nicely.
I'm only glancing at this but "price fixing" stands out to me. It's highly illegal to even discuss that. I understand the idea but...
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013 12:33 AM
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yeah, I don't think price fixings the answer here at all. Plus, a little healthy competition never hurt anyone! 
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013 7:49 AM
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How do we pay for matching boxes? Ordering boxes, having them distributed, is remarkably expensive. Particularly, when we all live near LFS, that will give perfectly good boxes to us for free. Perhaps we could afford to have an MBI sticker to put on the free boxes….
check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website: http://kathysclowns.com Captive bred clownfish and more (Wholesale to the trade.)
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013 8:07 AM
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One thing that has become clear to me in the years that I have bred fish, is that different parts of the country will accept different prices for the same fish. What the software can do, is limit the choices of the buyer to those breeders who are near enough to him or her to allow shipping to make sense. A buyer can ask to see a broader selection of breeders' fish if the first selection is not enough, but first choice would be those breeders nearest to him. This would allow for diverse pricing, depending on the market, rather than competing against each other on price. As an example, for years I've gotten a dollar or more per fish more than anyone I've heard of, because no one else was breeding in my area. Now there are more fish breeders locally, and my price has to come way down. I would not like to lower the prices for those who can command higher ones because of a geographical advantage. I believe in keeping prices as high as possible because what we do as breeders is skillful, special, and uncommon. We should be compensated for that. But we live in a market economy, and that is a fact that I've had to grapple with. I would not want the coop to make the prices drop for anyone. But the reality is that one way to sell more fish is to drop the price. There comes a point,however, where it is not worth it to produce fish, if the price is too low. The right price is the price that the seller and the buyer agree on, and that can vary. One thing that the software can be made to do as we go along, is keep track of how many fish are sold and at what price for various regions in the US. That can give a breeder guidance as to how to price his or her fish. Information is powerful.
<message edited by KathyL on Wednesday, August 28, 2013 8:18 AM>
check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website: http://kathysclowns.com Captive bred clownfish and more (Wholesale to the trade.)
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013 9:00 AM
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I see our competitors as being the BIG fish breeders that we all know of. Those are the wholesale prices we need to beat (along with quality), not each other's. They do not adjust there price by region. And we all know that captive bred fish are much better than wild caught for various reasons, so you can't compare these to wild caught on price. But here again, variety is going to be the key. This isn't going to work any better for any of us in our local markets if everyone is just producing designer clowns.
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013 6:42 PM
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I do think the prices of the fish will be one of the hardest things to work with. Some breeders probably rely more on their fish sales than others so they need to charge more to make it work, etc. Is it price setting when its a single organization that sets the policies for its products?
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Thursday, August 29, 2013 10:21 AM
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Just to chime in, I've always loved the idea and see a huge need for it. It hardly even makes sense here to breed any Os any more, as there are just too many breeders, but there's not enough demand to keep you going for exotic fish. There is really a need to find a way to get buyers together with breeders from all over. Good luck!
--Andy, the bucket man. "Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Thursday, August 29, 2013 10:55 AM
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I have a better time writing my ideas down and then re-reading them or as people talk about them make corrections/changes to make them more clear. So sorry if this doesn't make much sense or just seems like fragmented thoughts lol. It could be one website where the LFS doesn't have to know anything about the specific breeder (unless they wanted the information of course). All the processing/notifications could be done behind the scenes and then the LFS would be notified that their order has been verified and that they should pay now. The payment would include shipping calculations already. Once payment is recieved, the person(s) filling the order would be notified to ship the fish. While thinking about that, the first problem I think of is what if they are cherry picking fish, WYSIWYG style, or if they order such a large quantity that multiple breeders have to fill. The problem with that would be they would be increase the shipping more for each separate breeder that their order comes from.
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Monday, September 2, 2013 1:39 AM
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Originally Posted by KathyL
I wonder if we could arrange a website that would accept orders and contact the breeders needed to fill the orders. Seems like something that technology should be able to do.
But then how does each breeder fulfill the order? Do the fish get sent twice; first to an aggregator and then out to the customer; or are there multiple independent shipments from breeders to final buyer?
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Monday, September 2, 2013 1:41 AM
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Originally Posted by Fishtal
I'm only glancing at this but "price fixing" stands out to me. It's highly illegal to even discuss that. I understand the idea but...
Coop sets the price because you're buying through the coop, not directly with the breeder. Basically, as I'm skimming this, it's really just a bunch of breeders drop shipping on behalf of the coop. Shipping kills this, even with the inexpensive option Kathy talked about. Too many individual shipments..
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Monday, September 2, 2013 1:49 AM
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Sorry for the triple posts...just multiple things going on tonight. Everytime I see this idea come up, I keep finding myself insisting that a "coop" while a noble concept, is simply not the right model. Coops work where everyone is raising the same commodity to the same level of quality all within a local market. I'll simply interject this again - the way this really works is for someone to simply decide they are going to be a wholesaler and for breeders to be willing to service that wholesaler with farm prices. You take the hit on price because you're moving a large volume of fish in one shot, and you're not the one doing the marketing and breaking up of those lots to the retailers. ORA, SA sell directly to retailers because they've built up enough offerings to be standalone...hobby breeders don't generally have that to offer. I'll add this - I recently talked with a fellow LOCAL breeder about placing his fish on my list and taking maybe only 20-25%, rather than what I usually do with fellow breeders (which is look at what the fish has to sell for, and then offer 50% landed at my door). Because he is local, I don't have to hold the fish or touch the fish, he just needs to bring them so I can bag them and ship them out. He probably will have to stand behind the DOAs. He's not providing bags, boxes, oxygent, or clients....that's where my cut comes in. THIS is how a coop really works in my opinion.
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Monday, September 2, 2013 4:44 PM
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Originally Posted by mPedersen
...the way this really works is for someone to simply decide they are going to be a wholesaler and for breeders to be willing to service that wholesaler with farm prices. You take the hit on price because you're moving a large volume of fish in one shot, and you're not the one doing the marketing and breaking up of those lots to the retailers.
I have to agree. The Co-op idea has been suggested before, and while it's a great idea to pool efforts and production, with the logistics of shipping live fish, I don't see how it could provide an attractive offering to the retailer unless a larger entity becomes involved to handle the animals themselves as a consolidator as well as marketing, sales, shipping, etc. There are businesses willing to do this already (quite a few wholesalers are willing to purchase tank-bred animals and market them as such). Having said that, Sustainable Aquatics is happy to purchase tank-bred fish/inverts and market them alongside our own offerings. We do this already with fish and corals (we have even traded animals with other commercial hatcheries), as there's no way we can breed/propagate everything These could be unusual or extra animals that a local market where the breeder is located can't absorb. Two keys for SA is that we can hold the animals safely long-term (we dedicate systems in our Sustainable Islands facility for incoming cultured animals), and we are willing to market them as what they are -- "Kathy's Krazy Kaudern's Kardinal," or "Welsh's Wild Blue Pipes," or "Fishtal's Festive Flavivertex" -- or whatever. Both of these preserve and build the breeder's/producer's "brand." Of course as Matt points-out, there has to be a price-point that can accommodate the breeder and the "consolidator" for what they jointly contribute to making an attractive offering to the retailer that will in-turn sell the fish to the hobbyist--and this is where the problem sometimes comes-in, as there has to be enough margin to ship the fish to the consolidator and again to the retailer and still keep the price competitive, but it can be done! Anyway, just my $.02 Matt C.
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Monday, September 2, 2013 6:51 PM
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I'll get to work on those Festive Flavivertex right away.
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Monday, September 2, 2013 10:32 PM
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Originally Posted by Fishboy42
... Of course as Matt points-out, there has to be a price-point that can accommodate the breeder and the "consolidator" for what they jointly contribute to making an attractive offering to the retailer that will in-turn sell the fish to the hobbyist--and this is where the problem sometimes comes-in, as there has to be enough margin to ship the fish to the consolidator and again to the retailer and still keep the price competitive, but it can be done!
Anyway, just my $.02
Matt C.
Always a pleasure to hear from you, Matt. In your example, there is a cost to ship to you, a cost to ship to the retailer, and both the breeder and you want to make some money, but the price per fish must stay competitive. Four entities must be paid, and Matt, one of them is you. This is reasonable because you are doing all the marketing, holding, heating and cooling, packaging, etc. But with two shipments, and a consolidator that must be paid, it leaves the breeder, the one who did all the magic, with very little of the money that was paid for the fish. With the coop, the website doesn't need to make money, it just has to cover costs, which is really going to be less than you would make as a consolidator. The fish would only have to be shipped once from the breeder to the retailer. If there were two breeders involved, it would be two shipping costs, but it wouldn't be consolidator costs. So the cost of each fish would be spread out over only 2 entities: the breeder, and the shipper. Guaranteed, the breeders would make out better with a coop than a consolidator. No offense, Matt, my friend. It's a nice offer, I just don't see how, if I were to take you up on it, I would get paid for the work of breeding and raising the fish.
check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website: http://kathysclowns.com Captive bred clownfish and more (Wholesale to the trade.)
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Monday, September 2, 2013 10:59 PM
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Wholesale or co-op, it really doesn't matter. With a co-op the co-op effectively becomes the wholesaler. The difference is that the co-op members would have to buy in to the co-op so as to build the wholesale facility, and then be expected to put in some time to work at the co-op, so that is why they would get more per fish than with a wholesaler. I have thought about what you have said Kathy with using Fed-Ex and that is just not going to work. When a LFS orders fish, they want more that just 2 kinds of clowns. They are going to want a few of everything that you have to order. The more expensive the fish the fewer they will want of that type. That is just going to require airport to airport shipping and a central collection location. As in the example that Matt P. gave, that one person lives close to him, so he can bring over fish as needed to Matt's house and that will work. Now if Matt wanted to expand his draw area, then he could also draw from breeders from the twin cities. Someone could collect the fish from the Twin Cities and bring them up to Matt's, but then Matt would need to build a holding facility for them, in which case he would become a wholesaler. But if some of the breeders in the Twin Cities "bought in" for the build out and maintainence and put in time at Matt's facility doing work (cleaning tanks, boxing fish for shipping, transporting fish, etc) then you have a co-op. I don't see how setting up a website to take orders is going to work. I don't know what you have for sale right now Kathy, but what if 10 other breeders also have that variety for sale. If an order comes in for 10 of those, who gets that order? How do we decide who gets the order (rotation, ability to fill other species on the order, other?).
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013 12:03 AM
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How do we pay for the lease, the equipment, utilities, the staff, insurance in order to have a warehouse? Where does that money come from? How can we "put in some time" if we live distant to the warehouse? Who is organizing that schedule? A seperate facility justs sounds very expensive and risky to me. If you have a warehouse, you still have the issue of whose fish to sell first. If the coop is to buy all the fish from the breeders, what happens to fish that don't sell? Where does the coop get the money to purchase the fish in the first place?
check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website: http://kathysclowns.com Captive bred clownfish and more (Wholesale to the trade.)
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013 2:13 PM
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Simple answer is, the capital comes from the member buying shares in the co-op, and then the coop running it profitably like any other wholesaler. Like SA, the co-op can elect to purchase additional fish from non-member breeders on an as needed basis, but those non-member don't share in the profits of the co-op. As you note, some of the problem is because of the distances between us, so that some co-op members may not be able to put in equal time at working within the co-op, but there are ways to account for that as well. Ideally we would need someone experienced at marine fish wholesaling to help or be part of the co-op. I have some experience with this with koi and goldfish, but not marine fish. Essentially what we would be doing with the co-op is to create and buy into our own wholesale facility, so that part of the profits would also belong to the members. It doesn't have to be an expensive build, as a pole barn might even do. It just has to be close to a good water supply and near a major metro airport. Fish could be shipped to the facility by a converted truck with tanks for the purpose and have a route to pick of from various parts of the country at local collection points (if this turns out to be more cost effective than air shipment). Based on sales through the co-op, we would be able to fine tune production to demand. I never said it would be easy, but if it was say an MBI member co-op, I think that would carry a lot of weight. Still we would have to have the right people in place for the directors to ensure success and a profitable operation. I thinking with all the talent and connections among members of MBI, I would think we could make this happen if we really wanted it to work.
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Re:Interested in joining a marine ornamental co-op? Designed to market your fish, you must be able to ship.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013 6:16 PM
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I don't think that a co-op with a "warehouse" or physical entity will work because of all the overhead. I think the better idea is just a website with the programming to spread the shipping prices and stuff. Unless everyone participating is already breeding fish as their main source of income, and then if so I'm in the wrong place lol. Why not think of the website as a non physical "wholesaler" entity? I don't think I'm catching why it wouldn't work for breeders to hold and ship their own fish based of sales the website makes.
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