Reefs.org Forums

[swsaltwater]

I think I have ordered my last shipment of coral from wholesalers. Transhipping is the only way to go to get nice stuff at a decent price. Tired of getting the leftovers after cherry pickers that I am just thinking of discarding or donating to an aquarium or having to pay double price to get nice stuff when the market only wants to pay bottom dollar. My new policy is going to be if it is brown or washed out I don't pay period. Just insane that cites permits are wasted on some of this garbage. When customers ask who sent the bad shipment to you you know it is time to make a change lol.....They see what I get typically then this shipment it way off the map.

For those collectors like steve out there tell me, Are collectors typically picky and pick nice stuff over a longer range as opposed to simply staying in one area and taking anything they have a permit for. If so why/how do we get low grade or even garbage coral still? I went to a wholesaler off 104th last trip and saw a long tank with a few hundred brown mushroom rocks in it. Just one example, and why I would not have ordered from them for a few months while every LFS gets one or two of those rocks on each order lol. I don't mind surprise fill if it is nice stuff.

[cortez marine]

Hey,
A lot of the "brown coral" was actually collected and sold as some kind of colored coral. Perhaps a long trip in some level of ammonia after a week away from the sunshine worked against them.
Maybe a long, hot boatride sloshing about in "the soup" did it.
Few if any are the exporters that would order brown corals.
However,
To then go direct to the source kinda makes a case for the wholesaler to do the same doesn't it?
I mean, if retailers can buy direct from a wholesalers sources, could not then a wholesaler sell direct to that retailers customers?
How is "turn about" not fair play in this routine?
Or must wholesalers behave while retailers are free to go anywhere and do anything?
Just wondering >
Steve
Cortez Marine

[GreshamH]

<<<< thinks a few wholesalers have done that for years

Good, but loaded, question Steve

[swsaltwater]

Wholesalers have and still do that very thing (Flying fish express bring back memories??????), and I wonder if the good corals aren't held for the web site venture at this point. I do not mind wholesalers retailing as long as they sell at retail prices. If I tranship I sell at retail prices (maybe a bit lower) but certainly not at wholesale. The advantage is I make a little more margin on them, customers get it at or below net prices, and I get rare and unusual stuff a wholesaler would not send me or been set aside long before I got to order.

Quality Marine seems to be above all others in not allowing walk in traffic (I have been given the boot once until I proved myself as a LFS), they dont seem to allow cherry pickers (but need to step up the good stuff without large price tags on it), and have a very good DOA policy and overall quality. Not saying they are flawless by any means but now they are my sole wholesale source for anything.


Blue zoa is now owned in part or whole by a 104th st wholesaler. Wonder if other LFS will get anything rare there.
Route 66 is and started as frag farmer, not sure if he was going to sell. They have awesome stuff but too much premium added on to it IMO.

[swsaltwater]

Good point on the shipping aspect, I still see a lot of specimens that I find hard to believe were not dull or brown when collected. Usually when a coral browns out it will recover the color in time. I also find it hard to believe that besides SPS I dont get that issue on tranships with most coral which would imply the wholesaler browned it out and in that case they should not pass it to customers or simply disclose it as a dull faded red instead of "bright red"

[Raskal311]

I think I have ordered my last shipment of coral from wholesalers. Transhipping is the only way to go to get nice stuff at a decent price. Tired of getting the leftovers after cherry pickers that I am just thinking of discarding or donating to an aquarium or having to pay double price to get nice stuff when the market only wants to pay bottom dollar. My new policy is going to be if it is brown or washed out I don't pay period. Just insane that cites permits are wasted on some of this garbage. When customers ask who sent the bad shipment to you you know it is time to make a change lol.....They see what I get typically then this shipment it way off the map.

For those collectors like steve out there tell me, Are collectors typically picky and pick nice stuff over a longer range as opposed to simply staying in one area and taking anything they have a permit for. If so why/how do we get low grade or even garbage coral still? I went to a wholesaler off 104th last trip and saw a long tank with a few hundred brown mushroom rocks in it. Just one example, and why I would not have ordered from them for a few months while every LFS gets one or two of those rocks on each order lol. I don't mind surprise fill if it is nice stuff.

your talking about PAF?

[Raskal311]

<<<< thinks a few wholesalers have done that for years

Good, but loaded, question Steve

A few? are you kidding me? I can't think of any that does not, not even Quality who probably does the best job.

[GreshamH]

<<<< thinks a few wholesalers have done that for years

Good, but loaded, question Steve

A few? are you kidding me? I can't think of any that does not, not even Quality who probably does the best job.

I think you are mistaken. Quality Marine does not sell direct, or via a shell online website. QM doesn't even sell directly yo LA (Live Aquaria), they sell to another company that handles the LA account.

[cortez marine]

You mean ...WHOLESALE ONLY unless you're carrying $50 in cash or what?

That sounds like re-filling the petty cash fund, not taking out ads in community flyers, a big pitch in the yellow pages and local papers and going after public sales.

Theres a retailer wholesaler hybrid in South S.F. that is open to the public on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and closed for WHOLESALE ONLY Monday-Thursday. They must have 2 sets of books and pay sales tax out of the retail one.
But,
They are openly an upfront hybrid establishment.
I asked such a cross-over shop; "But doesn't that make your real retail customers upset?" He said...Thats OK. "They hate us anyway. " We ship out to non local retailers."

Once a guy justifies it by saying...Thats how we get the good pick on corals ...the wholesaler could say, By selling to the public, I finally get to make something on yellow tangs and Hawaiian fish! Not to mention Australian fish . Actually the list of lost leaders would shrink as nearly everything has a margin if its purchased direct and sold for full retail.
And even a small wholsaler is suddenly the biggest retailer in the region overnite if he goes all the way and completes the metamorphasis.

Steve

[swsaltwater]

Funny I have yet to find one new customer from LA that did not tell me their favorite place to shop was Sea Dwelling. One guy asked the price of a shrimp and at 20 bucks he said holly crap thats alot. i got them for under 10 at Sea Dwelling LMAO. They are not the only place on 104th but seems every local in LA knows about em. I heard Underwater World as well and funny how they all said that Quality was a bunch of dicks which I took as a compliment for them A lot of LA guys moving here lately with the job market out there

[cortez marine]

The old conventional wisdom was that if your good retail customer sees his own customer in the wharehouse, then you may lose that far better customer.
Logic dictates that you deny service to the retailers customers to insure his continued strength and support.
Selling to a casual customer who has 2-3 tanks vs. selling to a retailer with 50 tanks that need fish all the time is a no- brainer. Why risk losing the real customer for so little?
But, I take it it doesn't work that way anymore?
Steve

[swsaltwater]

You would think but at some point greed takes over and turning away any customer is not going to happen. Easier to try to explain why they were there then to admit it.

[gdw]

Greetings All !

... Route 66 is and started as frag farmer ...

FragFarmer was sold this past April, and is no longer connected with Route66Marine ...

Route66Marine does not sell to individual hobbyists. We spent a long time wrestling with how to cleanly tap into all the different strata of the marketplace simultaneously ... after all, we can count. But in the end, we simply couldn't figure out how to do it in a way that we were comfortable with ... for us, the inherent contradictions were insurmountable. Even so, ours is not the only legitimate perspective, and I for one am fascinated by the shifts & realignments that are taking place within the industry ... it's truly extraordinary.


FYI

[swsaltwater]

Heard rumors it was sold but nothing concrete till now.

[Raskal311]

<<<< thinks a few wholesalers have done that for years

Good, but loaded, question Steve

A few? are you kidding me? I can't think of any that does not, not even Quality who probably does the best job.

I think you are mistaken. Quality Marine does not sell direct, or via a shell online website. QM doesn't even sell directly yo LA (Live Aquaria), they sell to another company that handles the LA account.

Nope no mistakes, I’ve ran into one customer there a little over a year ago and I don’t shop there often because they don’t open on the weekends. I have three customers who has bragged to me they buy from Quality. To be fair I can only confirm one out of the three. One thing all three have in common is that they are all wealthy: lawyers, COE ect… Not your common hobbyist with a sellers permit. I was initially very impressed by how hard it was to open an account with them but I guess everyone have their price; quality’s is just set higher then PAF.

I’m not sure what the deal is with LA but I had an ex sales guy tell me Qualities inventory data base is linked to LA. Can’t confirm this either but it cam directly from an ex employee when it was still employed by Quality. Is it not true that Quality package and shipped orders for LA at their warehouse?

[swsaltwater]

I am quite sure every single wholesaler deals or has delt online in some fashion. Race openly admited here to buying from Quality and was a big reason I did not buy there in the past. Once the others got so poor on quality that I had no choice but to go there adn they are a step above the others at this point in the fish realm, no one has offered awesome coral at fair prices to date. I personally got flyers from SDC for a web site in my boxes on several occasions. Guess they help did not read english on those occasions lol. I know they were quite embarrassed and it happened to several customers. Again I don't mind them doing this I just wish they would do like most industries and charge more to non B&M customers. Wholesale + 30% to service guys and etailers would be about right IMO so the B&Ms could compete and still cover overhead. Too many players to make it happen, always a greedy SOB that will rock the boat.

[aquaticvet1]

Quality Marine's data or inventory is not directly linked to LiveAquaria. If you follow the postings on Reefcentral you will see that to the customers dismay, we do not know QM's inventory. That is the reason for us occasionally taking orders for specimens which are not available. If we knew the inventory, that would not happen.

As SW mentioned , we dropship items from Ocean to Ocean which is part of QM. Quality Marine is extremely ethical and does not allow us to cherry pick or rob from their supply at the expense of their retail customers. In fact, Chris Buerner openly told me that he would never sell us specimens at the expense of his retail accounts,---- and he does not. We do indeed get some great livestock from QM but only on a limited basis. If you follow our history, QM's reluctance to fill many of our orders led us into developing our own holding facility in Northern Wisconsin. That allows us to use multiple suppliers to fulfill our Diver's Den orders. QM could supply our needs, but they flat out will not jeapardize their retail accounts to do so------and I respect that.

As a retailer you should contrast QM's practice to others such as the old Flying Fish group, ReeferMadness and now the recent BlueZoo model. IMO, those practices are the ultimate in destruction for retailers.

Please do not get me wrong, I would love to buy more from QM but I also respect Chris's integrity and devotion to his retail accounts. His integrity forced me to assume overhead in Wisconsin rather then strictly dropshipping. To my dislike it also causes me to charge more, which further protects QM's retailers.

Having said all that, I accept and respect the limitations that QM places on dropshippers such as me as well as their devotion to their retail customers. They are second to none when it comes to quality and integrity.

Race

[GreshamH]

<<<< thinks a few wholesalers have done that for years

Good, but loaded, question Steve

A few? are you kidding me? I can't think of any that does not, not even Quality who probably does the best job.

I think you are mistaken. Quality Marine does not sell direct, or via a shell online website. QM doesn't even sell directly yo LA (Live Aquaria), they sell to another company that handles the LA account.

Nope no mistakes, I’ve ran into one customer there a little over a year ago and I don’t shop there often because they don’t open on the weekends. I have three customers who has bragged to me they buy from Quality. To be fair I can only confirm one out of the three. One thing all three have in common is that they are all wealthy: lawyers, COE ect… Not your common hobbyist with a sellers permit. I was initially very impressed by how hard it was to open an account with them but I guess everyone have their price; quality’s is just set higher then PAF.

I’m not sure what the deal is with LA but I had an ex sales guy tell me Qualities inventory data base is linked to LA. Can’t confirm this either but it cam directly from an ex employee when it was still employed by Quality. Is it not true that Quality package and shipped orders for LA at their warehouse?

removed - Race beat me to the punch

Sure a single hobbyist once in w blue moon may get a couple items, but how is that different then a store cutting a deep discount to friends?

[swsaltwater]

I think the purchase of Blue zoo is the difference in a nice bread and butter shipment as I used to get vs a dull crap shipment I recently encountered. Hate to think that they would/are bleeding the good stuff over to BZ and dumping the rest on us. It will catch up to them and they loose as the LFS get fed up and buy somewhere else. To me it was shocking and should embarass them that on the day their stuff arrived a customer asked if I tried a new supplier that ripped me off. I could only answer yes...................... Sure felt that way. Most their shipment will be discarded or sold at rock bottom below what I paid prices in the end. Whats not dying anyway, to top it off all the zoas have zoa pox and furan 2 is a pain to get locally these days, the brown scolys never were in good health and are dying, and the frogspawn (dull yellow) is not colloring up.

[aquaticvet1]

IMO, that is the difference. PAF, and it's member OWNERSHIP in BlueZooAquatics ( not to mention the Reefermadness connection ) is what retailers regret the most.