Zero Degrees of Separation

[aquaticvet1]

I will not speak for Kevin, but I have no desire to become involved with a Wholesaler. I am content paying Quality Marine the same or more than retailers do for identical specimens and for paying all the associated dropshipping fees and California sales tax. I wish QM would give me a better deal but since this is just a hobby for me I do not push it or have the critical mass to demand it. Since Chris Buerner puts retailers first and will only allocate some specimens to me I use the other Wholesalers, just as I did with you back in the day.

Please keep in mind you and I are together in this Etail venture and I respect you as a person and competitor. Too bad if the retailers do not like us as competition, it is just the way it is. Maybe some of them will join us, as you know the Etail market needs development and we could use the help.

 

[wonderreef1]

Dave, you are a nice guy and always been a straight shooter with me, but with all due respect your words here have a tone of arrogance that continues the general tone of "if you don't buy it on our terms we have a dozen other guys we can call that will buy it in a heartbeat". I guess I should not "cry" about it as you put it, but I feel everyone would be better off with the traditional chain of supply and just because that chain has been crumbling for some time does not justify what you are doing right now. Well again I am choosing to not further support it despite the excuses of it is just for a few weeks or it is just this way because it has been so for some time now, or just take it and like it. Too many others that frequent this forum I guess are afraid to speak up for fear of the "soup nazi" treatment---say someting we don't like and no fish/coral for you.

 

[Fish_dave]

Wonderreef, I am not trying to make this a heated debate, believe me there is nothing heated on my end. I do like hearing the discussion of what folks think about the trade, topics that I am interested in I try to reply in a way that will develop discussion that I am interested in. Please do not take any of it as being heated or angry on my end.

The main point that I am having a problem with in this thread and have had with Race in the past is the assumption that you both have made that Blue Zoo is a part of PAF. I own a part of Blue Zoo (60% for the sake of full disclosure) and I own a part of PAF (75%). There are no common shareholders in both companies other than myself. They are run as seperate companies. I manage PAF and to be fair to all of the shareholders try to make decisions for PAF that are the best for PAF. I do not manage Blue Zoo or make day to day decsions there. I have allowed Blue Zoo to ship out of PAF for the past two weeks while they moved their facility. I would most likely do that for any of my large customers that would ask me to do it. If Race Foster came to me and said that Quality Marine was going to move and he would like to ship out of my place for two weeks while Quality got moved I think that I would do it even though he likes to give me grief. I respect Chris at Quality and Keven at Live Aquaria enough that I would do what I could to help them out.

As for Blue Zoo getting Preferential product or treatment from PAF it is all bunk. If Blue Zoo sells something cheaper than you could get it for from PAF then they did not buy it from PAF, they got it elsewhere. There is not preferential pricing for them. Same for getting product, my sales people have first pick of product that comes in for sale to their customers. As an example this past week we received 40 pieces of spectacular cultured acropora from the Solomons, nicer pieces than we have seen in the past. 40 pieces, everybody wanted them all. Blue Zoo got 2 pieces, the other 38 went to PAF customer orders, many to etailers that are direct competitors of Blue Zoo. I think that one of the larger etailers got 12 pieces yet Blue Zoo got only 2 (Yes they complained loudly to me but it did not change anything). Another example, Vivid another etailer ordered 60 Fiji Acropora. They came in and were put in a tank on hold, the Blue Zoo guys saw it and wanted to take some, they werent allowed and vivid got all 60. PAF customers get the preferential treatment.

Dave

 

[wonderreef1]

OK Dave, we will have to agree to disagree. Race likes to bait and get folks going with statements like this is just a hobby for him and he loses money at it, blah, blah, blah. For me, this is my livelihood--plain and simple. If none of your other customers have an issue with this then I guess I am being silly even bringing it up. For me, I have a real issue with you selling direct to my customers despite the fact that you can somehow justify it in your mind that BZ is somehow a completely distinct venture from PAF. In simple terms let me put it this way, BZ is in fact a competitor of mine, you own a controlling interest in BZ and therefore in my world you are a competitor of mine. To you this may seem twisted and wrong and you can't at all see it my way, but this is how I feel about it. As I stated before, I know I might be very naive, but I think everyone would be better off with going back to the traditional chain of supply--importer imports, wholesaler wholesales, retailers retail, and all of them guard and have regard for their reputation. Instead you are telling me that you have the "right" to be an owner of a retail operation and be my competitor and that this situation should not alter my buying patterns from PAF. Even if there is no preffered treatment to BZ, there is the appearance or potential of it, to me, and in the past folks were concerned with even the potential apperance of impropriety.

 

[Fish_dave]

Wonderreef, I am not trying to speak with a tone of arrogance, if it comes off that way it is because I am not doing a good job of expressing myself. I think that discussion is good, it keeps me thinking. There is no soup nazi stuff going on, I am not all that involved in who gets what from PAF. The PAF sales guys get the bulk of the good stuff for their ship out customers. You being a local customer I can understand how you would feel that you do not get the cherries, the sales guys tend to hoard the cherries for their ship out customers. Having a good relationship with a sales person is the best way to get the best cherries at PAF.

The traditional chain has been crumbling for awhile now and this past year with the bad economy it has really acelerated. This next year is going to get very interesting in how things start to settle out. I think that in 3 years time the supply chain is going to be drastically altered. Personally I don't particularly like change but it is coming if we like it or not.

I am not trying to say that I am not a competitor of yours with Blue Zoo. I am saying that PAF and Blue Zoo are separate entities. I happen to own shares in both and run / manage one of them. I don't think that it is wrong for a Ford employee to own GM stock ( it may be stupid though ). I am not trying to make the case that you need to buy from PAF, you have the right to support whomever you wish. I also have the right to own stock in any company that I wish. What I find interesting and would like to see more discussion of is the fact that the supply chain can crumble and become more convoluted and no one pays much notice until you hit the raw nerve of retail. Some of the retailers that cry out the loudest about etail are the same ones that are buying tranship or direct from importers who have no tanks. I find that interesting. They want protection but give little thought to the supply chain up to themselves. Do you not buy anything direct from a manufacturer? Is everything bought through wholesalers just to protect the wholesaler? I don't think so. I think that most retail stores buy something direct that a wholesaler could supply. It is mostly economics for the store, they do what they can to make a profit sometimes cutting out a middleman.

Dave

 

[Fish_dave]

Wonderreef, I somehow missed the last sentence in your post above. I agree with you totally, there is the appearance and potential for preferential treatment to Blue Zoo. Other than sell my holding in Blue Zoo I can't do much about the appearance or potential. I did actually try to sell my shares for 50 cents on the dollar before they moved but I had no takers. That is actually how the move came about and is quite a long story that I won't go into here.

I think that most people in my situation would treat Blue Zoo differently. There is a lot of assuming going on by folks that don't know. I do know and that is why I am mostly comfortable with the situation as it is. Honestly all of the major wholesalers and most all of the minor ones dabble in the retail market either by drop shipping, etail, or just opening the doors to retail sales directly. PAF does not drop ship for anyone but does sell to a lot of etail customers. I (personally) am just the only one so far to be connected to both sides that does it above board and in the light without having been outed first.

Dave

 

[wonderreef1]

Personally Dave I do not buy via transhippers and have no interest in buying direct except items I can not get from wholesalers, in my case those are Australian and Caribbean corals--these items are not generally regularly available from west coast wholesalers. I am too busy to do your job and mine and so I really do not want to get involved in importing my own livestock on a weekly basis. I prefer the traditional supply chain as I would rather you take the risks and then charge the appropriate amount to be profitable---you collect and import and sell whiolesale and I buy wholesale and sell retail---Ok again sorry for being so old school and naive. You see, if I bypass that traditional supply chain it puts more cost pressure upon you the wholesaler and then you get ideas that it would be paradise from a financial point of view to just sell retail and cut me out of the picture. You seeing the destruction that WS did with RM and how much you felt it was wrong at the time I was shocked when I first learned of the PAF and BZ connection. Do you not think that at least in some part the slowing of your wholesale business and thus desire to venture into retail is due to and/or expedited by you involvement in the BZ venture, that is, a cyclical self fulfilling endeavor where the more you get involved in BZ the more your wholesale will decline and then the more pressure to sell more retail and the pressure to out compete me and further lower your retail pricing to be more appealling retail, etc. WS went down this same road and where is he now? Where do you see the progression of your business in the next few years? Will you be talking like Race does so casually that you will put all the retailers out of business--after all that would be the natural progression. Other wholesalers on 104th and beyond certainly are watching and if you do well with BZ they will go down the same path full force and then the traditional supply chain will forever be gone. You are in business to make a profit and as you said have some fun, do you not think you would be getting more of both if you took better care of your wholesale customers? I for one really do not like getting involved with some of the tranship characters nor dealing with the collectors/exporters directly. If you did your job better as a quality wholesaler you would have no need to get into direct retail out of your wholesale operation.. OK, call me silly and old fashion and just not with it, but I think it is just that simply and we sometimes just lose sight of the basics.

 

[aquaticvet1]

I speak casually as there is no sense arguing with a changing business climate, accelerated by technology. I and others including Dave either change or become archived. Please do not imply that I feel etail will put all retail out of business. I do however understand that etail competes directly with retail for many of the livestock transactions. I guess unless people are willing to get rid of the computer and phone applications, the change will continue.

I was in the same position as you wonderreef. I was a long time customer of PAF and Dave and then found out they were becoming more of a direct competitor of mine online----- so logically I left. I would guess today, they( PAF and BlueZOO) are the most powerful online source for livestock and yes that devastates many retailers and their sales, but it will not eliminate all of them.

Like you and others, I have choices for quality livestock and when possible prefer not to support my largest online competitor BlueZoo( PAF, Reefermadness et al). No one is a bad person here, just the winds of change.

 

[wonderreef1]

I understand the winds of change and I have no issue whatsoever regarding etail, I do it and that is not an issue as any retailer can put up a website and sell online. What every retailer can not do is have at his touch the vast variety of livetsock that Dave has via PAF and you do via QM. In Dave's case he has a monopoly being the collector (Solomons), importer, wholesaler, and now retailer. When one controls every step of the process they are more able to control the marketplace and that is fine, but not something I wish to fund when it is intended by design to put me out of business. I understand competition, it is a fact of business and we all must adapt, be smarter at what we do and/or be more innovative to survive, but that is on a somewhat level playing field. As I said before I supported PAF during the RM days because even though RM got very prefferencial treatment with livestock they sold it at a high price and actually enlarged the marketplace as more folks had access to higher end stock it created a greater demand for that type of stock for all retailers. With BZ, their target audience is more the bread and butter customer as they do not really offer much in the way of the high end product--some of the specials BZ runs are in fact at lower than I can land the product buying from PAF and paying for the items, freight, box, loses, and misc. costs to get it in my store . When you control the supply chain completely then you can obviously manipulate that retail arena to a point that those buying from your wholesale location can not compete and thus they would be stupid to fund any part of the chain you control. Now, one could argue that by me withholding my funding of PAF, and if others do the same as I suspect many are, then this puts further pressure for Dave to be more aggressive with his retail ventures as the wholesale customers dry up, and thus we are actually hurting ourselves. Could it be so, what if I just bought exclusively from PAF and helped increase their business, and if others did the same, would this then allow Dave to sell off his retail venture and then not be my competitor, or then am I caving to sort of blackmail--OH it gets so convoluted (Ok I am being dramtic here--but you get my drift).

 

[aquaticvet1]

I think first and foremost retailers and etailers should support the wholesalers with the best livestock. We owe it to our customers, the industry and the oceans.

I do not like the fact that QM will not sell me more and has in fact isolated and minimized me because of their comittment to retail. I honestly have not spoken to Chris Buerner in over a year and our sales have substantially declined with QM. Others have offered to dropship at a lower cost but to me quality is everything so I am forced to play the QM game, whether I like it or not. They are the best the industry has to offer so I stay with them.

 

[Fish_dave]

Wonderreef, I think that your past two posts were good and insightful. Thank you for your thoughts. I agree with a lot of what you are saying. The fish livestock trade is changing, I have had several discussions with other wholesalers and the only thing that we really all agree on is that the market place is changing and not everyone is going to survive. Time will tell which of the major wholesalers survive into the future.

Dave

 

[wonderreef1]

With all due respect Race, the "best" livestock is a subjective evaluation and tends to vary with every shipment. I have been there and seen far too many shipments unpacked from the same colectors/exporters weekly and the quality varies dramatically shipment to shipment. The best wholesalers are the ones that are straight with you and tell you that the shipment arrived in rough shape and maybe wait till next time or give you a call and tell you they got a killer shipment so today is the time to buy and then actually send the stock to back up their statements and above all support the wholesaler that does not in any way try to get business from your customer--that seems so basic to me--it is a conflict of interest wheather you manage the day to day or not.

 

[wonderreef1]

Sorry dave, my last post was being written and submitted as you posted yours. I understand the wholesale trade is changing. I suggest you would have been better off making your wholesale operation even better than it is now and not trying to recoup losses from lack of sales in wholesale by making the decision to go after the very customers of your wholesale accounts---is this not a basic & simple concept? Please , please do not take the following statement as being disrespectful, but it is my observation that you, and most other wholesalers, have become lazy and complacent in your ways---I can think of maybe a dozen ways in which you could easily improve your wholesale operation and gain enough business to not even have to think of doing direct retail--that is if you want to be a legit wholesaler again. There is too much of the attitude by you and other wholesalers that your job is simply to get in the shipment, put it in the tanks and then wait till the customers line up to buy it and nothing else needs to be done with it---the sales guys will do the leg work and that is that----some of the smaller wholesalers are doing more to gain and hold the customers you are now shedding. Maybe some new young blood and ideas are needed---again this is said with all due respect and simply as my personal observation FWIW and not meant to be mean spirited. Yes, of course you have the "right" to do as you wish, we are not talking here about someone strongarming you or the force of law preventing you from doing this, we are talking about you being responsible for your corporate reputation and I might say the trendsetter for 104th--as you go so will most others there and elsewhere as they are watching. So, by saying the wholesale marketplace is changing does that naturally mean you are changing it by now selling direct retail? You see no other way to enhance the business you and WS built over the last several years? So, if the change in the wholesale marketplace is going to direct retail sales then the natural progression is in fact going to be that many current retailers shut down and maybe that is good for some to go away and the stronger to survive. I personally would be more comfortable with myself if I were a wholesaler to do the very best possible in supplying a quality product and doing everything in my power to help my customers to be successful instead of devising ways in which I can undercut them at some level as is now happening with your operation.

 

[aquaticvet1]

Quality specimens go beyond what comes out of the cargo. How they are cared for is just as important and that is where some wholesalers excel and others do not. As you probably have, I have personally toured SDC, ERI(before and after), QM and others and make informed choices based on how well specimens are handled and the likelihood they will survive beyond my 14 and 30 day guarantee. No sense buying a nice looking cargo specimen only to have it die in 10 days. Kevin is the master at choosing healthy items. I am a novice at best but I do understand commerce flow and animal health.

There is not one wholesaler who gets all the best "out of cargo specimens" which is why our Diver's Den is largely populated with non-Quality Marine specimens. QM prefers to keep the majority of their choice items for the retail sector so Kevin utilizes a network of many suppliers to populate our Diver's Den.

You are correct, you can get some good and bad specimens from most sources, even the transshippers,----------- but day in day out is where the money is made. A wise choice is to focus on consistency of supply and a trusted business relationship.

 

[wonderreef1]

Yes Race, "a trusted business relationship" is at the core of why I started this thread. That trust is not there if my supplier is smiling when taking my order and payment and then plotting behind my back trying to put me out of business by devising strategies on how to sell to my customers--that is, low threshold free shipping, extended guarantees, lower than I can sell pricing, the ability to cherry-pick from vastly more stock than I can bring into my store, etc. etc.

 

[aquaticvet1]

I left the same supplier for the exact same reasons.

 

[wonderreef1]

Ok, so lets talk about who else we know for sure are doing the same thing now, not some past issues, but right now. QM is in the same boat as far as I am conerned as they are doing the same thing by doing your shipping--despite the fact you have tried to distant this in some ways. I have heard rumors of other wholesalers but have no solid proof--my point is to make a better, informed, buying choice. Quality and variety of product is one aspect, follow up care is another, innovation is a big one, and then backdooring is the ultimate for me.

 

[aquaticvet1]

I guess I do not know of the wholesaler who would meet your criteria.

I do not like using wholesalers who compete directly with me such as PAF(BlueZOO) but I certainly hold no grudges if they supply my competition. I expect to compete with retailers and other etailers for a sale but I do not expect to compete with my supplier for that same sale. I think we both agree on that.

Where we differ is that I also expect my wholesaler to supply my competition, be it another etailer or a retailer. It makes no difference to me who else my main suppliers may supply or dropship for. I go there for the quality of specimens and business ethics, I owe that to my customers and the industry. Not to sound rude but it is little league stuff to not purchase from a supplier simply because they also supply someone you may not care for, or have to compete against. A strong supplier is good for all of us, and the entire industry.

 

[wonderreef1]

Race, if I said I expected a wholesaler to not sell to a competitor then that is not at all what I meant. I don't think I said that, there is no such thing as that and I would never expect it that they would not sell to a competitor, everyone is a competitor that is a retailer. No, waht I said it that I will not support a wholesaler that sells retail.

 

[aquaticvet1]

I misunderstood, sorry.