All,
I was reading the "zero degrees of separation" thread, and got to thinking way, way back...
Who were some of the other early mailorder marine fish suppliers? Seems like the dwarf seahorse mailorder companies have been around since the 1960's, and freshwater fish had been sold pre-WWII by Beldt's and Crescent and the like, but I mean - who were some of the first full range marine mailorder suppliers? Robert Straughan's Coral Reef Exhibits had Atlantic fish only, and I'm not sure he sold retail.
Does anyone remember Barry Hershon's Pacific Sealife Distributors? He was in metro Detroit around 1981. He imported from C.V. Banyu Biru in Jakarta and some French guy out of New Caledonia. So Barry was an importer, wholesaler and he did mailorder to retail customers - all out of the same shop. Course he went out of business a couple of times, so maybe the business model wasn't working. I bought up his mailing lists, etc. and started selling mailorder fish out of my studio apartment in Ann Arbor under the name "Midwest Marinelife" (a modification of Dave Vatter's Atlantic Marinelife - who I was buying fish from). Barry had taught me an important thing - sell your price lists for $1....you'll make more profit on that than you will selling fish (grin).
Jay
I was reading the "zero degrees of separation" thread, and got to thinking way, way back...
Who were some of the other early mailorder marine fish suppliers? Seems like the dwarf seahorse mailorder companies have been around since the 1960's, and freshwater fish had been sold pre-WWII by Beldt's and Crescent and the like, but I mean - who were some of the first full range marine mailorder suppliers? Robert Straughan's Coral Reef Exhibits had Atlantic fish only, and I'm not sure he sold retail.
Does anyone remember Barry Hershon's Pacific Sealife Distributors? He was in metro Detroit around 1981. He imported from C.V. Banyu Biru in Jakarta and some French guy out of New Caledonia. So Barry was an importer, wholesaler and he did mailorder to retail customers - all out of the same shop. Course he went out of business a couple of times, so maybe the business model wasn't working. I bought up his mailing lists, etc. and started selling mailorder fish out of my studio apartment in Ann Arbor under the name "Midwest Marinelife" (a modification of Dave Vatter's Atlantic Marinelife - who I was buying fish from). Barry had taught me an important thing - sell your price lists for $1....you'll make more profit on that than you will selling fish (grin).
Jay
