The coral aquaculture industry and selling product

[bcolvin]

Hi,
I own a decent size coral propagation facility (~8000 gallons) and I am looking for some answers since I am getting mixed messages from LFS, the hobby, and large wholesalers. My background is at the hobby level and living in Colorado I have very little experience at the large scale places in California and Florida.

Much of my facility was set up to grow "bread an butter corals" such as candy canes, anthelia, leathers, rose bubbles anemones, zooanthids, and about 10 types of sps for that is what my impression, from MACNA presenters, this forum as well as other forums, was what wholesalers are looking for in corals. I currently have close to 100 candy canes (4 heads each coral) and 100 pcs of anthelia (6-7) polyps on each ready to go and will have that again in a month or so. Leathers, Zooanthids, RBTA's, and others are close behind in sustainability.

I have contacted a couple of wholesalers and the interest was not what I was hoping for. I will be contacting them again soon to find out what they are looking for.... since that was not clear in our conversations.

I have no intention of selling the corals to LFS unless there is no other option. I feel that I can meet the prices of what a wholesaler would want ( I have been given no exact numbers on this matter so my assumption is a little less than 50% of what a wholesaler would sell for). I have used this pricing during my conversations and the disinterest did not seem to be a pricing issue.

I am left to believe that it is:
1) the corals that I am growing are not in demand
2) Aquaculture is a bunch of BS and there is no care on this matter
3) My pricing is way off
4) A bunch of measly anthelia and candies will not get a response and I need more corals to come into production.

Please chime in from LFS, Wholesalers, or from the hobby.

Thanks,
Bennett

 

[Anonymous]

Bennett, I think your biggest 'problem' right now is twofold. First, you're new and don't yet have an established relationship with the wholesalers (there may be one or two people who'll chime in here, I no longer work the trade). Second, and I think this is really your biggest obstacle, sales and demand are likely WAY down.

As for the rest of your questions, those regarding what you should be stocking/growing, whether or not aquaculture is acceptable or that no one cares about it (personally, I think they do, but there are two sides to that coin), or your pricing I cannot come close to answering adequately.

 

[bookfish]

I think there are a couple of factors involved. Firstly, many wslrs count on the weight of bread and butter corals to make their freight breaks. Second, a lot of the stuff you're growing is both easy to culture and ships reasonably well. Being easy to culture beginner corals means these species are often given out for free to new hobbyists. I think a hard to ship coral like xenia would be more useful to a local whlslr.

 

[clarionreef]

Aquaculture is a bunch of BS and there is no care on this matter

...

Dude,
To the institutional degree that cyanide fish inventories have been accepted and promoted by all comers, why on earth would anyone care about cultured corals?
It would actually be most amazing if "culturing corals" really was a draw as opposed to the wild corals on eco grounds. But, it most surely is not. It is a draw for economic reasons.
Cultured product is grown to make money ...like marijuana. Culturing it allows new people to get involved in production...like yourself for example. It also competes with a few local village people who might also be employed to culture it or collect it.
Its another product line. If its cool, different and allows a 2.4 mark-up, then dealers would buy it...It sounds like.
You only need one or two.
Thousands and thousands of corals and soft corals have overgrown their little cement bases, gotten too big and become non marketable. There was no enlightened, consumer stampede for them on eco grounds.
Its more or less a 100% economic thing.

Steve

 

[coralfarmin]

I agree steve...though wild colonies are the choice of the majority IMO. they are bigger and a hobbiest can easly frag large colonies for themselfs, I just love culturing...whatching them change and grow, there is little demand...cept on ebay..sell them there, or eat them.IMO

I could be wrong and my mind changes .....beside most wholesalers sell both, they sell what I call wild frags...that they get from islanders, or produce themself...its just to easy to do..anyone can do it....no one wants a frag with bout the same price tag as a WYSIWYG ...

eddie

 

[Anonymous]

Hi,
I own a decent size coral propagation facility (~8000 gallons) and I am looking for some answers since I am getting mixed messages from LFS, the hobby, and large wholesalers. My background is at the hobby level and living in Colorado I have very little experience at the large scale places in California and Florida.

Much of my facility was set up to grow "bread an butter corals" such as candy canes, anthelia, leathers, rose bubbles anemones, zooanthids, and about 10 types of sps for that is what my impression, from MACNA presenters, this forum as well as other forums, was what wholesalers are looking for in corals. I currently have close to 100 candy canes (4 heads each coral) and 100 pcs of anthelia (6-7) polyps on each ready to go and will have that again in a month or so. Leathers, Zooanthids, RBTA's, and others are close behind in sustainability.

I have contacted a couple of wholesalers and the interest was not what I was hoping for. I will be contacting them again soon to find out what they are looking for.... since that was not clear in our conversations.

I have no intention of selling the corals to LFS unless there is no other option. I feel that I can meet the prices of what a wholesaler would want ( I have been given no exact numbers on this matter so my assumption is a little less than 50% of what a wholesaler would sell for). I have used this pricing during my conversations and the disinterest did not seem to be a pricing issue.

I am left to believe that it is:
1) the corals that I am growing are not in demand
2) Aquaculture is a bunch of BS and there is no care on this matter
3) My pricing is way off
4) A bunch of measly anthelia and candies will not get a response and I need more corals to come into production.

Please chime in from LFS, Wholesalers, or from the hobby.

Thanks,
Bennett

if your prices were competetive, you'd find a buyer

 

[MrPike]

if your prices were competitive, you'd find a buyer

Hopefully its as simple as that. Im assuming from the above post by CortezMarine that dividing the wholesale price by 2.4 might give a reasonable estimate of what a wholesaler buys corals for, and thus a ballpark estimate of what an aquaculture company can expect to sell product for?

 

[coralfarmin]

I'll not mention the wholsalers name here.....but I was told by him direct, he has thousands and thousands of maricultered frags just setting there growing ...he said point blank, hardly no one will buy them...so unless that is changed, I'd say they have reached their saturation point on the maricultered, I had some and the were great but for 5 (or so) extra dollars approx, I could get something huge ready to frag out...for renumerasation...still, I think your better off if you are closed loop captive system...lots of selling points there

xeina for one is much better captive raised closed loop imo..this is a selling point IMO..at least for xenia

or maybe you need a good sales men..on there level , you can make a sale if you are presistant...and ask to speek to the owner

oh and your pricing ever heard the song "low low" (apple bottom jeans)....you may be trying to sell to people who saturated themself a long time ago...and still have tons left today, that no one wants to touch....just go low low low until you get your foot in the door with them.....look over a tranship list they are low low low..wild ones bigger = better, to human nature, most people want bigger

just my opinion

 

[Anonymous]

if your prices were competitive, you'd find a buyer

Hopefully its as simple as that. Im assuming from the above post by CortezMarine that dividing the wholesale price by 2.4 might give a reasonable estimate of what a wholesaler buys corals for, and thus a ballpark estimate of what an aquaculture company can expect to sell product for?

you fail to take into account the 'freight break factor' the coral part of a coral/fish shipment represents,(better revenue to weight ratio in a coral box vs a box of angels ) or how dropping a decent part of an order would affect the importer's relationship with an exporter

i dunno who told you 2.4, but iirc-that's NOT the dealio

he has thousands and thousands of maricultered frags just setting there

-ask for a pic of the 'thousands and thousands' :lol:


'hundreds and hundreds' is far more likely-for maricultured stock amounts, in addiion to the standard variety of sps/lps/zoas/shrooms/softies etc etc from the wild

any whoresaler can tell you anything 'direct'-a pic is worth more than any words

i worked for almost 3 yrs at a whoresaler near la, as a husbandry tech...

plenty of maricultured sps's arrived, and left, nearly every week-(at least not far fewer than wilds) any claim of market saturation is plain silly-right now is the peak of slow season for much of the country, AND the general economy sucks

you really wanna market a high demand coral ? try euphyllias-their shipping survival rates are atrocious !

 

[Anonymous]

Vitz, Steve is the one who said 2.4 a few posts up

 

[Anonymous]

whoops

well, at any rate-the op's 50% assumption is quite off base-and the 2.4 is often incorrect as well-iirc

just as with any biz-markups aren't always the same across the board on inventory-the profit margin on batteries at home depot ain't the same as on a lawnmower

the op is thinking purely in terms of a 'one to one' mode of thinking-he needs to also adress issues like 'how much need it be worth to a wholesaler (in terms of profitability on the sale of my goods to him), to possibly damage the relationship with his major supplier(s), who can get him what i can, AND everything else,plus his decrease in profit/freight, PLUS the increase of his cost to bring in all the other stuff he needs, while guaranteeing him a nearly steady supply of these goods long term, in the amounts he'll need in the future

people have an overly simplistic understanding of what's involved in bizness, sometimes-my wager is that the whole 'thousands of corals sitting in the warehouse' 'shpiel' was more of a polite way of telling someone they thought was (too) naive that the 'seller' wasn't close to having a clue as to what would be needed to have the buyer even begin to consider a biz relationship, and that the prices the wholesaler would be realistically willing to offer would put the seller in 'sticker shock in reverse'

(just my opinion)

 

[Anonymous]

the op also needs to think about:

the doa/daa claims the retail stores WILL have on his product sold via the wholesaler, and the resulting loss to the wholesaler, and the resulting pressure on the wholesaler to try and get an even lower price on said product, to stay within reasonable profit margins

i'm curious how much the op thinks an aquacultured pulsing xenia is worth to a wholesaler in cali, vs how much it would cost him to produce them in wholesale level amounts to even one 'major' wholesaler ? (especially when outfits like ora offer them directly to stores as a wholesaler)

 

[coralfarmin]

if your prices were competitive, you'd find a buyer

Hopefully its as simple as that. Im assuming from the above post by CortezMarine that dividing the wholesale price by 2.4 might give a reasonable estimate of what a wholesaler buys corals for, and thus a ballpark estimate of what an aquaculture company can expect to sell product for?

you fail to take into account the 'freight break factor' the coral part of a coral/fish shipment represents,(better revenue to weight ratio in a coral box vs a box of angels ) or how dropping a decent part of an order would affect the importer's relationship with an exporter

i dunno who told you 2.4, but iirc-that's NOT the dealio

he has thousands and thousands of maricultered frags just setting there

-ask for a pic of the 'thousands and thousands' :lol:


'hundreds and hundreds' is far more likely-for maricultured stock amounts, in addiion to the standard variety of sps/lps/zoas/shrooms/softies etc etc from the wild

any whoresaler can tell you anything 'direct'-a pic is worth more than any words

i worked for almost 3 yrs at a whoresaler near la, as a husbandry tech...

plenty of maricultured sps's arrived, and left, nearly every week-(at least not far fewer than wilds) any claim of market saturation is plain silly-right now is the peak of slow season for much of the country, AND the general economy sucks

you really wanna market a high demand coral ? try euphyllias-their shipping survival rates are atrocious !

true in theory...but he was not very happy with the investment (IMO) and he is one of the most popular....these coral have been out abroad and alot still there (I think)
atleast thats what I got out of him (then).."no one wants them over larger colonies" when they know the diff..maybe nano reefers...a hand full

maybe he said tons..or was using it as imagry...heck they should be nice size now and those are the ones moving out...just a guess

 

[Anonymous]

true in theory...but he was not very happy with the investment (IMO) and he is one of the most popular....these coral have been out abroad for years and still there (I think)

i'm not sure what you're saying here, and i'd still like to see 'thousands' of aquacultured corals in any la based wholesalers 'troughs'-i don't believe you'll ever get such a pic

atleast thats what I got out of him (then).."no one wants them over larger colonies" when they know the diff..maybe nano reefers...a hand full

again-simply not true-plenty of aquacultured corals sell from wholesalers that import them, to stores-i've seen shipments of a few hundreds of (aquacultured) corals leave a wholesalers in a week-no 'theory'-i've had to help move many of them for 'cleaning' of macroalgae growing on the plug bases/tags to hermit crab 'troughs' multiple times a week-tens at a time (they often come in with ALOT of nuisance macros attached, heh)

you are being fed a 'shpiel' that doesn't reflect the actual situation-either on purpose, or simply by someone who's extending their individual inability to move aquacultured product onto the industry as a whole-either way, it's a shpiel

maybe they don't know how to sell them ?

 

[coralfarmin]

you may be correct, on not knowing how to sell them, at that point in time...but he said he was sitting on them, no one wanted them.

I'd also love to see the thousands, abroad meaning away from the business in another country. Its been some years ago.

 

[coralfarmin]

'shpiel', thats pretty neat..looks like a twitter code

if you have a frag next to the same type wild colony.....which will sell first, the big one ready to frag or the frag, to the majority ?

I know that it could be the frag.....but if a controled experiment was done on a average scale, nationaly.

I have to get up to speed, since I have been focused on the Foreclosure industry a couple of years.

I know, that you know what your talking about though vitz.

 

[Anonymous]

'shpiel', thats pretty neat..looks like a twitter code

if you have a frag next to the same type wild colony.....which will sell first, the big one ready to frag or the frag, to the majority ?

I know that it could be the frag.....but if a controled experiment was done on a average scale, nationaly.

I imagine it would mostly depend on price.

 

[Fish_dave]

Unfortunatly Vitz does not know the wholesaler in question here. He is indeed sitting on THOUSANDS of cultured corals and would like to sell many more than he is able to move. He is willing to sell to other wholesalers at a price point that does make sense. I have purchased some from him in the past. This market is not as large as everyone assumes, it is possible to produce more than the market can accept especially when you factor in some of the other points that Vitz has made which do have some basis in fact. It is a little hard to wade through the "I know more than you do" attitude of Vitz but if you can manage to make it through his whole post he does get it about 50% correct.

Dave

 

[coralfarmin]

hmmmm....maybe I should call him again, and we can work something out LOL, I'll take a few thousand....hmmm

I would really love to see the end users jump on board...after all we are floundering in economic crisis, but it seems to be getting better.

hence my prior aprehension to continue in the business.....my family has to eat, LOL, but I love the business so,

oh well, without risk there is no reward.

 

[Anonymous]

Unfortunatly Vitz does not know the wholesaler in question here. He is indeed sitting on THOUSANDS of cultured corals and would like to sell many more than he is able to move. He is willing to sell to other wholesalers at a price point that does make sense. I have purchased some from him in the past. This market is not as large as everyone assumes, it is possible to produce more than the market can accept especially when you factor in some of the other points that Vitz has made which do have some basis in fact. It is a little hard to wade through the "I know more than you do" attitude of Vitz but if you can manage to make it through his whole post he does get it about 50% correct.

Dave

how wonderfully condescending and patronizing of you!

the impression, as presented, was that a wholesaler was 'sitting' on thousands of aquacultured corals in a warehouse in CALIFORNIA

I'll not mention the wholsalers name here.....but I was told by him direct, he has thousands and thousands of maricultered frags just setting there growing ...he said point blank, hardly no one will buy them

NOT that the situation was more of a wholesaler in california 'sitting' on a supply of corals overseas,which is far different- wasn't aware that ANY of the 104th crowd has their own supply/culture ops overseas, or that anyone would be dumb enough to commit to that large a number of stock of anything during a recession, without guaranteed buyers 'aforepurchase'

who on earth would buy thousands of any livestock to hold overseas not knowing that they would have buyers-what if a hurricane hit the area, or any number of other things...

sounds more to me that someone simply made some very poor business choices here, that have nothing to do with whether or not there is or isn't a demand for that type of livestock

where in my posts on this thread do you see an 'i know more than you do' type of attitude ?


do you know of any wholesaler in cali that HOUSES thousands of cultured corals ?


it remains a fact that at least one wholesaler in cali indeed sells quite alot of cultured corals yearly, and for the most part has no trouble selling off what they bring in weekly-does the fact that i've witnessed this and worked there translate into 'i know more than you' ?

it's also a fact that many of the cultured corals come in at sizes larger than many wilds, and many times with as good, if not better color-i have seen this with my own eyes-nowadays you can't really make a comparative generalization for one group over the other-there are 'cherries' and 'stones' in BOTH groups, as well as big and small

was my response to bennet about price incorrect, or my surmising that he may not know what wholesalers actually pay for some of their stock ?

i still stand by my contention based on EXPERIENCE-there is indeed a market for cultured corals, and competetive pricing is the key-one just needs to be aware of all that 'competetive pricing' includes

marketing and sales technique also are important

:roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: