The Disturbing Trend of Price Slashing in the reptile hobby/industry

Evan,

I'd like to address pretty much your entire posts so I'm not going to bother quoting them...

The species you listed are perfect examples of the cyclical nature of the industry but I'm not sure if they are the species most people are discussing...

I believe the intent of this thread was to discuss some of the morphs that have been more reccently introduced that have dropped and some of the species that seem borderline on being overbred where the market is oversaturated...

Sure, burms went up in price this year, it's something a lot of people have noticed, there was a lower production amount than was anticipated because it seems many people simply assumed everyone else would be breeding them and "didn't bother" this year... But did they hit the prices they once were? I see albino burms selling for $100+ rather than the $45-60 that neonates seemed to be last year but I don't see them selling for $5,000 the way they were shortly after their "introduction" onto the common market. I believe this is one issue that some people felt strongly about simply because they didn't really stop to think about the fact that, as morphs become more avaliable, the price drops... They were instructed in this by several people who have seen it happen to any number of species...

Most of the people who commented and found it unusual seemed to be talking about those new Pet store favorites of Beardies and leos however. Those animals certainly have dropped in price because they breed easily and yes, less competent or educated individuals can produce babies that are of sufficient quality to become something of a threat to the more experienced breeder who was hinging some of this years profits on them... I do hesitate to say this isn't "normal" because it also happens to most species at some point to some degree but there has been a serious and relatively new situation with some of those more common pet store species... Not only does a mid-sized breeding operation have to compete with the individual who "accidently" bred their animals and the individual who set out to do it deliberatly but wasn't prepared for the consequenses both selling their animals at cut rate prices... They also have to deal with a fairly reccent innovation of enormous specialized breeding facilities dedicated to a very small number of species.

I can't condemn either of these gentlemen for doing what they are doing because it is in their own best interest but... Who can possibly hope to meet Ron Tremper's prices on leopard geckos? Who can possibly meet Bob Mallioux's prices on bearded dragons? The volume these gentlemen are working with allows them to make a profit while selling the animals at prices that appeal to a consumer buying in bulk... who in turn sell the animals at prices that appeal to a consumer buying a single animal. The relative ease with which reptiles can be obtained by the novice consumer has both good and bad points, the good point is that they will be buying reptiles, buying books about reptiles, attending reptile shows and just generally increasing interest in the hobby... The negative points are that it does encourage people to compete in their prices (good for a consumer, bad for a vendor) and the individuals who are not yet as fully established as yourself but who are doing this as the entirety or as a substantial portion of their income can't compete with those accidental breeders or the HUGE producers and keep the costs above the point that covers their overhead and makes a profit.

I know full well that none of that was in any way a revalation to you, or many of the other individuals who read this board, it's something that some of the more experienced of us realized would be happening long before it did and it allowed time to make the few alterations needed to remain successful in the environment as it has become... But there is a fairly large group of extremely intelligent herpers who produce great quality animals who just got in at the wrong time and didn't quite have the experience to be aware of market fluxuations (or the severity of the fluxuations at any rate) of anticipate this broad spectrum breeding of some of those species that represent perfect specimins to the novice pet owner. There are certain events that have occured that never had before when considering herps as a saleable commodity within the pet industry, they have traditionally been the animals owned by fringe groups and avoided by the mainstream. That has changed.

What I would suggest for anyone who wants a bit of an idea of what the future of the herp industry will look like, is to take a good look into the history of the tropical aquarium fish market here in the United States. Take a good look at which animals are popular today and why, take a good look at the business models that have long term success (Yes, there is a small production high quality niche) and take a look at how the public opinion of the animals themselves, the market that produces them and the markets that support them (supplies, equipment, educational materials, advertising, etc.) have grown around what was once considered a hobby for strange people with a wet handshake who spend far too much time arguing over nomenclature... (I think aquarium water is prefferable to what some herps leave on your hands incidentally).

The market has changed in recent times, the production numbers and the pool of potential consumers have both grown, this will cause some changes in how people function as a business and how the levels of supply and demand react to one another any given breeding season... But a bit of forethought will generally make it very easy to see which directions the market as a whole are taking and allow the individual to react in the appropriate manner. I would reccomend to everyone that long term success off "The next big thing" really only occurs if you happen to be the originator of "the next big thing" and that jumping in when it becomes easily affordable isn't ideal... Of course I told quite a few people that years ago when they wanted to spend enormous amounts of money on leopard geckos and beardies the year before the bottom fell out of the market value for some of the color morphs due to high production numbers and the avaliability of neonates... But people never listen to me anyway.

Seamus, your comparrison is invalid and 100% FLAWED logic. How can you say that baby albino burms are selling for a better price than last year but have not recovered because they are not $5000? That is just dumb. They will never be $5000 again. They were $5000 when there were less than ten people in the world that had less than a total of 100 animals. There have been tens of thousands of them sold since then! How could they be that rare to rationalize that price? You are talking about two completely different things. You tell me what morphs you are talking about. Albino leopard geckos were $900 for adult females 3 years ago. This season there were a couple hundred thousand produced. Does it surprise you that they are $25? Supply and demand as well as market cycles are a totally diffferent topic than this post refers to. I do many shows, talk to many people and am very involved in this industry both in retail and in wholesale and I stand by my earlier statement that this year I have seen less price dumping than I have seen in a decade!

Every year at Orlando you would see people with tables of super stupid low priced stuff. Other dealers would always buy them out so that they were not harmed by that pricing. I have not been to Daytona, but I know the majority of the vendors there and have talked to them at length about how even the most common low end colubrids like cornsnakes are not even cheap at that show anymore. Things have changed. People are not dumping this season. Evan Stahl

What I forgot to ask you is how you can compare reptiles to fish? Nearly 99% of what fish are bred in this country are mass produced on farms. Even that makes up an extremely small percentage of the available animals. What, maybe 5%? Imports make up the vast majority and with salt water 99.99%.

It is not so and can't be so with reptiles. There are maybe half a dozen breeders in this country of huge scale and they are no where near the size or volume of the fish farms. Also, each year we get a larger and larger percentage of pet trade animals going CB instead of WC, with much coming from small private breeders. Again the leopard gecko is a great example. It used to be a wild caught pet trade item and now there are hundreds of thousands a year produced in this country and it has become one of the most common and highest volume pet trade animals even as the imports of green iguanas drop each year. Evan Stahl

You are right about the price dumping. There has not been too much price dumps. This has been the year of naming every type of reptile as something "new". I have seen about 100 different types of beardeds and about 80 of them are just pretty beardeds. How about the balls. Chocalate, mocha, cinnamin, and I don't even want to think of the rest I have seen. Boas with the laddertail, circleback, 5 different types of pastels. Most of these things are turning into a box of crayons. Honestly the only reptile I have seen that has 100 different valid mutations are cornsnakes. The rest seem to be mostly a joke. Just my opinion. Thanks.

Tony Alles

Seamus, your comparrison is invalid and 100% FLAWED logic. How can you say that baby albino burms are selling for a better price than last year but have not recovered because they are not $5000? That is just dumb.

Evan... that was my point!

That some people believed their animals would retain more value than they ended up retaining as breeders became more common and that this was an incorrect assumption.

Supply and demand as well as market cycles are a totally diffferent topic than this post refers to.

There are multiple issues that have been discussed on this post Evan, breeders trying to undercut one another, the tendency of any given animal's price to drop as they become more common, the general ebb and flow that occurs within any particular industry based on general economic principles... All were at some point discussed.

What I forgot to ask you is how you can compare reptiles to fish?

Because the tropical fish industry fifty years ago looks phenominally like the herp industry today, if you can't see the similarities you either have no idea what changes the tropical fish market underwent or you're simply not particularly perceptive. Looking at the history of another market that encompasses ectothermic animals that were at one point thought to be bizzare animals to maintain in the home, has many species and many potential color and pattern "morphs" will give you valuable insight into the general manner in which a livestock market functions. We're simply seeing it happen in a more compact time frame with herps because of a better understanding of the genetics involved and the ease with which communication can occur.

You know Evan, you made most the same points I did, for a pretty smart guy you sure seem to have trouble reading and comprehending the words of others, why don't you go back to the post you seem to disagree with, read it slowly, sounding out anything you have trouble with and getting someone to help you with the longer words and then get back to me when you realize you agree with everything I said (except you don't see the similarities between the herp market and the fish market over the past 50 years or so).

Hey Seamus how about you kiss my a**? I am far from illiterate and you are far from as knowledgable as you want us to believe. There is not now and never will be as close a similarity to the fish and reptile trades for a myriad of very SIMPLE reasons that I'm sure you can com-pre-hend if you sound them out.

First off, there has never been and will never be the volume of regulation on fish that there is and has been on reptiles. Restrictions on what is imported from where and how and when and in what volume and to where. The only example of a fish that even comes close and is not even anywhere near the reptile regulations, is piranah. Fish are more more accesible in much higher volumes, much larger varieties from many more ports. Also, fish are not regulated here once they arrive as reptiles are again with the possible exception of piranah and a couple specific restrictions on snakeheads due to release and creation of wild populations destroying native speices.

Second, there is not now and never will be anyone in the reptile business that can produce the volume of reptiles that fish farms can. There are single farms that are producing hundreds of thousands of one species each season, oscars, piranahs, koi, African cichlids, etc., etc.. Single fish farms will out produce our entire industry on one animal! It is not possible to do reptiles on that scale due to space, heat, building costs and other requirements as well as legalities. The large scale reptile breeders have gone to court many times and had to fight just to do what they are doing now and are not capable of growing much unless they are able to keep it secretive. You can go anywhere warm and create a fish farm as it does not carry the stigma to the general populace that reptiles do. Nobody ever thought fish were strange. Not fifty years ago and certainly not today. I had relatives breeding large numbers of fish here in Michigan 40 years ago that sold to pet stores. Every store wanted everything they produced. Today, still, nearly 2/3 of all pet stores in this country either do not carry reptiles at all or have only a couple very base species. There are so many places where it is illegal to sell many if not all reptiles that many stores will never be able to have them. That was never true and will never be true of fish.

Also, pet stores and business' dealing with fish are regulated and inspected much less and much more loosly than reptiles as fish are viewed by most agencies as "lower" order animals while reptiles are getting the same treatment from the government in most legislation as mammals as far as cruelty statutes and housing conditions/space rulings. I have dozens of other reasons but am getting tired of flogging a dead horse since you will surely never admit that you are wrong and persist anyway in your flawed logic and lack of facts.

I do not agree with you at all Seamus. I don't think you have much of a grasp of this business. As I attacked your logic and your argument you attacked me personally and that is an obvious sign of somebody that can't support their argument.

Again, what species of reptiles are people dumping? Just like the post above by Tony I think it was, that he complained about dumping prices, but his whole post was about how people keep making up new descritions and names of animals for which they charge more! Another 100% flawed argument! Evan Stahl

Evan and Seamus, you should both stop insulting the inteligence of others, what purpose does that serve this discussion? You should be able to disagree without the insults.

I agree. You both normally post very valid and well thought out posts. I know who threw the first stone, but I am not going to get into that other than, calm down guys

Now Evan, hopefully you don't get bent out of shape, however I agree with alot of what Seamus posted regarding the comparison of the reptile trade to the fish trade. Of course there will never be a 100% perfect industry to compare the reptile trade, to, I feel that fish do make a fairly cood place to start making comparisons with trends in the market.
You say that reptile breeders will never be able to reach the production numbers of fish farms as they are now. I disagree with that. With people like the Brants who produce what is it, 50,000 leopard geckos each year and Tremper who produces something over 20,000 if I remember right(as well as several other breeders who do strictly wholesale that you may or may not know), I don't think they are TOO far away from reaching the 100,000 mark a year point. And although it is not in the US, Iguana farms in Central America produce hundreds of thousands of iguanas each year. In the US, there are turtle farms producing hundreds of thousands of turtles each year(as well as farms in other countries). Alligator farms also produce tens of thousands of alligators each year(though only a small portion go into the pet trade, the numbers are still there). So the herp industry is still lagging behind, but we're catching up.
As far as Seamus' FLAWED logic regarding albino burms, his point WAS that they will never again hit the $5,000/ea mark. Both you and Seamus made that point. I agree. Prices were indeed slightly higher this year than I've seen in the past two years on them, but nowhere near what they were in the 80s and 90s(or whenever they came out) or even 5 years ago. Albino Leopards were running a couple thousand each during their first year on the market. But now almost 5 years later, if you pay more than $50 you think you're getting jipped.
Regarding regulations, I am pretty sure there are alot more regulations in the fish industry than you are pointing out. Pirrhana and Snakeheads are NOT the only ones being regulated I am darn sure of that. And I am just as sure that the hatcheries had to go through just as much, if not more inspections and red tape to be set up than any of the larger scale reptile facilities. After all, you will have to set up all kinds of ponds, pools, pumps, filtration, water treatment and all that. A fish hatchery alters the landscape in a huge way where it is built. A herp "farm" usually incorporates one or two small-medium size buildings(with exception to turtle and alligator farms). So you would think based on a sheer size and environmental impact issue that large-scale fish farms would be jumping through more hoops than large-scale herp farms.

When it comes to price dumping, though, I have observed quite a bit this year compared to previous years. But again, this is cyclical. For instance, if you watch the bearded dragon market you will see an interesting trend. About every 2 years or so, there is a huge price drop in bearded dragons(I'm sure everyone's noticed years when babies can be as low as 10-15/ea). When this happens, many of the people breeding them either thin down their production or simply get out of them altogether. After a year or two of these super low prices, prices shoot back up to where they were before the bottom fell out. Why? The breeders who cut down production or got out kept supply lower and therefore demand increased and prices increased as well. But then, when people see prices higher again, they get back into the game and enjoy the good times until supply again exceeds demand. I've watched this go on for years. It's actually kind of funny in a way
Most of the price slashing I see done though is from private indivuiduals trying to simply unload or get out of certain projects and doing whatever they can to get them gone. Also I see this from people needing cash(I get caught in this trap sometimes as well). They've got 10 baby boas they could normally sell for $80/ea(just throwing a number out), but since they are hurting for cash, they are dumping them at $40-50/ea. Unfortunately, with the economy being as it has been this last year, there are more and more people needing cash now taht simply cant' afford to keep the animals long enough to sell at the higher prices.

WEll, either way, Happy Happy and Merry Merry everyone!!!
Cheers!

Evan, I never complained about price dumping. I agreed with you that it was not happening. I think you read my post wrong. As far as the naming of all the different patterns and colors, I personally think it is rediculous. Thanks.
P.S. We shouldn't insult eachother personally, these are only our opinions. It is good for people to disagree sometimes.

Tony Alles

I know people who own fish farms and I know people who own large reptile business'. There is no comparision. As far the leopard geckos go you are stating my case. Bill Brant is the biggest and produced more than you stated. The three largest producer who make up about 65-70% of the animals produced in this country this year produced a combined total of around 140,000. There are dozens of fish farms that individually produce 5 to 10 times that a year. That is a huge difference. And no, you are wrong, there are more regulations and laws on the books regarding reptiles in this country. The only substantial fish laws are just like I mentioned, regarding the potential damage done to environment, specifically native species, by aggressive predatory fish. The only species of fish that I have ever seen, specifically named in legislation are piranahs and snakeheads. Because fish can not live out of water and can not survive in many environments in this country (tropical fish will not survive winter climate in 90% of the country) there is not as much need for regulation. Hell, there are very few regulations on fish for human consumption as well! Many many less than produce and meat!


There are no farms in world producing hundreds of thousands of iguanas. I get all federal import statistics each year and I will bet you that this past year was lower than any we have seen in volume of baby iguanas in ages. And I know that because I know the two largest importers of iguanas in the USA have had very little supply compared to the past but also there has not been as much demand as much of it has gone to bearded dragons and leopard geckos now that they are $5-20 wholesale in the pet trade. The top farms, of which there are only a few left now, produce a few thousand iguanas. Not hundreds of thousands.

As far as the thing with Seamus goes, he attacked me. I argued against his argument. He insulted me. I am not the one you need to chastise. I realize that this just a bull session forum, but I really hate it when people present themselves as something they are not. Simply put, I keep and breed snakes. I am very involved in the pet trade and laws regarding animals because it has a direct effect on my hobby and my livelyhood. Seamus is the world's expert on fifity years of the fish trade. How long has he been in the fish trade? Is he even in it? What does he base all of his statements on? Was he a fish wholesaler? A pet store owner? He does not support his argument with expertise or fact just opinions. Let's have some facts. Just like Bill Brandt produces what I understand to be 60-65,000 leopard geckos. Mark Bell produces 50,000+. I talk to Mark about it. I talk to other breeders like John Mack who produces tens of thousands. I talk to Bob Ashley all the time who bought and sold about 10-15,000 this season and get updates all the time on production and pricing. I am very aware of what is going on. Does Seamus have this kind of intel on fish? I would like to hear that. I talk on a weekly basis to large scale fish wholesalers who buy from breeders and supply stores. I talk to large stores almost daily, as I did today, some who import their own fish shipments. I only represent something as fact if I know it to be. I state opinions clearly as such. Too many people are blurring the line. Evan Stahl