New price order?

This is what I call a very good discussion!

Donna,
I agree with parts of your statement...and I think parts of it are naive, at best. The reality is that, yes, you can hold onto the babies...but (with BPs, in particular) you won't get more for them as yearlings. That means you are housing, feeding, and caring for them for free.
Let me give you an example: back in 06, I bought a few spiders at about $1000 each. One of the females turned out to be the oddball that was a sporadic feeder, and won't be ready to breed for another year (or two? ). The other two are plenty big enough to breed, and I plan on doing so this year...much as I would almost prefer to get out of balls entirely (I think everybody knows I'm not a big fan). IF I could sell my pastels and spiders without taking a loss, I would in a heartbeat...but, the reality is that I'm going to have to breed them a few times before I can consider it.
Sure, I could breed the male to a couple of the normal females I have sitting around - which are still here because I won't give them away - but then I would just have a bunch of babies that aren't worth crap that I would have to feed & try to get rid of (OK, in all fairness, if I LIKED BPs, that wouldn't be such a chore, lol...but I don't, so I'm not going to put myself through that. Even if I did, it would still take a couple seasons to make back what I invested in those 3 spiders).

I also don't really see it as a self limiting issue - unless there there is a mass exodus of BP breeders, along with a freeze on incoming enthusiasts getting involved. Every year, more and more people are getting involved in breeding...and producing animals they haven't really considered how they are going to get rid of (you'd be surprised how many new breeders never contemplate NOT being able to sell the babies). I can point toward any number of people that have kept snakes for a year or two, that have at least 10 BP females they plan to breed this year.
BPs are so heavily produced that we could cut off importation of WC and CH, and not really even feel the loss...heck, from a market perspective, it's probably a pretty good idea (except it would kill everybody's dream of snagging their own morph).

You're right...there is a market, and they will sell. IF you have something unusual, or are willing to drop prices til they do. (I focused on BPs for the majority of this post; but most of what was said can easily be generalized, with minimal changes)

Originally Posted by KelliH

I wish more people would do what you did. The leopard gecko market is WAY super-saturated right now and there are too many being produced. I don't keep up with the ball python market these days, but I do know that it is extremely difficult to sell leopard geckos right now. Part of it is that too many people are breeding them, and also a couple of the "bigger" breeders are WAY overproducing the morphs, therefore causing major price drops. The other part of it is most definitely the economy IMO. The Europeans still buy. I know one other US. breeder that has not had a domestic leo sale since May.

If the biggest breeders are able to sell every animal they hatched and you aren't... which one of you "overproduced"?

I know that you, for example, go after a slightly different customer than an industrial style breeder does Kelli. Aiming at a niche market of selective customers who are willing to pay a little more for a higher quality animal. There's some overlap between their customer base (or the customer base of their customer base since the biggest breeders *largely* sell to retailers and jobbers) and yours though, since there are also people who would sometimes select price over certain differences in quality.

That said though, if the biggest breeders are able to sell all the animals they want to at a price that makes them a profit during a time when a smaller more selective breeder is not... which of those individuals is using an unsuccessful business model?

I think my earlier posts made it pretty clear that I genuinely miss the idea that widespread care and attention would be put into producing the best possible offspring from every pairing. I can't fault the business model of the people who produce and sell massive quantities though, nor can I justify attaching any kind of negative stigma to them just because their production numbers dramatically changed the whole supply and demand equation by inflating the supply side. If they are running a profitable business during a time when a smaller niche breeder is not, then it's the unsuccessful individual who needs to look at their profit margins, pricing scheme, advertising approach and overall capability to profit by doing what they want to do... throwing blame for difficulties or failures at the feet of someone who has managed to look at the market and the industry and be successful isn't really logical.

I see a lot of parallels to the tropical fish industry in the reptile industry, always have... And the thing is that when you breed guppies... even high end brand spanking new super high quality guppies (ohyes, they do exist) with a large price tag attached... you need to understand the overall guppy market and model your business accordingly. It's not appropriate to blame Seagrest farms for producing forty million of your cutting edge morph a year after you introduced it, or the resulting price drop as they appear in every petco and petsmart in the world (at twenty percent off if you have your PALS card no less). Those breeders have to spend their time constantly improving their stock, refining the trait to it's pinnacle or working on the next new thing, they can't sit on their laurels while thousands of people who have never bred a fish before in their life begin reproducing that trait which distinguished the trait as formerly high end.

If the biggest breeders are able to sell every animal they hatched and you aren't... which one of you "overproduced"?

No no... I didn't say I am not selling. I was referring to the leo market in general.

Those breeders have to spend their time constantly improving their stock, refining the trait to it's pinnacle or working on the next new thing, they can't sit on their laurels while thousands of people who have never bred a fish before in their life begin reproducing that trait which distinguished the trait as formerly high end.

Agree 100% and this is why I am able to keep going year after year, and will continue to breed leopard geckos, which are my passion. I really like what you have said about widespread attention and care, and I agree. The supply/demand/overproduction "thing" has happened before. What usually ends up happening is that you will see a large number of aspiring leopard gecko breeders having a "Collection Sale" and getting out of it because they are frustrated. It's not easy to sell leopard geckos unless you have something really unique or unusual, or a brand new morph, and/or are a very well known breeder. I actually tell/warn my customers about this. Sometimes I think I am not the best salesperson but they always buy anyway.

I think if people are dropping $500-1000 on mutts (poma-poo, labra-doodle, etc), their are going to be people out there wanting to put that sort of money into a reptile.

Originally Posted by KelliH

I wish more people would do what you did. The leopard gecko market is WAY super-saturated right now and there are too many being produced. I don't keep up with the ball python market these days, but I do know that it is extremely difficult to sell leopard geckos right now. Part of it is that too many people are breeding them, and also a couple of the "bigger" breeders are WAY overproducing the morphs, therefore causing major price drops. The other part of it is most definitely the economy IMO. The Europeans still buy. I know one other US. breeder that has not had a domestic leo sale since May.

Want's funny, Kelli...Half of what I actually kept were my last Leo purchases I've made...And they were from you!

Originally Posted by KelliH

No no... I didn't say I am not selling. I was referring to the leo market in general.

Sorry about the confusion, most of those "you"s were "you who are reading this" not "You Kelli"s

Agree 100% and this is why I am able to keep going year after year, and will continue to breed leopard geckos, which are my passion. I really like what you have said about widespread attention and care, and I agree. The supply/demand/overproduction "thing" has happened before. What usually ends up happening is that you will see a large number of aspiring leopard gecko breeders having a "Collection Sale" and getting out of it because they are frustrated. It's not easy to sell leopard geckos unless you have something really unique or unusual, or a brand new morph, and/or are a very well known breeder. I actually tell/warn my customers about this. Sometimes I think I am not the best salesperson but they always buy anyway.

I have a bit more of an issue with those people who find themselves unable to move what they produced than the industry trend setters that can dictate prices on more common species/traits.

Both of these groups tend to produce offspring using the first male avaliable first female avaliable, GO! approach that I don't care for as a personal matter... But the giants know what they are doing when they do it. There are buyers lined up, they have run all the numbers and know what kind of efficiency and profit they are getting as a return on their time and investment and, ultimately, the majority of the animals they produce will be sold to people who will not be breeding them or contributing to the overall captive gene pool. It's the approach from the people who end up perpetually unable to move their stock because they didn't comprehend that they would be competing against those wholesale goliaths who often end up using the animals they couldn't sell as future breeding stock, only compounding their problem.

I've notoriously got very limited patience with people who are naive and not actively seeking to change that though. My intolerance for ignorance probably makes me judge (and condemn) those people who blunder into producing junk more harshly than those who simply choose to produce baseline, midgrade stock as a result of an educated and informed business plan.

I gotcha. I am still selling geckos but it has slowed down a lot when compared to a year ago or two years ago. It's mostly the cause of a recurring cycle that happens every few years, but I do think that this time around the economy is playing a bigger role in it than in previous years.

I agree with most of your points, Seamus. Many of the people that decide to start breeding leopard geckos are young and this is probably the first reptile they have ever reproduced. They get caught up in the excitement of it and some spend a good amount of money on their breeding stock. Some quickly get discouraged when they realize that 1.) it is not as easy as they thought it would be to move their offspring and 2.) it is very expensive and very time consuming to properly care for a medium to large collection of geckos.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me as if the reptile market in general has been rather slow as of late. Not just with leos, but everything. I see it as a supply/demand issue as well as an economic one. Those of us that have been doing this seriously for awhile have seen these up and down trends many times, and I have no fear that things won't get better. I just wonder how long it will take!

Originally Posted by hhmoore

Donna,
I agree with parts of your statement...and I think parts of it are naive, at best. The reality is that, yes, you can hold onto the babies...but (with BPs, in particular) you won't get more for them as yearlings. That means you are housing, feeding, and caring for them for free.
Let me give you an example: back in 06, I bought a few spiders at about $1000 each. One of the females turned out to be the oddball that was a sporadic feeder, and won't be ready to breed for another year (or two? ). The other two are plenty big enough to breed, and I plan on doing so this year...much as I would almost prefer to get out of balls entirely (I think everybody knows I'm not a big fan). IF I could sell my pastels and spiders without taking a loss, I would in a heartbeat...but, the reality is that I'm going to have to breed them a few times before I can consider it.

Of course--there's a big difference between buying an animal and then having to turn around and sell it, though, and producing some yourself. I can't think of a single animal in my collection I wouldn't take a loss on if I tried to resell it as a yearling, just due to food costs. It's also true that some co-doms are dropping so fast that the difference in price each year means that a hatchling's cost one year will be a yearling's cost the next--but that isn't true so much with the recessives. Usually you can at least get the market hatchling rate plus the cost of the food it ate, for a yearling. For females, sometimes more.

A hatchling pastel female right now is worth 180 to 250. A breeding sized female is worth 1000. Now, even in 3 years, a breeding-sized pastel is going to be worth more than 250, because that's the basic price for a normal breeder female. The cost of normals hasn't changed that much over time, and that caps off what you would expect to lose on the low end of the market.

Ball pythons remain fantastic pet snakes--in spite of the massive quantities being shipped in out of Africa, there's still a demand for normal balls just as pets. Although I've seen some folks complaining about having problems moving normals, I didn't experience that problem this year myself--in fact, they've moved as fast or faster than my pastels.

When I bought a pair of normals over 10 years ago, they were $25 apiece from a reptile show. And you can still buy normal hatchlings for exactly the same price today. That's what I've been selling mine for.

The stability at the bottom of the market is the reason why I don't see huge problems. The way I see it, if you can eventually make back what you paid for the snake plus some, and it pays for its own food and supplies every year, then it's profitable to breed. "Just normals" will bring in just enough money to care for them over the course of a year. Once they get older and lay larger clutches, then even they start to make a profit.

If you threw your male spiders with a couple of normal females, you would wind up with about $1200 in spiders, and $150 in normals. It might take you a few years at that rate, with prices dropping, but you'll still make back your investment in the spiders--easily. I understand you don't like them, and I think that's what makes the big difference. Spiders still have a few years left before they get down into the price range of normals--pastels probably have 2 years, maybe--because I think it will slow as they actually approach the price of normals. Ironically, when they do, demand for inexpensive spiders is probably going to spike, because unlike pastels, I think they'll do well on the pet market, in pet stores. (A shop owner here informed me that the pet-buying public isn't really willing to pay more for a snake unless it's dramatically different, because they don't know a pastel from a normal anyhow--they just want a nice pet. He had a pastel up in his store for ages, and sold dozens of normals, and couldn't move the pastel. Put pastels down into the same price range, and they'll sell then as pets).

I picked ball pythons for reasons other than pure $$. I really like the snakes, always have--I could have picked boas, but I don't like boas much. lol
I set out to breed snakes, yes, to make money--after having kept reptiles for decades, and having done leos for a year or two, I had the opportunity to invest in it, and I've been completely happy with the decision. It's basically my 'dream job'. Coming in at the ground level, this season is going to be the first one we're really going to see a decent return, and it will be at least one more after that before we're in the black.

I may be naive, but so far my luck has been fantastic. (Example, my biggest female layed 13 eggs, and we hatched 11 pastels and 2 normals from them...lol).

It may take some bad luck to knock the rest of the naivete out of me, but I have been paying attention, and I just don't think things are as bad as some folks are saying they are.

Maybe my expectations are a bit more conservative, though? The numbers we've been crunching look pretty good to me.

Now, I wasn't saying you should stubbornly refuse to lower prices when the bulk of the market drops--that's not it at all. I'm just saying that you shouldn't be selling a snake that sells (not just is priced at, but sells) for $200---for only $100 because you're in a hurry. Nor should you take the lowest prices you see to be where the market's really at currently. People will buy animals in the middle of the price range even when the really cheap ones are available, in my (admittedly limited) experience. They'll do it because they like the look of the animals you have for sale. There are things more important than the price tag.

That doesn't mean you can sell a pastel female for $500 right now, unless you happen to be NERD or Graziani. But if you ask $250 because the animal is exceptional, you will get it--you might have to wait around for a few months, but you'll get it. And hey, even she ate $8 worth of food in that time, you still did pretty good.

I still maintain that with a lot of morphs, the price doesn't drop so fast that a 3 year old is worth less than it was as a hatchling. You may eat the price of feeding it, but on a HIGH end snake, that few hundred dollars is no big deal. Obviously males are a lot less predictable, but that's what I'm seeing, overall.

Getting in kind of late on this one...BUT...here's my opinion.....In regards to pricing, of course the pricing can only be what the market will bear. That being said, in ANY "economic downturn" or whatever you would like to call it, the people who are buying truly high-end, expensive, rare, and unique items will still buy them, regardless of the economy. They remain relatively insulated as far as disposible income is concerned. This remains true for reptiles as well as nearly any other industry ( I was in mid-fi sales for a long time and have now gone to esoteric level stuff...the market is stronger) THe people shopping for 5-50K reptiles will be shopping for 5-50K reptiles regardless of the economy, for whatever motivational reason they possess. The truly injured in this economy are the Mid-grade hobbyist or breeder. The animals that are sitting in the $250-$2500 range are suffering the most decline. The really inexpensive remain strong and the Upper range remains strong. All the fluctuation is always in the middle. But aw %^& it, who wants pie?

Originally Posted by The BoidSmith

This brings me to the topic of "price elasticity". In lower priced reptiles there is very little elasticity. This is particularly true with internet sales where shipping prices puts a fixed and heavy burden on individual snakes (multiple snakes can be shipped in one box thus diluting fixed costs). With higher priced snakes we have greater elasticity. Who can deny that $2,500 for a snake is still a good chunk of money? How many people would like to receive just that as a monthly salary? But there's another factor that comes into play, and it's your perceived value of your merchandise, and the need you may have for the money at a particular point in time. For a snake valued at 40 k there's even greater elasticity, and it wouldn't be unheard of for a person accepting an offer of 20 k.

Best

I haven't worked since June 12, 07 due to ripped up knees from an " on the job injury " that my boss was kind enough to fire me for. On top of that , he increased the company profit margin by NOT having mandatory Workman's Comp Insurance. I haven't received a dime from my boss since and I'm still wrapped up in a Workman's Comp suit against him and know that by the time it hits the court room the company may have already been put under. Even if its still viable I know I likely won't see a dime since the state fines will kill the company by themselves.

With that said , I normally don't talk about it because I don't want anyone thinking I can be lowballed on my prices because I'm desperate. Food is still on the table , roof over my head and I'm in no way so desperate that I gotta dump prices to put a few bucks in my pocket.

From what we produced this past season the Blood Boa ( $5k ) is the last up for sale and I'm just as happy to pull her and keep her. Even when I was working I had child support for 2 kids coming out , taxes , weekly gas money , weekly food money , bill money etc. but I found a way to buy what I wanted.

Elasticity on my prices is there but depending on the animal , the elastic may not stretch as far as it would on a 5 year old pair of undies. The elastic really doesn't stretch that far on the higher quality animals we produce. If its an outstanding animal , the price will reflect that and the amount of leeway as to what I would accept on it will not be as much as it would be on an animal in the B range. If they want it , they get the offer in the area that I will accept or I wait until someone who does comes along. I never kidded myself that I could sell every animal for exact asking price in 3 months or less. I built into my production the means to sit on a higher priced animal until I got either what I wanted for it or I was tired of seeing it and was willing to drop a few bucks on the price.

I'm opting to have a wait and see approach on how the economy pans out. As it stands , I pretty much got what exactly what I wanted out of what was produced this year and have no complaints. If my $5k snake sells , it sells and I make more this coming season and hold back from that. If she don't , I won't be a year behind on the project I want her for.

As for price dumpers selling all their animals ....
I'm seeing the same animals up for sale week after week that have been dramatically slashed in price. I'm net seeing them moving all that fast if at all. I think folks are holding out for a deal but not so good it devalues anything drastically.