Observations Of A Closed Society

after being involved with providing information on the post concerning LA Reptiles, I began thinking how different the business of selling Herps is today as when I was in the business almost 40 years ago.

We operated within a closed society. Everyone basically knew everyone else and we were all making money, had our routes and respected each other. Their were always new operations attempting to get into the field, but because of the heirarchy that was set up back then, importers only sold to wholesalers who sold to jobbers who sold to stores. Individuals were completely out of the loop, and maybe with a few exceptions were not privy to how the animal business worked.

The major difference was the protection that we afforded our customers. You just could not come in or call and buy. Needless to say this was done for many reasons, but the most important one was that the people who dealt with us made money. When they made money, we made money. For us it did not matter whether we were selling snakes or shoelaces, we maintained a tight community of customers that were loyal to us as well as us being loyal to them.

In todays market, everyone seems to know everyones business, and seems to have access into most facilities if your willing to spend the bucks. Their may be some exceptions, but the rule of thumb is "ours doors are opened to anyone who can pay" I found this to be a problem at Strictly Reptiles where they will sell to anyone and yet they are importers who provide no protection to their customer base. The business of selling Reptiles today seems to be the business of everyone. JERRY TRESSER

In todays market, everyone seems to know everyones business, and seems to have access into most facilities if your willing to spend the bucks. Their may be some exceptions, but the rule of thumb is "ours doors are opened to anyone who can pay"

Yes, I agree. But I wouldn't go as far as 40 years (when I started herping). In my opinion this is something more recent and that has developed with the age of communications. The Internet has opened the doors not only to us here in the US, but also opened the eyes of the shippers overseas. Almost anyone can get into a cybercafe and learn how much a certain morph is going for and who to contact to get the most out of it. Times have changed, and will continue to do so. Either we adapt or we join the T. rex!

Regards

what I am referring to is (and you may be right with regard to communications) is that we no longer know whom we are dealing with. I have received emails from 14 year olds who have a business name and are young entrepreneurs. They can hide behind their emails, advertise on forums and conduct business just like any other business.

That could never have happened when I was in the herp business. Nor would we allow it.

Alvaro is correct. The internet has opened a vast market. There is both good an bad in doing business online.

Good for the customer:

1. Wider selection. You can easily and rapidly browse for even the rarest of species/morphs.

2. Speed of shopping. No longer do you have to wait for a herp show or when you are able to make it to a specific breeders location. You can pick up the next animal or supply item today (even if today is at 11pm).

3. Information. There is a flood of information on everything from the simplest husbandry questions to complex genetic guesses.

4. Community. You can now fulfill the human need for belonging by getting into a hobby and joining a website dedicated to that hobby. For those home bound I feel this is probably the greatest gift of the internet.

Bad for the customer:

1. Sharks. It dangerous waters dealing without face to face communication. The anonymous nature of the internet can make scams prolific for all the same reasons that a good business can be prolific (see below).

2. Information. The flood of information can be overwhelming especially considering anyone can put up a website that says "do this with your animal" and there is no verification of actual knowledge behind that statement. Someone once told me you should not give your customers more than 4 choices (ie sizes, colors, etc) as it is too hard for them to make a decision they are comfortable with.


Good for the retailer:

1. Lower overhead ($$). You can stock a warehouse in a low rent part of town lowering your costs tremendously. You can streamline your product display area (a website instead of a retail store) and provide a professional appearance at 1/2 the cost of dressing up a retail location.

2. Lower overhead (personnel). By providing a well built website you can provide a larger amount of product information/knowledge without it being a burden on personal time. Email communication can be streamlined to be more efficient than face to face or telephone communication (especially if you can type fast ).

3. Volume. You can meet your target market on a much large scale because you are not limited to getting them to your physical location to buy.

4. Niche markets (like reptiles) can find their interested market much more successfully.

Bad for the retailer:

1. Competition. Customers can more readily price shop.

2. Volume. Now that your meeting more customers your good things shine more but also your weak areas are more visible. Competition moves very fast online.

3. Harder to build a relationship with your customer. Customers that have a solid relationship with a retailer are more likely to be loyal and also more likely to value shop instead of price shop.

4. Sharks. Retailers can be scammed as well as customers. Professional scammers are now able to target multiple companies without leaving their house.

On a whole it has blurred the old-style heirarchy because customers can source items much more readily. This is encouraged by the fact that since you can now streamline your customer service issues it is more feasible for wholesalers to go directly to the public (one of the biggest reasons manufacturers would put a layer of distributors between them and the public is the fact that customer service requests (service, product information, order volume etc) would slow down the system they had created. With automation (website order intergration, computers eliminating the double work of data entry, more refined managerial skills) this customer service volume is more readily absorable by the manufacturing firm without slowing down the system.

This is a very similiar situation to the late 40's/early 50's when consumers where making good money (economic recovery after the Depression) and goods were cheaply being manufactured (due to the huge automation revolution in dealing with WWII). No one cared about the quality of products only that they were being produced cheaply (easy to replace). Then in the 70's people started to look at value over price alone. While you still had to be price competitive the consumer was demanding quality as well.

With the start of the internet the fact that you could find anything for almost nothing and have it shipped to your door was perfect. This led to the ebay type sites that moved a ton of volume of low priced low customer service items. Now we are starting to see the beginnings of people demanding quality (customer service in this case) on top of the lower pricing and ease of shopping. No longer is a cold impersonal internet transaction the way to survive.

Oh, yea, most of this is just my opinion and the basis for our economic experiment (which better work cause the people at the house like food on the table ).

I have received emails from 14 year olds who have a business name and are young entrepreneurs. They can hide behind their emails, advertise on forums and conduct business just like any other business.

This will become harder to do as business relationships are demanded by the customers. No longer will they be happy with getting a generic item from a retailer but looking for the customer service to go with it.

There is a basic need by humans for communication and a sense of community. As more and more demands are made upon our time fulfillment of that need is being found online (this is shown by the success of such sites as Fauna and KS).

It is financially rewarding for the merchant to fulcilitate (sp?) because it is much cheaper to sell to a customer that has already purchased from you than it is to locate a new customer.

Not saying that it's good, bad than how business was conducted previously. It's just the playing field that we have to deal with now.

to me, (and Iam glad that its not), I would make this business a restricted one. We certainly never had the availability of SPEED and to reach world wide avenues in minutes if not seconds, when we were in business. I am referring specifically to herps. But we did have a general goal that we all understood and rules for conducting ourselves and maintaining some dignity in the herp business. That does not exist today.

What you are referring to cannot be argued because you are correct, but as it stands this business today is a mess with no clear direction in sight. I hate going backwards in time, but things were so much simpilar, and the road was clear and unobstructed by the govt and all of these pet advocate groups. Reptiles and Amphibians played such a minimal role in the animal heirarchy that people forgot they even existed. Today people are spending hours debating about how to ship a Uromastics lizards. Its ridiculous.

Jerry,

Spoken just like every other business man from every other period of time that had dramatic change, and probably spoken by me in X number of years as the business climate changes once again. LOL

The point I was trying to get across is that consumer demands are changing and that will raise the standards again on quality (both animal quality and business ethic/standards quality) in the near future.

Good points and I agree. Another subject....From an importers side.. with the advent of better communication... dealers in other countries are seeing the prices the U.S. dealers get for their specimens and have steadily gone up on their prices. However, quality is the same and it's hard to get them to understand how much care has to go into an "import" before it can be sold to a "end consumer".(customer) In the "old days" it was nearly unheard of for a dealer to treat specimens for parasites or hand pick/sex specimens. I'm sure there were a VERY few exceptions. However, I remember the quality of what I used to get. At least there seems to be a trend for a "better product" so to speak. I'm sure it's due to both a better understanding of their needs and the increased awareness from the general "buying community". There again are still exceptions.

ourselves with bettering quality for the end consumer. As a matter of fact, we never even thought of the end consumer! That was because they were not part of our "chain" within the business.
Secondly, the availability of animals at least in our minds "were an endless stream of herps" never to end!
If we did not receive the variety we were expecting we assumed it was because the shipper did not pay the collectors. Our mind set had no room for thinking that maybe we were de-populating the enviornment and that eventually their would be no more animals. The bottom line is that the animal business was a commodity business that demanded quick movement, just as any other perishable operation. Get the merchandise in on Monday, and move them out on Tuesday. Presell and minimize the loss. That was the basic principle of the import business.

We had built into that philosophy a very interesting method for conducting business which I will get into if anyone is interested. JERRY

One thing, I agree with Ray. Most of my suppliers in Africa see my ads on KS and know how much I sell animals for on there. They have tried raising their prices as to get a bigger chunk of the pie. But most of them have realized that when they raise their prices I don't order as much. I am lucky that most of my suppliers listened to me in the beginning of our relationship and learned how to take better care of the animals before being shipped to me. (there are still those that don't care and just want the money). Most of my suppliers if they don't have the ability to house and care for the animals for any long periods of time only collect the animals within 3 days prior to the shipment. Because of this I have not been able to get all the animals I order but the animals are ensured that they have not been sitting around for weeks and not being cared for. I have one supplier that I have not ordered from in a long time because he has seen that I sell a species of Chameleon that I order from him posted for sale on KS for $200 per pair. Well he has raised his prices on these animals to $50ea before importation. He just does not realize the cost involved with importing the animals and the cost that go into caring, treating, and acclimating those animals before I can sell them at those price. One good thing about the Internet and my exporters in Africa is I am able to communicate with them via e-mail and save myself alot of money on international calls.