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First of all, let's go back to Paul's original response.
"In the initial days of contacting vendors, the question of "exclusives" came up in regard to frozen rodent sales. When asked this question, we answered by saying that we did not want any exclusive arrangements." And "...but Rodent Pro has a stipulation that they only vend at shows where they are the exclusive provider of frozen rodents.""
It was not us who asked for an exclusive. We were the ones promised there would be none. Is Rodent Pro the only frozen dealers in Hamburg or the 2 Ohio shows? No! At the Harmar show, we are able to sell frozen rodents along with two other rodent dealers. There, we make little more than enough to feed our colony ($90 a week to feed regardless if we make any money that week,) and our average $400 per month frozen mice order from Rodent Pro. The Mars show has Vince as the exclusive frozen dealer and is barely worth us going but it's like 5 miles away. Paul knows all of this. I also gave Paul my word that I would be at his show (I'm sure Floyd did as well). Some would simply say "if you only gave Paul Your table money." I realize now what a mistake that was, but with 2 months to go after the Harmar show, I needed all the cash I had to feed the animals. With over 1000 rats in your basement, you better not run out of feed.
So, why all of this whining and "hurt feelings." Well, we met Paul through Brad (who was our 'only' friend who encouraged us to breed rats) and raised rats for Paul on 2 different occasions. The first time, we were just getting started and we trusted our 'best-friend' Brad on what would be a fair price. $1.15 for small-live rats 'every week'. Smalls turned into mediums (a week of extra work & feed) and 'every week' turned into every 2 weeks (more work & feed just to freeze fhem.) It then turned into a 5 week strecth of Paul not showing up, leaving us feeding and caging his 100 rats until they were the size of Rodent Pros mediums. I had to finally end it when we were taking money from my paycheck to feed Pauls animals and we were almost broke. The second time Paul was in some kind of a bind. We were better breeders (given lots of inside tips from 20 year rat breeders), and most of all, we had new (to us) lab racks (that Brad got for us) to breed them in. We wanted badly to be Pauls rat guys. Paul showed faithfully for his rats this time, but the price, again, proved to be a back breaker for a small time (200 breeding females) rat breeder.
Both times almost killed us financially. Both times we had to stop the arrangement. Both times Paul (and Brad) degraded us as though we had no idea what we were talking about or how to breed rats. I'm sorry, but (good rule of thumb, everything before "but" is B. S.) we would never...tell Mr. Brachman how to breed gecko's...tell Jim how to breed Boa's...tell Porkchop how to breed frogs or ever tell Paul how to breed high dollar ball pythons (that we almost lost everything to feed!)
So, in the end, Paul (and in my mind, Brad as well) totally threw us under the bus for Rodent Pro and their 35,000 e-mail list. Given the fact that Rodent Pro is the worlds largest rodent dealer, how many of those 35,000 do you suppose are able to show up in south-western Pa.? So much for helping the little guy that's local to our area! We have heard many customers tell us that they prefer our rats over Rodent Pro or Vince because of the quality and price! To them, we say, from the bottom of our hearts, "Thank You!" We did not buy our frozen rats (like Vince) (it's much easier to buy and sell), we bred them with devotion. We bought our frozen mice from Rodent Pro. Just the other day, Brad said to me (he has since also started breeding rats) "I don't see why you can't get $1.50 for a live small rat." How much then should a live medium rat go for when 'every week' is more like every 2 weeks or more? Just for reference, Rodent Pro normally sells frozen medium rats for $1.39, and on super sale, they sell for $1.19 (without shipping...frozen) At Brads discretion, we were trying to sell Paul 'live' medium rats for $1.15 (our frozen medium rats sold everyday for $1.25.) Whatever happened to the advice of my good friend "They are always worth more alive than they are frozen." Some friends huh? But then again, I know they see it more as "'Who can do more for me right now?"
And to Paul...we did not make the decision to kill our top quality breeder rats and sell all of our reptiles and cages over "hurt feelings," or just "throwing in the towel." I gave you my word, I'd be at your show, I have always kept my word to you in the past. But I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that you didn't keep yours to us, it's not like it's the first time. I am reminded of something my father told me years ago, "you can always judge a mans character by how they treat someone who can do nothing for them." There is a lot of work for 2 people to organize the breeding schedules of 200 females and deal with all of the poop of well over 1,000 live rats (5 large Rubbermaid totes every week!) Do we even have to discuss the smell! It simply wasn't worth a little pocket money. Your great new show would have finally been a huge reward for us, but you went ahead and shit on us again anyway.
We made this decision because we got tired of the two biggest names in this industry, in this area (one of them, I really thought of as a true friend) sticking their males appendages into our backsides!
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