STEEL CITY REPTILE EXPO! September 12, 2009!

OOps forgot.

Up to 43 vendors.

Your a little cutie, just like your frogs!

as far as the "exclusives" go, Paul promised me there would be none. That is until the almighty Rodent Pro got involved, now the only frozen rodent deelers will be Rodent Pro and Vince Clemens (he gave Paul his money before Rodent Pro got involved).

Hey Deb, whats up! Just talked to Vince yesterday while pickin up my mealworms , he said it did'nt matter to him, he has free table space and he's close to home . I'm sure he will still make sales to his regulars.

I never really did understand the point of "exclusives"

Can some one fill me in?

Exclusives are for the people that are afraid of alittle competition. There shouldn't be any exclusives. How many snake vendors are there? How many turtle & lizard vendors? We weren't afraid of the competition of the other rodent dealers. We were breeders & our prices were lower than even Rodent Pros were. Are they the only vendors that have any expenses going to any shows? All we've heard is a bunch of lies.

I wanted to take a moment to address the issue of "exclusive" vendors at our shows.

When Ben & I decided to do a show and created our business plan, we discussed that we wanted to have a show free of exclusive vendors of a specific item.

We then solicited vendors face to face and asked them to consider vending at our show. 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.

After a short time of promoting the show, we were approached by Casey of Rodent Pro. Casey wanted to vend at our show but Rodent Pro has a stipulation that they only vend at shows where they are the exclusive provider of frozen rodents.

At this time, we told Casey that another vendor, Vince Clemens, had already submitted his application and table fee. We told Casey that Vince would be attending this show no matter what Ben & I decided about exclusives and that I would get back to him.

Ben & I struggled with this decision for several days. On one hand, we had told people that we weren't having exclusive arrangements. On the other hand, Rodent Pro brings a large customer following with them. Rodent Pro had also agreed to email their contact list (over 35,000 people) to inform them of their appearance at our show if we would let them attend as exclusives.

At that time, we only had solid commitments from Vince Clemens and Rodent Pro. At that time, we decided to do what was best for the show. We made a business decision to allow Rodent Pro to be exclusive. Any good business plan has to be constantly revised.

Inevitably there will be some personal feelings hurt, even though this was purely a business decision.

When Deb's husband John called me on the phone, I explained all of this to him. I'm very sorry for hurting your feelings with this decision.

Sincerely
Paul Wyble
Ben Corcetti
Steel City Reptile Expo Ltd.

Originally Posted by Home-Grown

Exclusives are for the people that are afraid of alittle competition. There shouldn't be any exclusives. How many snake vendors are there?

Have to aggree with you on that one deb. I dont use rodent pro due to there prices are way to high. Deb and Vince have good prices and i deal with both of them all the time.

Originally Posted by retic88

Have to aggree with you on that one deb. I dont use rodent pro due to there prices are way to high. Deb and Vince have good prices and i deal with both of them all the time.

I'm not impressed with RodentPros quality at ALL. I recently gave away about a hundred of their rats because my snakes turned up their noses at them. Thin, dirty - yuck. Shame there won't be any competition for pricing, that's the reason a lot of us go to the shows.

That said, I will still be there. Just not buying any rodents. Paul has still put together an awesome list of vendors otherwise.

Is there going to end up being other exclusives?