Hi Jon. Just a little about me and my place. We are just a little pet store in Las Vegas, but we have lots and lots of animals. We specialize in herps, as this is my background. I have a masters in zoology from KU, and have worked in several zoos most of my life. I started with elephant poop shoveling, and worked my way to my goal of herps. We are a retail store. We don' wholesale, nor do we have animals in stock in huge numbers. I try to stock a little of everything, rather then 500 of one thing. It's more fun for me that way. We breed most of the colubrids we sell, along with several species of turtles, tortoise, and some lizards. I suck at breeding amphibians, but I plan on getting better at it down the road, when I have more time. We pride ourselves on the quality and care of the animals we keep. Our cages are clean, and our stock is well fed and maintained. Since this is my sole source of income, and my hobby also, well, this is all I do. I work in the store all day, and maintain a collection of about 1,200 herps at home at night and on my one day I take off. I don't sleep a lot lol, especially this time of year with breeding season in full swing. As I said, our animals are second to none. I won't say we are the best, but we are up there. Our prices are a bit more erratic. Since we are retail, some of our prices just suck when compared to wholesalers or home breeders that produce animals out of thier home. Being a real storefront, we have a huge overhead in rent, power, garbage, etc etc. We just can't compete with someone who's breeding snakes out of their parents basement or garage. However, you will also find that most of our prices are very good, especially for the animals we produce ourselves. We also try to find herps that are very hard to get. This being my hobby, I just love new stuff, even if I only get to keep it for a few days. I can make money doing many things, but I really love my job. Getting herps that I've never had before is a big thrill, and it's hard to keep myself from taking some of them home to keep for myself. I have a staff of 6, and I pay them as much as I can to keep the good help. Just to get an inside into our training, once we hire someone new, they are not even allowed to talk to a customer for about 2 years. They work, clean cages, learn the husbandry of the large and varied collection, and they listen. Only after the long period are they allowed to even attempt to answer questions or help customers. Then they are closely supervised to make sure the information is correct. The internet sales are a bit different of course, and there are only 3 of us that qualify to help internet customers. I answer each and every email personaly everyday, which averages about 65 emails each day. Did I mention I don't sleep much? lol. Usually it's Tiffany or Kim that actually talk to people on the phone, since no one can actually read my hand writing. We have gotten very good at shipping, guarantee live delivery, and pack things in a very save and secure manner. You will never get a box from us that is not insulated or unmarked as to what's in the box (unless you ask us to of course). Our average shipping costs are about $35,000 a year.
So anyway, that's pretty much the information about us. We have about 35 zoo accounts that we send stock to on a regular basis, most of them repeat clients. We also buy directly from some of the larger zoos in the country. Most of these require an inspection of our place before they will deal with us, and we've never had one place not do business with us once they have inspected us. If you have any other questions about us, please feel free to email me directly, or just give us a call. I don't want this post to become a commercial for Exotic Pets, since this is not what Rich had in mind when he started Fauna.
To get to your main question (finally), it's kinda complicated. We average about 400 ads on any given day. We are a bit low now, because of our move to our new store location. Anyway, I add and delete ads everyday, tryint to keep our listing on kingsnake.com as current as possible. Our website sucks, but I'm going to work on that when I have more time. It takes a lot of time to take care of all my ads on kingnake. I'd like to put my ads on more sites, but I just don't have the time to maintain them. I had to pick which site gave me the most bang for my buck and time, and kingsnake was the logical site, since they get more hits then any other herp site. I'd love to put my ads here as well. I have known Rich for many years, and have a great respect for him and what he's done here. Plus he's just a nice guy. The biggest problem with advertisng here is the speed at which I get on this site. Just as an example, just to read your post, and respond (not counting the typing now) to it has taken me almost 5 or so minutes just for the site to come up on my computer. When I submit this post, it's going to take another 5 minutes for it to show it to me. To read all the pages an this thread alone would take me close to 45 minutes, or even more. Sometimes I just get time outed, and have to start again. I used to read the BOI every singe day, but now, with the lag time, I rarely even sign onto the site anymore. If I had 400 or so ads posted on Fauna, and tried to update or look at all of them to make sure they were still current and valid, it would more then likely take me 5 hours or so to do it. I just don't have the time. I don't have this lag time problem on anyplace but Fauna, and I can't explain why it just happened one day. For years it was quick and easy, and now it is slow and just painful. I love this site, and always have. I just can't take the time needed, as I do have to sleep sometime.
I'd like to thank each and every person who has had such nice things to say about my service and my business. Like I said, I try very hard to take care of everyone the best I can. I will only send out animals that I would own myself. I'm picky that way. I learn something new every single day, whether it's about a herp or mammal (we sell wallabies, flying squirrells, and all sorts of other exotic mammals also), or just a way to help our customers better. Our stuff is well maintained, healthy, and feeding (if it don't eat, it's not worth a dime), and we get better at this everyday too. By the way, we also have a huge selection of books, most likely the largest selection of herp books in any retail store anywhere.
Well, that's it for now. If it were me, I'd have skipped most of this post and went right to the bottom. You won't hurt my feelings at all if you do the same lol. Seamus, thanks for the kind works also, nice of you as usual. To the rest of you, once again, thanks very much. If you need anything, just shoot me an email. I promise to answer asap.
