Organizing group buys and doing home retail

Cirrus

Cirrus

Arowana blogger
As noted in the open forums, I provided Bcarlos with a contact for well priced exotic plecos. There is a good business opportunity here for people to play Canada wide in every major city where there is demand for plecos. Let me know if you are interested.

Assuming Brandon can pull this order off, this is a perfect example of how various "inside" members of this forum can make use of my accumulated contacts to make some money through home based retail/wholesale to pay off hobby costs. In return I will ask for some form of sponsorship fee to pay off all my associated costs of maintaining my websites. Also, keep in mind that I spent $10,000's and many months to get these first hand fish wholesale contacts.

I am thinking it would be easiest to just give you guys the contacts and have you deal direct with the farms without involving me at all. Of course, I can help out with advice, and even with logistics and trans-shipping, but preferably on an ad hoc basis; I don't want this to be a real "job".

For a variety of reasons, I think Belowwater will make sense as the main supplier for wild caught fish. I am finalizing deals with two other major wholesalers to provide fish for home based retailers. One player is global, the other national.

I have all sorts of ideas.

The question I have is, who wants to join me? :)
 
I think this is a great deal for Theo to offer up his contacts for us to use ....a small fee to keep the site is nothing if we end up picking up our dream fish and then some with those contacts. As in the L46's...where are you going to be able to pick up these quality pleco's for under $100!...$85 to be exact each...Great opportunity for folks who have some room, tanks and knowledge to care for these stocks during transition if any.

As for Below water, I've dealt with Oliver and he is for such a expert in his field very down to earth and have the time to talk to you!....Looking forward to continuing to deal with Oliver in the future.

In addition, this is exciting to see what else Theo has in mind in bringing in a couple other suppliers!.

Depending on how quick I get my new tank stocked...I might even jump on the L46 deal and pick up a few!....

Jump on guys! If I had room for another tank or two I'd be jumping on ....when you get these opportunities to save and make your money back ....why the heck not!....
 
Sounds interesting! I will have to think about whether I can devote the time to them as I just bought a house to renovate/rent.
 
Congrats Albert :)

I've brought in a few orders now from various suppliers for myself and others. I wouldn't mind giving it a crack on a larger scale once all the details are hammered out.
 
count me in Theo since we've been doing this already...
more contacts = more fish and that would lead to $ paying off the hobby!
 
It's a pretty powerful model, Theo, and I'm proud to be a part of it. We've got so many knowledgable people on this site; combined with these exclusive contacts, we're on par to make Dragon Fish a real player in North America for those hard to find fish.
 
The real trick in my opinion will be for us to combine (aggregate) the demand for fish across our respective markets, and then be able to approach Oliver with larger orders. Larger orders (even if distributed in a piece meal fashion - i.e. some fish for GTA, some for Saskatoon, some for wherever, etc.) means greater discount. Greater discounts mean more competitive retail prices and more sales. And so it goes.

The trick will be to find our respective roles and specializations within the overall arowanaclub/dragonfish group buy organization.

Theo
 
Theo I would have to be counted out on this one. Maybe in the future once i free up some times. I've been working here in Montreal and oversea manufacturing and looking to distribute to greenhouse for north america and UK.
I had to put aside my hobbies for the last while now. Even my dream ray pond in the family room.
So I wish you guys the best of luck
 
No problem Nathan, you are welcome to watch and enjoy the show. :) And of course any time you need anything or if you want in somehow, just let me/us know.

For everyone else, here is more to consider. Should people take on specialist roles within the wholesale/retail structure in the group? Should people essentially take on "ownership" of any give set of contacts?

For example, I have an understandng with Maju and Nico that I basically represent them in Canada. I used to do that with Kan at Panda too. Thus, on occasion they forward me emails from people in Canada and have me close the deals.

I now have introduced Brandon to someone with whom he may be able to develop a similar kind of exclusive relationship. The nice thing about this is that it prevents fragmentation of orders. For example, say there were two or three people in Canada who all wanted to deal direct with the pleco guy. This would divide the market and lead to overall lower retail sales prices (potentially) or make it hard to get the larger sales of 100+ fish needed to get the volume discounts.

Thus, it really does make sense for each of us involved in this organization to become specialists "in charge" of dealing with certain fish or a certain farm/dealer. At the same time, within the closed section of this forum, we all cooperate and are part of an inner cirlce. In short, we need each other. Brandon will need to offer you guys plecos at a price that allows you to profit for resale. This is key in my opinion.

In the end, Brandon gets some kind of 10-20% reimbursement wholesaling to us all, while doing much better returns on retailing generally. If everyone sets their local prices according to Brandon's official set price, then they make a good profit too.

Some generic fish are not worth the hassle of setting up specific accounts. I am thinking here of the Thai fish catalogue for example. I think that catalogue could just be "common property" amongst us all?

Ultimately, Oliver Lucanus is the sleeping giant here....

How do we aggregate sales from him to get the biggest discounts, how do we share him for use as a supplier - especially when he would not offer exclusivity I think?
 
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I like the model. I do have some concerns, in regards to transparency, and fair pricing/ pricing standards, however I want to work everything out in my head before I comment on these things.

As far as Oliver goes. It's not fair to ask for someone to exclusively work with Oliver. As many of us have been working with him for years. Maybe we could figure out if he could give us some form of a discount regardless to what we order from him, and then work out bigger discounts if we all collaborate and do larger orders of specific items. Oliver will be a great way for us to get specific rare fish like the few oddballs he's got me lately as well as getting great deals on large quantities of harder to find fish.

It's just an idea.

Anyways I think this is a great idea. Just one question, how do we decide who deals with what contacts or types of fish.

Theo maybe you could throw together an idea of how we could split up contacts or types of fish.

Thanks,

Justin Morash
 
Excellent points raised Justin, keep them coming.

I think of Oliver as a community resource, everyone is always free to deal with him on their own; however, as long as our orders are separated into single or regional orders, we don't get full volume discounts.

Take Cichla sp. for example. If we organized a spring group buy amongst ourselves to take delivery of say 200 WC's, we would (I think) get a better price than if four of us placed orders for 50 fish. By uniting our buying power we should be able to get a better price.

How would people feel about bringing Oliver into this private forum?

If he does join this forum, we may reach a stage where for confidentiality reasons we need to set up one more additional password forum.

I agree on the need for transparency of pricing, but don't forget to quantify risk. Specifically, who is putting up the money, who is processing the order, taking delivery of the fish, acclimatizing them, etc. I know the standard, industry wide mark up for trans-shipped fish is 20%. The mark up is higher when acclimatization is done, %50 -100 depending on species.

Lots to think about, I am offline for remainder of the day.

Theo
 
Cirrus said:
No problem Nathan, you are welcome to watch and enjoy the show. :) And of course any time you need anything or if you want in somehow, just let me/us know.

For everyone else, here is more to consider. Should people take on specialist roles within the wholesale/retail structure in the group? Should people essentially take on "ownership" of any give set of contacts?

For example, I have an understandng with Maju and Nico that I basically represent them in Canada. I used to do that with Kan at Panda too. Thus, on occasion they forward me emails from people in Canada and have me close the deals.

I now have introduced Brandon to someone with whom he may be able to develop a similar kind of exclusive relationship. The nice thing about this is that it prevents fragmentation of orders. For example, say there were two or three people in Canada who all wanted to deal direct with the pleco guy. This would divide the market and lead to overall lower retail sales prices (potentially) or make it hard to get the larger sales of 100+ fish needed to get the volume discounts.

Thus, it really does make sense for each of us involved in this organization to become specialists "in charge" of dealing with certain fish or a certain farm/dealer. At the same time, within the closed section of this forum, we all cooperate and are part of an inner cirlce. In short, we need each other. Brandon will need to offer you guys plecos at a price that allows you to profit for resale. This is key in my opinion.

In the end, Brandon gets some kind of 10-20% reimbursement wholesaling to us all, while doing much better returns on retailing generally. If everyone sets their local prices according to Brandon's official set price, then they make a good profit too.

Some generic fish are not worth the hassle of setting up specific accounts. I am thinking here of the Thai fish catalogue for example. I think that catalogue could just be "common property" amongst us all?

Ultimately, Oliver Lucanus is the sleeping giant here....

How do we aggregate sales from him to get the biggest discounts, how do we share him for use as a supplier - especially when he would not offer exclusivity I think?
Click to expand...


lots of good points so far from everyone. this has been a good read.

i myself am quite busy with my everyday job/life but when need be, will help out with group buys.
 
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