Angelfish laying eggs
Had been wanting to get back to this post, and have now found the opportunity. I can see that your LFS’s owner may well be quite profit oriented, going by those prices you mentioned, but then depending upon where his wholesaler is located, part of his prices may reflect the additional shipping charges if he’s getting his fish from the “lower 48.” I’m sure you could easily beat his costs for his fish when considering he wouldn’t need to pay shipping charges for your fish.
The “special breeder license” does sound absurd, if that’s his excuse not to buy from local breeders, but I’m sure once he finds out the price of your fish compared to the cost of his landed, he would be more than happy to buy from you (why wouldn’t he). I can’t really figure why he wouldn’t want to buy from local breeders anyway; here in the Northeast, LFS’s are clammering to buy locally raised fish if they’re quality, and ESPECIALLY Angelfish — which notoriously do not take to shipping kindly (many are usually lost in transit, with many more dying within the week as a result of the stress, which today’s farm-raised Angels do not tolerate).
Is there really something wrong with selling your young Angelfish to your LFS at $5.00 each? (???). Possibly so, if you too are profit- oriented, but you don’t need to be if you want to make money raising and selling Angelfish. Just because he’s selling his young Koi Angelfish at $14.99 doesn’t mean that having to set your price at $5 is going to lose you money. You can’t expect to get near the same price that he is getting, with all his overhead. If you do, you can’t expect to sell very many near that price.
The idea is that your money is being made in the quantities you sell your LFS. Many of the Angelfish pages you see posted on Aqua-Bid may go for much more than $5 each for young Koi Angelfish, but these prices are aimed directly at the hobbyist for the most part, not at the repeated sales you would get at your LFS if you were to establish a working deal to keep selling him young Angelfish as he continued to need more, as a steady customer. Certainly, it would not cost you anywhere’s near $5.00 each to raise each of your Angelfish, when you would be raising a spawn of averaging 200 Angels all at the same time.
Here in the lower 48 States, the retail prices are about 1/2 that of those you posted for your LFS, at the most — usually somewhat lower. I would be thrilled to death if I could ever get anywhere’s near $5 per young Angelfish and would be laughing all the way to the bank. I would probably be dying of this laughter, that’s how gleeful I’d be. Here in the Northeast, I get $2.50 each at most (usually less, maybe $2.25) for the better strains of Angelfish, including Koi, when selling “wholesale” to the LFS’s. The market for Angelfish here has never commanded any higher price for them in the 45+ years I’ve been raising them and yet I’ve always made good money with them as they’re one of the best sellers. Of course, if you want to consider your time as being worth $50 an hour, you could never make money raising fish, but you need to be a bit more accomodating when considering your own time. After all, this is a hobby, and part of that time is your enjoyment in doing this, yet there’s still a good amount of money to be made provided you don’t get too greedy. Ray
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
