Hello fellow morph marketers. I felt the overwhelming need to express my disappointment in big retailers of inverts. Let me preface this. I am a hobbyist tarantula and reptile breeder. I have been reaching out to large retailers of tarantulas due to my collection producing more than what I can sell locally, hoping to sell large quantities of slings cheaply. I offered what I thought was a VERY modest price for species I have seen sold for upwards of 40-70$. When I say modest price, I mean I left room for a 300-400% markup on the slings, which sounds fair, right? Well, the responses I got were EXTREMELY discouraging. Apparently, these large vendors are importing these spiders for 3$-4$ a piece. 3$-4$!!! That being said, how is anybody supposed to breed tarantulas in the US if the total price of the whole sack doesn’t even cover crickets to feed the parents, electric, housing, etc.? I was shocked. I imagine what has happened is comparable to what happens to jobs in the US. They move overseas because labor and resources are cheap. Makes sense from a business stand point but where’s the support for your fellow breeders and enthusiasts who simply share a love for these creatures? All I want is to help get these creatures into the homes of other people that appreciate them, and at an affordable price, but these retailers get a spider for 3$ sell it for 70$ And refuse to buy from us breeders because they might make 65$ instead of 67$ and But then what happens to the little guy? They all will disappear and all that will be left will be the wal marts of breeding. I am disappointed large retailers. All of you started the same way. Small. The way to give back to the spider community is to support local breeders. Then maybe there would be more of us and retailers could buy spiders in the United States for prices they’re looking for instead of funding who knows what overseas. I never realized people could be so cut throat and ignorant about breeding and purchasing spiders. Support your local hobbyist breeders my friends, before the wal marts wipe us all away!
This is the nature of all species for which there is a large import trade, it is not unique to inverts. Why do you not see CBB savanna monitors? Why do you not see CBB iguanas? It is not the importer’s fault either, they are driven by the buyers. Whether or not they admit it, a large portion of the people in this hobby will always go for the cheaper price. You see it all the time. CBB chondro for $800 on one table versus WC for $300 on the next table over? By the end of the show, that $800 chondro will still be siting there. Carpet python with impeccable lineage info for $450 from a well respected breeder versus mutt carpet from a flipper for $350? People line up for the mutts
You cannot blame the importers for selling what the people are buying, even when presented with the option to buy higher quality
Very true, again from a business stand point I agree it’s a smart move. It just spells disaster for anyone doing this as a hobby, which is unfortunate! It just goes to show you how much more people think about making a buck now and not the future of any of this.
I don’t know who you’ve reached out to, but it might be worth going to independent specialty shops that might not buy a 100lot of any one species, but would get a 10 lot of each species you produce. It also might be worth attending reptile shows a little farther afield than you’ve travelled previously. I don’t know what species you work with, but any recently listed on cites might be a higher price point because of the extra cost associated with the paperwork involved in exporting.
I can see the same thing in scorpions, really cheap wild caught pricing and because invert imports are not regulated you get a lot of species taken from the wild and imported.
With wild caught you don’t know the age, the lineage, the health, whether it has parasites, been exposed to toxins etc.
In the case of most arachnids they have molt stages that vary from species to species and once in their final molted body there is no telling how long they have been in this phase or for how much longer it will live. Scorpions life spans vary from species to species and environmental factors can impact longevity.
Working in retail for a number of years one common denominator was constant, people rarely cared about quality (though they said they wanted the best) and 95% would always say “don’t you have something cheaper?”
I could buy my scorpions really cheap from places like Indonesia, but for me i don’t like supporting poaching/or wild caught animals. Even though there are very few regulations regarding importation and sales of invertebrates as a whole, secondly besides the above mentioned reasons, i don’t want to support possible criminal or terrorist enterprises.
There are many inverts that i would be so tempted to buy that aren’t in US markets for breeding purposes such as a Sydney Funnel Web, but i don’t wish tobe part of some possible criminal enterprise.
you need to buy a large wholesale order at those prices to turn a decent profit.
1000 pieces MINIMUM. then you go and flip that $4 per specimen to a mere $5 per specimen.
That’s an easy profit of 1k if you do it right.