Hey Brian,
Sorry to go on a bit of a long rant here but:
The majority of our products are sold through LFS around the country, the way our pricing is structured on the wholesale side this allows your stores to have the best pricing and we control the pricing of the only 2 other official Biota online vendors (AlgaeBarn and Live Aquaria) so stores will have the best pricing at all times. The stores that order from us most frequently actually get an incredible recurring discount to increase their margins further or sell the products even cheaper. Stores also have first knowledge and access to our brand new species over our online store.
We have incredibly strict guidelines to what stores around the US are even allowed to purchase our products so brick and mortar stores aren't competing with home based businesses with little to no overhead. Many other wholesalers only require a business license to release wholesale pricing which leads to ambitious hobbyists undercutting their LFS. The vast majority of other wholesalers actually sell direct to the public without being transparent about it (see The Coral Reef TN: Sustainable Aquatics, Saltwaterfish. com: Sea Swelling Creatures, and this is the same model that Poma Labs has had from the start just to name a few). In some of the local wholesalers here in Florida I've heard stores we sell to complaining they walk in and see their customers cherry picking out of wholesale tanks, this is unacceptable.
The reason behind us going direct to consumer as well as wholesale is there are tons of customers around the country that have been directly requesting our products for years that either do not have access to our products or their local fish store is not interested in bringing in new vendors (old mentalities of if its not broken why fix it or they can buy a wild caught mandarin at 1/2 the pricing so it doesn't matter if it dies). Every time I've received a request from one of those customers I've called the store they've recommended to give them first right of refusal on the sale before getting back to the customer so it is their decision to make the sale or not.
On top of this many LFS are not yet equipped for all the benefits of captive-bred fish. So we've learned that our mandarins and Coral beauties being thrown in a constant copper treated system does not bode well for their survival rates. Neither does mixing our animals that we strive to keep pristine and healthy with wild-caught specimens that have a higher likelihood of carrying diseases. So stores that have captive-bred systems that mix our fish with ORA, Proaquatix, ect. have a much easier time selling our animals and we understand this is not yet achievable for all LFS.
Our mission has always been a sustainable future for the hobby and to do this we need local fish stores around the US that share our vision. The demand for our product is incredible and we want the LFS industry to continue that relationship with their customers because it's really how all of us starting keeping aquariums (my personal LFS growing up was Absolutely Fish in NJ who we sell to every single month).
Just waiting on things to come into stock.
