Major Decision. Get out or hang on?

[AlexStinson]

I know the store I work in is running quite slow right now, but the last week or two have picked up. But compared to last year sales are horrible.

 

[AquaWorldPSC]

We are picking up on the weekends, but during the weekdays we are doing the usual. I know 4 Saturdays ago we did around $10,000. Once everyone is done spending money on their vacations and being home more they gain back interest in the hobby.

 

[EliteReefs]

if your talking about a brick and mortar store thats one things and the fish world is VERy tuff to break into with a store front and make any real money at it. I will never do a store front. to much over head to many problem that can arrise all that bring coral prices up higher then most people are willing to pay

online sales though thats a different story. i think it is all about finding a business model that works well for you. for instance my thing is price. i tell every vendor i run across the same exact thing. i used to sell corals for as much as i could. we sold a good amount and made a ton of profit on every sale. then i thought to myself. why not just make a very small amount of money per sale but make ALOT more sales. Thats when i dropped my price to what it is now. I dont make much at all per sale but i now have 5 times the amount of customers. we average 40-50 sales per week at this point and it is only growing. we have been turing away customers every week.

why is it growing? price. people have less money and we cost less money. simple as that. i still make a profit but i have to work alot harder for it. i have to pack alot more orders then i used to to make the same money but since i have so many more orders then i used to i end up with more then ever. if every vendor would drop pricing to make as little as possible per sale we would all have alot more customers. and then even more people would get into the hobby because it becomes more affordable which creats even more customers. see the trend.

there are plenty of customers to go around for all of us. we need to start banding together to help each other out in any way we can.

 

[AquaWorldPSC]

Elite Reef's that is my philosophy too! In our store we used to sell as much as we can get for it until i realized the same thing sell more at a smaller price so the stuff doesn't sit around and i can bring in new orders more often. I am a online vendor also we do a lot of eBay too! But we only specialize on rare corals online.