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Agree. I have seen the shipments of rock wholesellers get in. The question is- are they breaking up a zoa rock, naming them, and selling them or breaking them up and selling them as “Jason Fox Gobstoppers” or some well known coral.Most "proven" sellers do not maintain mother colonies of everything they sell. That just isn't feasible. They get new corals in all the time and pick and choose which ones they want to grow out long term and which to chop up and sell quickly.
of course. Buy low, sell high. Typically we see wholesale in this hobby. I buy 10 Scoly’s in bulk at $50/piece and sell them for $100/piece. No issues. I don’t want to buy, house, or travel with 10 scolys so I’m happy to pay someone else to.If the smaller vendor sold the coral at the asking price, they made a sale at their desired price and should be happy. If another bigger vendor can take that same piece and sell it for more money, well that's OK too. It's a free market. Often when you start a new business and have built up no customer base you sell things at a discount or perhaps even a loss to drum up business. As sales increase, you can increase the price to balance out supply/demand and ensure profit.
My 2 cents...i actually see nothing wrong with this behavior. As OP wrote: The market pays what it can but I have a firm belief that scalping via arbitrage shouldn't be allowed.
It would appear OP knows about free market theory but doesnt want it to work effectively. If seller A sells it for too little to the point that Seller B can buy from Seller A and Sell it to Seller C for a mark up..that is definitionally free market theory surrounding inefficient markets. In fact, these intermediaries are a big reason that many of us can get products. In our hobby, distriubtors are a big part of our equation and they are bringing products to those that want and liquidity to the original seller in an inefficient market.
Dont get me wrong...its the same as having a garage sale just to have the pawn shops and ebay sellers haggle you down over your stuff and it annoys me...but it doesnt mean it is wrong. As a seller, you make the decision if you are willing to sell at a price. As a buyer, you make the decision if you are willing to buy at a price. The mechanism outside of your decision for anything other than a definite need (food, energy, etc) is a moot point.
This right here.. this is commonplace before the doors even open to the public.Yeah ... this is not new. There are a lot of trades/deals/sales that go on behind the scene at every show before most hobbyist even enter.
Fully agreed.My 2 cents...i actually see nothing wrong with this behavior. As OP wrote: The market pays what it can but I have a firm belief that scalping via arbitrage shouldn't be allowed.
It would appear OP knows about free market theory but doesnt want it to work effectively. If seller A sells it for too little to the point that Seller B can buy from Seller A and Sell it to Seller C for a mark up..that is definitionally free market theory surrounding inefficient markets. In fact, these intermediaries are a big reason that many of us can get products. In our hobby, distriubtors are a big part of our equation and they are bringing products to those that want and liquidity to the original seller in an inefficient market.
Dont get me wrong...its the same as having a garage sale just to have the pawn shops and ebay sellers haggle you down over your stuff and it annoys me...but it doesnt mean it is wrong. As a seller, you make the decision if you are willing to sell at a price. As a buyer, you make the decision if you are willing to buy at a price. The mechanism outside of your decision for anything other than a definite need (food, energy, etc) is a moot point.
But how would you know that they were making it up?I always ask about coral (where’d it come from, how long have you had it, lights, parameters, etc).
It may be “technically” ok to just make all that up but I imagine most of us wouldn’t buy from that individual. I certainly wouldn’t.
Named them. BSA Corals.Could you just name the other vendors who didn't do this?
I think the implications are that vendors are offering a level of provenance and hence tank stability/frag quality based on brand name.You know there's another way to look at this, right?
As long as the vendor in question isn't trying to haggle down the LFS, the LFS is still generating sales. Leveraging a brand while at the same time helping the booth opposite isn't exactly a terrible thing. I suppose it would depend on the markup to see just how much it hurts the customer in the end, but to be fair, as long as you're not buying from the greedy big name, who actually is losing?
My 2 cents...i actually see nothing wrong with this behavior. As OP wrote: The market pays what it can but I have a firm belief that scalping via arbitrage shouldn't be allowed.
It would appear OP knows about free market theory but doesnt want it to work effectively. If seller A sells it for too little to the point that Seller B can buy from Seller A and Sell it to Seller C for a mark up..that is definitionally free market theory surrounding inefficient markets. In fact, these intermediaries are a big reason that many of us can get products. In our hobby, distriubtors are a big part of our equation and they are bringing products to those that want and liquidity to the original seller in an inefficient market.
Dont get me wrong...its the same as having a garage sale just to have the pawn shops and ebay sellers haggle you down over your stuff and it annoys me...but it doesnt mean it is wrong. As a seller, you make the decision if you are willing to sell at a price. As a buyer, you make the decision if you are willing to buy at a price. The mechanism outside of your decision for anything other than a definite need (food, energy, etc) is a moot point.
Congradulations! Perhaps the best post ever on R2R right there. You just did what our public education system won't do. Teach free market capitalism, and the responsability of the end consumer.
I love the way people in the hobby always try to blame the vendor, when in fact the real cause of the problem is the buyers bad behavior. Until we stop buying corals just because their names makes us feel better about how much we spend, this will only continue to get worse.
I agree, but there's a abuse of your brand when you are not treating the corals at shows like the rest of your brand supposedly gets treated and ultimately while everyone does it, showing up with 2/3 10g tanks to reefstock as BSA is shady. I didn't say it's not genius, it is genius, but don't do it when you have some crazy brand behind you that people pay good money for and trust. This is how you destroy people's trust in your brand and what you do behind closed doors is your own business, but lying to customers about provenance or making things up for a flip and putting your brand on the table is a huge disservice to customer trust and it's already a struggle to get people to trust vendors as is.Buying something at a discount and selling it for a profit is how business works.
BINGOThere's no such thing as a "designer" coral. There's no all knowing guru out there cross breeding to create a new species. It just doesn't work that way. If you think otherwise I'll sell you everything I own at designer prices. I can name it anything you like just bring your money.
There are a couple, and it can work that way, let's just say that it's not as quick and easy.There's no such thing as a "designer" coral. There's no all knowing guru out there cross breeding to create a new species. It just doesn't work that way. If you think otherwise I'll sell you everything I own at designer prices. I can name it anything you like just bring your money.
You can all say what you want about free market and all that to make yourselves feel better. At the end of the day the behavior described is extremely greasy and no one should do business with these people. They should be shunned from the hobby. There are a lot of people exploiting the hobby right now and treating it like a gold rush. The people here defending the vendor in the name of the “free market” won’t be so enthusiastic when they’re eventually priced out of the hobby. Which will happen.
I don’t give a rats you know what about free market. Anyone selling a single Zoa for 300 dollars should be beaten relentlessly out behind the dumpster. I don’t care what it looks like or is called.
A lot of the people doing this greasy stuff and having these crazy names and outrageous prices do have something in common. You figure it out though
It wwcI love that everyone loves collecting corals, but I saw something at Reefstock that really, really bothered me. I specific high end coral vendor was buying stuff off of other vendors in order to fleece the crowds by making up names and abusing their reputation as a high end seller in order to make money and proportedly sell things as "rare" or "unique" just because you have a really reputable brand behind you.
This is not okay and I hope you know who you are if you are reading this.
I will not be purchasing from you again and upon asking a local LFS this is not the first year they have done this so I can only believe this behavior is happening at other shows as well.
For the record, it was not Top Shelf Aquatics. They had a good selection and I got some more dragon tongue. It WAS
another nationally recognized brand.
Buying a coral at a show is one thing, but to use your reputation and good brand name to screw over hobbyists is another. I'm pretty upset about it but I just won't ever give them my money.
Not only that but they had a habit of trying to tell customers including myself, "awwww man there's some rare stuff in there" only for me to see them run up to a booth I was at later on and quickly tell a vendor "I'll take these three scolies just charge my card thanks" only to see that they later gave them weird names I'd never heard of.
Not only that, I saw them buy up a hammer coral colony labelled as hammer coral colony and proceed to then take it over, give the name of jack o lantern hammer or something, and charge basically double what the original LFS wanted.
Look, I know you want to make money, everyone there does.
But if you want to sell coral, how about checking your corals in the plane like everyone else instead of ripping off communities of hobbyists around the country.
End of rant.
This just rubbed me the wrong way. The market pays what it can but I have a firm belief that scalping via arbitrage shouldn't be allowed. When a hobbyist asks about your corals, I expect to buy your corals, not some flatworm infested p.o.s. that you bought from the maricultured 7 for $100 area and claimed was a special coral.
Anyone who wants to know the vendor can privately pm me and come to their own conclusions, but I believe it is my duty to spread this awareness as this vendor charges a very, very healthy markup and I can confidently say that this was not consistent with their public image, at all.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, if it was any other vendor I probably wouldn't be so upset about it but I think this is just plain fraud.
I should also note, I have photographic evidence of other vendors complaining about this specific vendor at past events, and lack of truthful provenance of the corals and how they were obtained.