Hey everyone, I've been in the aquarium hobby ever since I was about 12 years old. Last year, I set up my first reef tank, and it absolutely changed the game for me. Saltwater is much more interesting than Freshwater. At first, I did notice how stressful , expensive, and hard it seemed to start ( reading for hours on how to get started) . I noticed after I got started, that it actually wasn't that difficult. Which leads me into my idea and post here. I recently graduated college, with a degree in marketing, and I have always wanted to have my own fish store, but through much research have found it can be quite costly to start a brick and mortar store, and with everything going online they are sadly fizzling out quite a bit. My idea, which I am in the process of starting, is a web store , Simply Saltwater, which has everything a reefer needs to get started in the hobby, as well as a very lengthy Getting Started section which basically will guide a new hobbyist into what they need, why they need it, and guide them into making choices that will sustain a healthy ecosystem for years. The problem I have ran into is I am using the order fulfilment of Drop shipping, and have yet to find USA wholesalers who openly support this, and do not exactly know where to even get started. I found a site called lowcostaquarium.com, but it is a China based site , with only a few reputable brands. I would like my site to include only reputable brands, brand names, and products that I know are really good long term. I reached out to Fluval and they said they only dealt with brick and mortar stores, no E-commerce sites. I would love to have name brands such as Red Sea, Waterbox, Fluval, Brightwell Aquatics, Instant Ocean, and other big brands like this. If anyone has any advice or help , it would be greatly appreciated, as I would really love to get this off the ground, but need to find good, reputable suppliers that are willing to drop ship items
