Vendor sales question

[PJs_Bucket_List_Reef_75]

This is probably a silly question, but I'm driving myself crazy with disappointment so I have to ask. This is a question for those who have been in the hobby for a while (at least a year or two). How often do online vendors and stores have big sales? I'm nowhere near ready for stocking, and I'm seeing all these awesome July 4th sales everywhere I look. Missed opportunities, since I'm not ready. It's bugging me, thinking that by the time I'm ready to stock my tank, there probably won't be a sale in sight lol. Geez, I gotta stop browsing and looking at the livestock sections and stay focused!

 

[GARRIGA]

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[Gumbies R Us]

Sales happen pretty regularly. I would say once a month, we have one of our bigger sponsors running a sale here.

 

[Reefer Matt]

This is probably a silly question, but I'm driving myself crazy with disappointment so I have to ask. This is a question for those who have been in the hobby for a while (at least a year or two). How often do online vendors and stores have big sales? I'm nowhere near ready for stocking, and I'm seeing all these awesome July 4th sales everywhere I look. Missed opportunities, since I'm not ready. It's bugging me, thinking that by the time I'm ready to stock my tank, there probably won't be a sale in sight lol. Geez, I gotta stop browsing and looking at the livestock sections and stay focused!

All the time. Especially after covid. Black Friday is usually the best time to stock up on equipment though. There are way more sales this year than normal. Even wholesalers are having sales. There will be more summer sales, then Labor Day sales, then back to school, etc.

 

[Biokabe]

Livestock goes on sale pretty frequently. Honestly, there's only two times I ever pay "full price" for livestock:

1) I'm at my LFS and see something absolutely gorgeous that's reasonably priced.

2) I'm using reward points from on-sale purchases.

There are quite a few reputable vendors out there (World Wide Corals, Living Reef Orlando, AquaSD, Top Shelf Aquatics, Pacific East Aquaculture, Tidal Gardens, Unique Corals, Jason Fox, TCK Corals and more - that's just off the top of my head). Between all of them, someone is probably going to be running a sale at any given time.

Live sales can be a lot of fun and can be an opportunity for good deals, but they can be stressful if you're not used to the format and if you don't have a VERY good idea of how to care for most corals off the top of your head. Your window to buy is short with live sales, so it might be better to focus on more straightforward sales before diving into one of those.

If there's a holiday coming up, someone will be having a sale for it. So don't fall victim to FOMO and just take things at the right pace.

 

[yanetterer]

A lot of the sales aren't really much of a sale. You likely didn't miss out on much. Most vendors on here will have similar sales at least once a month if there is a holiday, convention, anniversary, or some other random event to name the sale after.

Many of the vendors will have an inflated list price that is then marked down to give the appearance of a sale. Others seem to have similar sales so frequently that the sale price is basically the normal price and the list price is "We need time to catch up on orders, but if you really want to pay that much, then ok." A 25% off sale may sound nice, but when stuff is perpetually 20% off, it isn't as much of a deal as you would think.

It is also the middle of summer which isn't the best time to ship coral. Even if the vendor has a good packaging and DOA policies I wouldn't want to take the chance of everything showing up dead from the heat.

If you have a local club, check out their classifieds. People don't typically give their tanks as much attention in the summer, so there may not be as much for sale, but the ones that are selling probably aren't finding many buyers right now. I literally can't even give away the more "generic" stuff right now.

 

[PJs_Bucket_List_Reef_75]

A lot of the sales aren't really much of a sale. You likely didn't miss out on much. Most vendors on here will have similar sales at least once a month if there is a holiday, convention, anniversary, or some other random event to name the sale after.

Many of the vendors will have an inflated list price that is then marked down to give the appearance of a sale. Others seem to have similar sales so frequently that the sale price is basically the normal price and the list price is "We need time to catch up on orders, but if you really want to pay that much, then ok." A 25% off sale may sound nice, but when stuff is perpetually 20% off, it isn't as much of a deal as you would think.

It is also the middle of summer which isn't the best time to ship coral. Even if the vendor has a good packaging and DOA policies I wouldn't want to take the chance of everything showing up dead from the heat.

If you have a local club, check out their classifieds. People don't typically give their tanks as much attention in the summer, so there may not be as much for sale, but the ones that are selling probably aren't finding many buyers right now. I literally can't even give away the more "generic" stuff right now.

You can give it to me when my tank is ready! lol