~....Need Advice About Opening a Fish Store....~

test the market for demand and see if there really is a market out there for you to open up an lfs. after this is done, focus on providing what other lfs lack in your area. that might be helpful advice, healthy or exotic stock, or just a nice variety. you really should check out what is available and find out if it would be worth your time/money to pursue it. also, doing this research will help you know how expensive your initial stocking might be. you may do well to establish a nice website that you could generate sales and revenue through as well. if nothing else, a good website is great promotion

i am planning on doing the same when i get out of school. ya dig?

Go to your local craiglist listings, type aquarium, then average out how many postings there are every day in one given week.
Get that same average from a few other members in high/low markets (They'll need to do the same search/averaging) . Then compare.

This will give you an estimation of your given market..

A guy I know opened a store near Wilmington, NC and he is struggling to stay afloat.

I live in Ontario, California and my personal observation is the lfs and local small time pet stores are having a hard time staying afloat right now, they are all low on stock of fish due to low demand. Even a petshop that has been around for the past 45 years is on the brink of closing it's doors.

Dont want to rain on your parade but I think most people arnt looking to buy fish tanks right now.

However, if you do decide to open a fish store, for the love of all things holy, keep it clean as possible and have very good customer service. those are the first 2 things that turn me away from local fish stores. I drive past 3-4 shops to get to my favorite store for that reason.

anyways, thats just my 2 cents, I hope everything works out for you either way.

I hate to be a debbie downer, but having worked in the dark bowels of mom and pop LFS on and off for 6 years I would not suggest it as a primary business for anyone, the overbearing majority of LFS aren't really financially viable businesses you can feed your family with, even my favorite LFS only stays open on account of extenuating circumstances personal to the owner I'm not discussing online.

Most of the profit comes from cheap fish, food, chemicals/meds, and feeders. But most drygoods, especially the high end stuff is cost controlled at the distribution level, so you can't charge much more for anything than an online discount store would, and exotic fish are so hard to house longterm that you need to take orders and hope whoever orders anything is able to pick up their fish and pay for it in full when it comes in, you have no idea how many abandoned arowana, big puffers, and rare cichlids we got in that sat in 20s for months before the morons who ordered them could be bothered to pick them up, and even then they'd try to haggle the prices down.

In short I could see it being a nice side business if your spouse is the real breadwinner in the family or if you're independantly wealthy, but the odds are stacked against you no matter where you live on making a living owning an LFS.

Advice number one (even before checking the local demand): Have alot of money to start with.

I'm taking a Global economic leadership class and just finished a business economics class and really. You can't have a successful business without a strong foundation.

Take the chinese bamboo tree for example. inch for inch it is stronger than steel. And It grows taller than most buildings. When you first plant the seed, for the first year, no matter how many times you water it and no matter how nutritive the soil is, or how much sunlight it gets, guess how much will you see sprout out of the ground in the first year? ZERO. None. Second year: water it, sunlight, ferts, etc... how much will it grow? ZERO. You keep on doing this for 4 or 5 years and maybe on teh 6th year you'll see a little sprout sticking out of the ground. Few more years, maybe a few more centimeters of growth. And then after about 8 years, this thing will shoot up. They've been sighted to grow in increments of feet per day! Why? Because during those years of judicious caring, that little seed is creating a large, intricate network of root systems because it knows that it will need to support one of the tallest plants in the world.

Read this and think about the importance of a strong base. Start small, build up your arsenal, then unleash on those mofos =) not exactly what my teacher said, but pretty close.

Hopes this helps.

Maybe instead of jumping in and opening a store try aproaching local dentist or doctors office to see if they would be interested in having you set up a fishtank for them. Also offer a monthly maintainance fee to maintain it. You could start small that way and see if you would enjoy it.