Tropical Fish Distributors online closing up shop

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iam kind of glad to see him close maybe if he let people order fish he would be open right now i tried to order like 200-300 dollars worth of fish form him he would not let me because i live in erie pa he said he sells to fish stores around here so he cant sell to me :)
 
Well Ori look at it this way. He had a store(s) ordering from them weekly or so & most likely spending $300-$500 each a week so that can be $1000 a week compared to your couple hundred bucks? Economics & trying to keep what stores he had to keep buying. But once he started to post his wholesale list online for everyone to see he basically started to cutting his own throat. Little sales, small amount sales do not cut it for wholesalers when they need to move a ton of fish as fast as possible before they die in their tanks! one fish here one there & dealing with all the questions for this, that & wanting this, that & pics of this & that etc.. becomes very time consuming not worth it.
Cost of doing the fish business is costly.
 
Is anyone in Central PA going to be placing an order? I used to order from him, and I would like to order one more time, but what I want is not going to be enough for a $200 minimum.
 
Terrible to hear. Joe is a cool guy.
 
orionxtr;5081755; said:
iam kind of glad to see him close maybe if he let people order fish he would be open right now i tried to order like 200-300 dollars worth of fish form him he would not let me because i live in erie pa he said he sells to fish stores around here so he cant sell to me :)

Well, that means he is a good business man. He wanted to protect the interests of the store he supplied to.

He knew if he sold to you, the stores nearby you will lose out since you will not buy from them. He did not throw his customer base under the bus.
 
well he basically did throw the stores he supplies under the bus. Posting the exact wholesale list that the stores recieve for the public to view & buy from was dumb. How is a store suppose to buy from him & turn around & sell the fishes for a profit when they know what you are paying for it! He tried to say you can mark the fish up to cover the shipping. Ah dah that is not enough to pay the bills. That is typically a little mark up & not enough. Plus if the fish was sick or died (usually) guess who was going to eat it? The shop most of the time. He should have posted a retail list in turn and made some more money on these direct orders but at the same time keep the wholesale end going & send customers to existing accounts if near them. He basically threw himself & his business along with others in the business under the bus. You reap what you sow..
We will all most likely will pay the price down the road in the hobby because of greed or bad business practices.

me

me
 
I have always received healthy fish from TFD every time I ordered from them. I have been lucky to date and never experienced the strain of ick on steroids that was difficult to treat from TFD or any other vendor to date.

The packaging by TFD was excellent. I am ANAL about quarantining fish (NO MATTER WHERE I PURCHASED THEM FROM). I have had (ZERO) fish from TFD fail to pass a minimum two week quarantine with parasite treatment.

I have not dealt with any other source that I can make this claim. I think that most people claiming "lack of quality" from TFD do not have the resources, or initiative to properly quarantine new fish purchases and they fail to take into consideration the EXTREME stress that "shipping" has on fish!

I am a private collector, and certainly do not have the resources to properly quarantine fish in the "wholesale" environment. LFS's and retail vendors SERIOUSLY need to consider these factors BEFORE going into the business.
 
Somethingfishyinc.net;5082942; said:
well he basically did throw the stores he supplies under the bus. Posting the exact wholesale list that the stores recieve for the public to view & buy from was dumb.
You made a mention of this in a previous post and I'm glad to see that you kind of expanded on and explained it.I fully understand what you meant and it makes sense to me....He did seem to have a list that was handy to the public to see for as long as I can remember though.
 
krichardson;5083128; said:
You made a mention of this in a previous post and I'm glad to see that you kind of expanded on and explained it.I fully understand what you meant and it makes sense to me....He did seem to have a list that was handy to the public to see for as long as I can remember though.

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TFD Price List.JPG
 
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