I Need Feedback on my Business Idea.

Who is your end user, and whay are you different?

This is my thought. Who is your customer? I would think that you may not be selling directly to the end user. Would you be taking money out of the pocket of someone who does the system build and the maintenance?

 

Absolutely! But if you need to make money now, an investment in a population that won't exist for another 5+ (let's hope) years, is not a promising investment.

Shipping is scary. It may not be monetarily feasible to ship your product anywhere, thus localizing your business. There are things you can do to minimize cost, such as opening a Fedex account and a business American Express account. But still the cost of shipping even smaller items makes me run for the Tums.

Then there are the costs of permits and what not. Your lucky you live where you do because we have to pay $800 bucks tax for items we haven't yet sold.... yearly.... for the "privilege of doing business in California". Pffffft. That's what the stinking form said. Then there's the cost to run a website. Advertising costs. Are you ok paying these costs while you weather out the current financial storm and hopefully BOOM with business on the other side?

We decided it was worth it and recently took the plunge ourselves. But you'll be a niche, like us, which makes it harder. You're selling Cadillac tanks just as we are selling Cadillac fish. There are those that still want to spend top dollar, you just have to find them and get your product to them.

 

ok, this is probably very silly but I'll chime in. What about making your product high quality with the little things spoken about above with some shelving and multiple openings but make it something that a DIYer would be interested in - like an IKEA type of stand? Quality product but perhaps would ship better with put together instructions. The end product could appeal to a standard reefer and a high end customer. Just a thought.....

 

That could be cool. Same weight, much smaller shipping size though.

I lived in Houston most of my life. Just don't miss the heat and HUMIDITY-yet!

 

Haha, you will when you get old enough!

 

Ideas:

*Stand ships flat, assemble yourself.
*Real wood veered, stain/finish yourself available as option.
*No center brace between doors.
*ventilation
*cable access holes.
*cable management.
*templates and/or pilot holes for mounting major brands controller's and modules.
*switched power strip mounting bracket
*controllers, power strip, sump, pumps, plumbing etc available as add-on options.

 

Much of this is part of my plan. The parts that weren't yet, are now. Thank you very much, this is very helpful.

 

Interested to see what you are able to come up with. I spent a lot of time looking for a decent stand, or even plans to build one, before I settled on the crappy one from the mfg that I'm not happy with. Should have built my own, but was in a hurry to get a tank setup running. Now that I have one running, I'll probably work on a custom build when the bigger tank bug bites.

One thing I would note is I think there's a hole in the market for smaller tanks and stands that are well built with advanced features - corners, cubes, columns, etc - in the 30-60 gallon range. I know these were what I was after, but settled on a 39 gallon AIO.

 

I think people have assumed I'm targetting larger tanks. My goal is to start at about a 60g, because it is forgiving of the engineering, but to quickly try to expand to include the smaller sizes (as well as a larger one).

As for the stand shopping experience, I hear you. I've got this beautiful (well, getting there) reef, but it sits on rubbish. I have to squirm and struggle my aged 42 year old body into unnatural positions to do anything. Its made of cheap materials. It is finished badly. Nothing has a place. And I can't keep my wife happy because the stand and components don't really fit with the furniture or the room.

Given how much we spend on the rest, why can't we end up with a piece of furniture that looks as aethetically appealing as the rest of our furniture?

 

I hear you there. I call it the wife constraint - in addition to the traditional time, space, and budget constraints. The wife constraint is the hardest to overcome.

You want the tank out where you can enjoy it, but it has to fit the decor, and not look like a glass box sitting in the corner. Furniture quality is the key.