What do you wish your LFS had told you?

Here's one I've always made a point to do, so many pet shops say things like "yup we have ball pythons for $1.99!" but never mention the $150.00 set up they need to house it properly. We always go over the complete long term picture with our customers. Especially things like bearded dragons that can eat 50 to 100 crickets a DAY that I've seen workers in stores never mention that major cost. (one of my personal pet peeves, no pun intended)

Thanks for the post and here's hoping more pet shops would be up front about long term care/costs!

GreyBeard

 

the honesty part SHOULD go without saying but unfortunately as I've ranted about before it's not the case in so many pet shops. I am in a very small community and ANY bad info... even if it was unintentional would get me a bad rep fast, which is fine with me as my theory of business is be fair and honest or close the shop and go to work for someone else fast. As to classes at this point my store is VERY small/low volume so we basically to 'classes' all day with each individual customer. Many of my customers have my home phone in case of 'emergency' question which I field gladly. I love helping people (probably hero syndrom? LOL) so this works for me.

Thanks for chimin in! All good points for sure.

GreyBeard

 

You guys have been great as always. If anyone else has comments or ideas I'll be eagerly waiting to hear them. I want to get this right BEFORE I start offering my first corals for sale NOT after! LOL

 

First off let me say,great thread Greybeard.When I was super new at sw I would have appreciated two things;one is for the lfs to tell me that If I was serious about making my tank a success Id be replacing my budget equipment real soon,and two would be to tell me about three reef.Ive learned a ton here and dont know how I could have a sw tank without it.I love the idea of care sheets.We only have one decent lfs in a town of 180,000 with one guy running it,so just getting him to bag something up for you is sometimes hard.Also,I would have liked for my lfs to stress the importance of learning as much as possible.Good luck with your store,If you stick to your morals and beliefs Im sure it will be a success.

 

Wow thanks for the 'great thread' I wasn't sure I'd get ANY responses and I just noticed today it's on the hot list for the week? lol
All good points for sure and to give you an idea where I'm coming from my store is pretty much a one man show that started on a literal shoe string in August 2008. I've been making a modest profit since the third month and set new monthly sales records regularly as we are very much still in the growing stages. I've grown slow and careful missing many sales but growing a GREAT customer base that thinks the world of my lil store. I get Thank You cards from my customers every once in a while! Gotta love 'em!

180,000 in your town? mine has less than 1000! LOL but to be fare I have customers that drive around 50 miles to come to my store on a regular basis.

I think on each care sheet I'm going to put 3 Reef's www address. I wonder if a moderator type could chime and let me know if that is ok? I would think it would be but rather be sure first.

Thanks for the post!
GreyBeard

 

great thread idea, everyone loves an honest lfs. the only thing i could think of that you were missing was the placement of the coral in the tank. for example some do like it closer to the top and some like mid, etc. good luck with your store, i wish i was nearby so i could be a customer

 

I wish my LCD had told mr that peppermint shrimp sometimes eat pink feather dusters before I added it and watched it get devoured

 

I'd have a little netbook on the counter so people can research.

Have a copy of Scott Michael's and Ron Schimek's pocket guides on fish and inverts out so people can refer to them while in the store.

 

Giving customers unfettered access to the Internet can be problematic (although there are programs that control which websites can be accessed and I would highly recommend them). To give you an example, I had a customer come in that I had never seen before. She bought a damsel (even though I warned her about their temperment) and then she asked me if I match competitors prices. I said, "Yes, if the fish is the exact same and the same size". She then asked if she could borrow our internet and I said, "Sure". Well, she had been over there for a looooong time so I went over to see what she was researching because I might know the answer already. She had written a list of various fish with prices. She wanted me to match a tangs price from Ebay, a clown from a local reefing club forum, a 6 line wrasse from an online retailer, etc.

I explained to her that we match LFS competitor's prices. I'm not going to match the price of a clown a club member is selling to another club member because it doesn't get along with his other clowns. I mentioned that the prices she was finding wasn't even the real price....there was still going to be shipping added to her price. In fact, the tang price was higher buying it online than buying it from me after adding shipping charges. She was putting fish names into Google, hitting the "shopping" link, finding the cheapest prices and then expected me to match them....that's just not doable.

In the time she spent looking up all of those prices, she could have already been home and finished acclimating her damsel.

 

I wish my LFS suggested ways to save money by doing a lot of the DIY projects. I also wish they would have told me the difference between different lighting types.