Regarding the New life spectrum incident that made Cory quit selling them

[HenryC]

I was genuinely curious about this, not trying to start an argument but hearing the "other side's" version of the story made me think...

So everybody knows why Cory quit selling NLS, in a stream he said they were very rude to him, they screamed and yelled to him in a convention, and told him feeding anything else other than NLS was fish abuse. Cory said it was someone, most likely in charge of social media, that was rude. She appears to have apporached Cory to ask some pointers for her youtube channel, and everything happened from there. I'm assuming this individual was a girl named Hillary? (You can check her out in NLS youtube channel). She appeared to be freshly hired back then?

So then, the other part of the story:

I've been told in another forum that the person that was rude to Cory was indeed this newly recruited social media spokesperson for NLS. I don't know what the hell she was thinking by saying such things but for the looks of it, the actual owner of NLS would not say such things (at least I was told that by a person who claims to know the owner of NLS (Pablo tepoot). He said he called him on the spot about the incident and pablo confirmed it wasn't him that was rude to Cory, but that newly hired girl.

He also said Cory was selling their foods for very very low, to the point of going below the MAP price (Minimum advertised price) that they specified. MAP prices are supossed to protect a product's reputation by setting a minimum price someone can sell your product, in order to protect your product's "reputation" and value. Well at least this is what he said, that NLS wasn't happy with Cory selling their stuff for super cheap (below MAP), sent a letter about it, and everything fell appart. Does selling something below MAP price is illegal? If this indeed happened, was Cory in his right to sell NLS for the price he wants?

@Cory I can send you the forum thread if you want, but really it sounded like the whole of NLS was very bad when it appears it was just one inexperienced person? Did the owner actually scream at you back then? 😮 I'm aware that all of this might be irrelevant since it has been years, and a decision has been made, but I was wondering if the guy at MFK.com is saying the truth or just making things up.

Edited December 15, 2021 by HenryC

[Gator]

@HenryC; I worked in retail for about 30 years and companies sell below the "Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price" and the "Minimum Advertised Price" all of the time, and the reason is to generate knowledge, familiarity, and trust of the company and its products that retailers carry, especially if that product is relative to the retailer selling it.

The rudest people I have ever had to deal with in my entire life are in Orlando, FL. Did this incident happen to occur at the Aquashella Orlando event by any chance? 

[Cory]

I'm not interested in starting any drama and thus will lock this thread after I post my information.

Indeed it was the owner Pablo. Pablo was the aggressive one. Quotes such as " if you feed anything other than new life spectrum, you're killing your fish" "yes you should tell a 14 yr old on an allowance to throw away repashy and buy new life spectrum." This was in response me asking what would you have me do with a 14 yr old who spent their allowance buying another food like Repashy previously and then asking about your food?

As far as Hillary, she was new the company and the new face of their social media. She is the one that brought us over to the booth. She wanted tips on live streaming and such. She was never rude to us. My tip was to be real with the audience, develop a real connection etc. If you tell people you have the best food all the time, you're going to sound inauthentic. This is where Pablo comes in and is proclaiming they are the best food in the world. He developed it etc. How it cured skinny fish disease in saltwater tangs. Joel and myself say, but how can you know? Have you tested every food against this with every species of fish? Every day new fish food comes out, how could you know? We were always met with NLS is the only food that is 100% complete of what a fish needs. We mention wood eating catfish species vs saltwater, vs livebearers, vs everything etc. Same thing, just elevating loudness and tone the whole time. Joel and I end up leaving the booth and literally saying "can you believe that just happened?" He did send a stack of his book she wrote on saltwater fish so I could educate myself and my staff on why his food is the best like 6 weeks later.

As for selling below MAP, that is true. I can't remember the exact order of events, as it's been so many years and the emails are gone. So my recollection will be all I can go off of. So that we are aware of what map is. Minimum advertised Price. If you sell below that, typically a manufacturer will stop selling to you. However people routinely do things like, use this coupon code for $5 off. This doesn't go against MAP. Add to cart to see price, doesn't go against map etc.

After getting back from Germany, I decided to clearance out all the slow moving NLS products. Basically the only food which I really thought was different than comptitors was the Thera A line and the flake food. However we rounded out the others to carry the "line" as a survey we had run previously said people wished we carried NLS. The problem was most of the line wasn't selling. I put these on clearance at I believe 30%, and put them into our clearance section of the website. I then received a letter saying I am in violation of MAP. I replied something to the effect of I don't intend to ever carry these lines again, and am only clearancing them out. It was maybe 25 bottles of food total between the skus.  They came back saying I couldn't do that, and then I said, based on how I was treated by the owner, I just won't sell any of NLS.

To sum it up, it was the owner, not an employee who soured us on NLS. There is no mixing up Hillary and Pablo. I stand by my claim, that's impossible to know and research the perfect diet for every fish. Let alone by 1 person. We haven't been able to do that for humans, dogs, cats. Yet new life spectrum has it all figured out for fish. All they have to do is market their food as a good food. Why pick the best food in the world forever as the hill to die on?