German Pet Store

[Streetwise]

This video is amazing, @Cory!

I want to figure out how to do the floating wood for my cousins’ pond.

[gardenman]

It's a neat store. The closest thing to it I've even been to is That Pet Place in Lancaster, PA. That's the biggest pet shop around here these days. Martin's Aquarium that used to be in Jenkinton, PA was pretty neat also. There used to be Worldwide Aquarium in Upper Darby that had a huge store with lots of neat stuff also. I think the right store like that could do well in America, but the startup costs are astronomical. I think Cory said they had fifty employees. That's a lot of salary to cover and the electrical costs would be absurd. You'd pretty much need a private well to supply the water. It's a neat store though.

[ccc24]

It looked spectacular. I’d love to visit. I wonder if one would have to lean hard into making it an attraction as well as store to survive in this market with as big as it is. 

[Jacob Hill-Legion Aquatics]

I want to move to Germany now! The aquarium hobby there is on another level!

[Jeff]

@Jacob Hill-Legion Aquatics it really is. What I would like to know, are reasons why America is so far behind other countries when it comes to fish at pet stores.  

I'd love to know everyone's opinion on why there's such a stark difference between European stores and America.

 

[The Goatee]

@Jeff I’d be curious if there were economic differences that drive the difference in the hobby around the globe. Do we in America get hit with the stereotype goldfish in a bowl for kids? So we are “cheap” culturally when it comes to the hobby, thinking these are things with limited time and investment with fish not living long? Something for a child to enjoy for a couple of weeks on $20 invested? The big box stores seem to cater to 20 gallon and under tanks with the equipment and kits they sell, and especially tiny things 5 gallons or less with pictures of 20 fish in them, deceiving the customer on proper stocking levels.

I don’t have large circles of local contacts, but until I got in the hobby I only knew one person in them who was truly serious about fish keeping. He had a 285 gallon cichlid tank in his office. Several large tanks at home. He’d fill up a 55 gallon trashcan in the restroom every Friday and I’d noticed how dedicated he was.

I also wonder if we are too short attention span and lazy? Or too busy to give tanks attention they need and so they crash which discourages them? I am probably just intermediate skill and I don’t worry about perfecting an aquascape and perfectly managing algae, but I spend 2 to 3 hours on the weekend taking care of my tanks. I get the sense most with families wouldn’t ever have that amount of time, let alone the time some of the daily work the pristine scapers do.

I was also amazed at all the books and resources at the store in Germany. I’ve never really seen educational material at a pet store.  If not for the great internet videos by Cory and others on YouTube, I’d have failed miserably in the hobby and gotten really discouraged when my three big box platies all got crushed with ick when I started my first tank in 20 years.

[Flumpweesel]

I can't think of anything like that in the UK we are probably nearer the USA in shop options except we have a lot of LFS , one franchise chain and the UK equivalent of Pet smart.  It would be interesting to hear from the other europeans how the shopping looks in their countries. I remember a post from a French member struggling to find somewhere to buy an aquarium in France . 

 

 

 

[ccc24]

On 6/26/2022 at 11:04 PM, The Goatee said:

@Jeff I’d be curious if there were economic differences that drive the difference in the hobby around the globe. Do we in America get hit with the stereotype goldfish in a bowl for kids? So we are “cheap” culturally when it comes to the hobby, thinking these are things with limited time and investment with fish not living long? Something for a child to enjoy for a couple of weeks on $20 invested? The big box stores seem to cater to 20 gallon and under tanks with the equipment and kits they sell, and especially tiny things 5 gallons or less with pictures of 20 fish in them, deceiving the customer on proper stocking levels.

I don’t have large circles of local contacts, but until I got in the hobby I only knew one person in them who was truly serious about fish keeping. He had a 285 gallon cichlid tank in his office. Several large tanks at home. He’d fill up a 55 gallon trashcan in the restroom every Friday and I’d noticed how dedicated he was.

I also wonder if we are too short attention span and lazy? Or too busy to give tanks attention they need and so they crash which discourages them? I am probably just intermediate skill and I don’t worry about perfecting an aquascape and perfectly managing algae, but I spend 2 to 3 hours on the weekend taking care of my tanks. I get the sense most with families wouldn’t ever have that amount of time, let alone the time some of the daily work the pristine scapers do.

I was also amazed at all the books and resources at the store in Germany. I’ve never really seen educational material at a pet store.  If not for the great internet videos by Cory and others on YouTube, I’d have failed miserably in the hobby and gotten really discouraged when my three big box platies all got crushed with ick when I started my first tank in 20 years.

I think you bring up some excellent points. Big box does cater to small set-ups. And small set-ups have unique challenges that can crash them quicker. 
Plus what other hobby does your pet/focus of interest up and die one day and there wasn’t much you could do most of the time (whereas a dog you can rush to the e-vet, there is a vet present to treat them when you get there, they have the meds they need in stock, surgery is an option, etc).

And yeah, everyone knows something about dogs, but hardly anyone knows about fish. Serious fish keeping is a niche hobby for sure. 
 

[gardenman]

Parts of the hobby do very, very well here in America. Reef keeping is a huge business here. Companies like World Wide Coral, and Tidal Gardens have huge facilities. Bulk Reef Supply does large sales volumes. For monster fish keepers there's Predatory Fins who specialize in monster fish at often monstrous prices. In a recent video they talked of buying a large fish for $20 but then it cost $800 to ship it to them making it a $820 fish just to break even. They've moved to New York now to be closer to a shipping hub. World Wide Corals did a YouTube video titled "Largest Private Reef Tank in America" where the tanks hold 17,000 gallons and two thousand gallons of water are in just the plumbing. (A pretty neat video by the way.) The owner has full-time staff to care for the system and it costs millions. If he's a customer of yours, you've got it made. Fitz's Fish Ponds imported over $5 million worth of koi in just one shipment this year. What we don't have is a single store that does it all and does it all well.

Could we have such a store? In the right place, maybe. You'd need a large population nearby and low overhead prices. The problem is when you get into large population centers in America, you get into higher overhead costs. Energy costs more, taxes are higher, salaries are higher, square footage is more expensive, and you can pretty quickly find your costs are unsustainable. 

Where would be "the right place" for such a store? I like Southern NJ, Northern Delaware, and Southeastern PA. A store in those locations would be a two-hour drive from NYC. Baltimore, and Washington DC. The potential customers within a two-hour drive or Amtrak ride would be around 20+ million people. And it's a relatively affluent part of the country. The problem is the cost. Renting a space would be prohibitive, so you'd want to buy the square footage you needed. Owning the facility makes your monthly rent cost zero but requires more cash up front. Controlling energy costs could be done by using the roof for solar panels for both electricity and heating the water. Once again, an upfront expenditure that would lower your monthly costs. You'd want a well or two for your water supply. Another upfront cost that ultimately would pay for itself. Maybe build an apartment or two or three for staff/managers to both live in and work at the facility. Including free rent could lower your labor costs and always have at least some staff on hand for emergencies. And you'd want it near other stuff that people want to visit so they don't have to just make it a trip to the store. They can combine it with other tourist type things to do. And you'd want/need tax breaks. Taxes and bureaucracy just kill you around here. I was in a LFS one day maybe thirty years ago when the owner had to fork over $200 for an elevator inspection. I looked around and said, "You don't have an elevator." He nodded, but the state had recently passed a law requiring every multi-story commercial business to have an elevator inspection each year. His store was just one floor, but he had storage in the basement and second floor, so it was a multistory commercial business. They just assumed every multi-story business would have an elevator. You still had to have the inspection even if you didn't have an elevator.

And you'd want attractions within the store. Beautiful display tanks. You'd want to PT Barnum the store. "We've got the largest, biggest, greatest, best ever, etc." type of promotions. Sell exclusive stuff like custom made tanks made in the facility (or nearby.) Custom backgrounds. Custom stands. Gadgetry galore. T-shirts. Sweatshirts, Hats. Sell monster tanks. Work with a structural engineer to design very large sectional fiberglass tanks that would be assembled in a customer's home in certain stock sizes and also custom ones in whatever size a customer wanted. I like two-foot-wide, four feet front to back, six-foot-tall sectional fiberglass tanks. You'd need to design a left and right end wall sections, then glass/acrylic holding two-foot-wide sections that would be bolted between those two end sections and hold the glass/acrylic. Even take back the used glass/acrylic when a customer expands their tank and buys new glass/acrylic. A six-foot-tall two-foot-wide, four foot deep, tank section could fit through nearly any "normal" doorway and allow a customer to build (or have you build for them) a custom tank of whatever size they wanted.  A base model would have two end sections and two center sections giving the buyer an eight foot long, four feet front to back, and nearly six feet deep monster tank (around 1,400 gallons) with a four-foot tall and six-foot-wide viewing window. If they wanted it expanded, they could just remove the current viewing window and add a new section or two to the tank and then add a new larger viewing window. By making the tank sections a standard size, you only need to make the molds once and can fabricate them on demand with some always in stock. Design in facade securing elements so the customer can face the tank with whatever they want, plywood, drywall, or something exotic. Selling monster tanks opens up the market for things like rotary drum filters, bead filters, larger pumps, enormous pieces of driftwood and stone, etc. The tanks could even be used as above ground koi ponds.

You'd want some named fish like Murphy that people would come to see. Store pets basically. Use social media to death. Have videos and posts going up daily. You'd need a social media person or staff. Maybe have a remote-controlled drone that people could fly around the store or maybe something more like a camera on a track that would just roam the store 24/7. You'd want to bring in speakers on weekends. Have events, like frag exchanges, fish exchanges, plant exchanges, group meetings, etc. Done right, the startup costs for a store like that would be in the millions. But the monthly costs could be kept fairly low. Low enough to make a profit anyway. Show people things they just can't find elsewhere. Have a Koi Korner with a huge koi pond built into the store. Buy some absurdly overpriced champion level koi from Japan for the display.

To do it right, make a humidity proof store, likely constructed from scratch, with all of the amenities needed and then stocked, you're probably looking at something close to $20 million in upfront costs. Maybe more. And then you'd need customers to find you. It's doable. It could be done. It wouldn't be easy. It would be expensive to start. But it could work. The potential is there. Done right, it could make a lot of money. The upfront costs though would just be insane.

[Nickyjax]

It’s absolutely amazing to see how other parts of the world enjoy the fish hobby as well. 

[Flumpweesel]

He's been running that store in Germany a long time and it has probably evolved over time, Cory is about to triple the size of his store soon if he does that every 5 years he'll be catching up.  

[Jeff]

@Flumpweesel It's not so much about the size of the store that is making me wonder. It's the variety products that are offered - that's the part that's unmatched here in the States. 

And I'm not even saying that stores should carry every brand of plant. It's just the types of products that are offered, to show how to set up a tank the right way.

[BradfordAquatics]

I was most impressed that you could buy bags of live food to feed to fry and tiny fish. I think that would be so convenient and awesome to have at every lfs.

[Flumpweesel]

On 6/28/2022 at 3:51 AM, BradfordAquatics said:

I was most impressed that you could buy bags of live food to feed to fry and tiny fish. I think that would be so convenient and awesome to have at every lfs.

That is available in most stores I visit in the UK at least bloodworm and daphna. From a post I read recently frozen foods are a lot cheaper here as well. I think the main brand is European so it's probably just a shipping thing.

I do think that working in the live food farm must be a bit grim (they must have break away hatches and so many things flying around) maybe @Cory should do a factory tour sometime.

[Andy's Fish Den]

The biggest pet/ LFS I have been to is Preuss Pets in Lansing, MI. That store is pretty amazing, but nothing compared to the one Cory went to in Germany though. They have a large fish area, both fresh and saltwater, and it even has a river running through it that ends up in a pond with large waterfall outside and it has large koi and goldfish in it. They also have stuff for other animals as well as selling the small animals and reptiles and birds, from parakeets to the large macaws. It is a stire that has evolved over the years as well, I am not sure how long it has been around, but I know its been a long while. The owner has given talks at several conventions like Aquashella on his business. 

On 6/27/2022 at 10:51 PM, BradfordAquatics said:

I was most impressed that you could buy bags of live food to feed to fry and tiny fish. I think that would be so convenient and awesome to have at every lfs.

Years ago, I'm talking mid to late 90s here, I could buy packages like those of bloodworms, tubifex, daphnia at the LFS I went to and worked at. It also hatched BBS everyday that would be for sale and would then raise the leftover BBS into adults to sell. 

[Guppysnail]

I agree with Cory. That gravel mat pond liner is genius!  

[gardenman]

On 6/27/2022 at 10:51 PM, BradfordAquatics said:

I was most impressed that you could buy bags of live food to feed to fry and tiny fish. I think that would be so convenient and awesome to have at every lfs.

This used to be common in LFS. I don't know if the wholesalers got out of the market or what, but it's rare these days. At least one LFS I used to visit would have a small bag of brine shrimp or bloodworms that they'd give you free after checking out. It would be enough for one or two feedings, but they also sold bigger bags. For a LFS selling live food makes a lot of sense. Any that's not sold can be used to feed the fish that are in stock. "Oh. we didn't sell three bags of live food today and it'll be no good tomorrow." Feed it to the fish in the store. It's that much less other food you have to give them. San Francisco Bay Brand Brine Shrimp used to provide hatching/raising/dispensing tanks for LFS. They had a tap on the bottom and an airstone and you could see the brine shrimp bubbling away inside the tank. I could buy five or ten kinds of live food back in the day. It was readily available. My refrigerator would often have live bloodworms and live brine shrimp in it waiting for the next feeding session. Mealworms, wingless fruit flies, crickets (for bigger fish), and much more were pretty readily available.