Joined
·
2,519 Posts
I agree with this 100%. Being a business owner myself I know how much it takes to get a business going and make it successful in the long run. If it were the 80's I would say go for it but in this day and age I don't see a fish/pet store making it with the big box stores and the Internet as your competition. I have seen more than a few try to open up a fish/pet store in my community and the only one that is still open is not what I would consider a successful business. I know the owner personally and while he has had this store for the past 20+ years I know how much of a struggle he has to keep the doors open. I wish it wasn't this way but that's just a sign of the times. I remember when I was young going to LFS in many different cities with my dad and they were everywhere and very successful. And slowly I have watched them disappear. Even in larger markets they have a hard time making it work. I thought really hard about what it would take to make a business like this work and I just didn't see it as possible. It's really hard to compete with chain stores that have the buying power when they have multiple stores to supply and are buying such huge quantities therefore can sell at a lower price than any LFS could. Not only that but then you have the online retailers to compete with. Take Walmart for example, look how many small grocery stores that they have taken out of the equation by simply by offering prices that is impossible for the smaller mom and pop store to compete with.I would say that you would need to be out of your mind to open a tropical fish store in this day and age.
In thinking about the locally owned non-chain stores that are within about 1/2 an hour of me, there are only two left out of at least 10 that I can think of. Both of those are old time stores and also have general pet products.
Going out to places that I can get to in a couple of hours, there are some excellent places, but I got to make a special trip, and these places tend to be large again been there for years.
The simple fact of the matter is that it's almost impossible to compete with the large chains and the internet.
Now if you still want to try, I'd first say that your going to need to open a general pet store and carry all the other small pets, and dog and cat products. Very few small places can make it on fish alone.
As you can see, this is going to require a lot of capital, most of which is going to have to be supplied by you. Most banks are not too interested in lending money to a startup.
For fish you are going to need a lot of tanks and so on. Just look how a small place could easily have 30 plus tanks.
As for stock, you got to carry what will sell, so there is no point to having "not so common rare stocks" unless it's going to sell.