>>nice snake ,,,,,,, i want to ask you terry about the hondo price thread below.whats your take on it?,,,ive read it havnt posted myself as i am i very small breeder,but may get into the hondo mrkt.next year and would like here your take as you are so successfull in the hondo market,,,,,,,thomas davis

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I think a couple of nice fellas with beautiful breeding stock and excellent management practices overproduced a particular morph (I was told told one of them produced nearly twice the snows I chose to produce in my very best year). Personally, I think they then overreacted when they didn't sell immediately (I don't usually sell out until march of the following year; a couple times i've sold out by january and was thrilled. And i've been doing this for a decade and have a couple hundred customers so lots of word of mouth and thousands of dollars of print advertising annually and what i hope are pretty functional exhibits at several major shows, to develop relationships with customers). So maybe expectations were too high, something we can all learn from and it's to John's credit that he's shared his thoughts and experiences.



Patience really is important in this business. I've sold about 3/4 of my first-clutch babies, and I wish i could sell all the remaining ones--tomorrow--but in reality I continue getting some sales week by week, chipping away at inventory the way it's always been. Car dealers anticipate having some inventory on their lots for weeks, sometimes months. They'll have a sale, but they don't cut prices day after day expecting to empty the lot in a day, and i think that was a flawed strategy with the snows. if they'd only had a few to sell at rock-bottom prices it wouldn't have had an impact on the market, but with so many, it created a great buying opportunity for others.



I think if some of their adults are sold to other breeders and next year the same number of snows are produced but in numerous differen't people's hands, each person would have 2 or 3 snows to sell, there'd be more patience for sales, less price cutting, and the market will be just fine. Nothing's going to change the fact that adult snows are beautiful and unlike any other tricolor morph, or the fact that hondos are good feedrs, nice strong constrictors, tame nicely and are blessed with a multitude of color types that make them more variable and interesting than almost any other snake.



As I say, on the bright side, it created a great opportunity for buyers. And i think the fellas have been upfront in sharing what's a good lesson for all of us, not to produce too many of any one kind of animal. That's why GM has four or five different makes, and Chevrolet offers multiple models from high end corvettes to gas-guzzling SUVs and economy sedans. Its dealers have to anticipate demand and can't order hundreds of vettes and quickly find buyers for them all.



As for sales at the expo, where the fellas first got concerned because their animals didn't sell, I rarely sell many high-ticket snakes at the shows. I deliver animals there that were pre-ordered, and i meet a lot of people who become customers later, but in my experience there aren't many colubrid buyers, at least, walking the show floors with thousands of dollars in their pockets. I took one snow baby to the show so people could see one, whet their appetites. It didn't sell there, but i've sold it and three others since the show. I have three left and am confident they'll sell eventually.



I have one other observation, because in the thread a couple people talked about losing money. I'll address that issue in a separate email.



peace

terry

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