Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well, I have been throwing this idea around back and forth with my wife for about six months now, so I figured that I would throw it out to the group. I am thinking about No longer soliciting retail business and selling to dealers for the most part. Now there is always the people who are looking for specific animals that I may have and contact me directly, But I think for the most part, I am no longer going to deal with retail sales and this is the reason why……..
I am seeing an incredible amount of animals out there with all kinds of names put on them. It seems that everyone wants their animals to be a morph or have a special name. Leticia Colombian Boas are everywhere and look amazingly like you average BCI Boa and pastels are no longer pink and Hypo Central American Boas are no “Red Back saddled supreme Boas” and so on and so forth.
I don’t want to be a part of that anymore, I want to enjoy what is really my hobby and not my second job or main source of income. I think I would be just as happy selling a group of Albino Boas to a Dealer for $200-300 per head then selling them one by one for $1,000.00 each, Is that crazy? I already work with a few of the most reputable dealers and I am sure that they would happily buy my offspring, after all, that is how they make their money, I make mine by other means. I would be perfectly happy to trade with the dealers for the animals that I want, make a little cash on the side for up keep and cages and enough to take a yearly trip on, I certainly do not need $1,000.00 per animal to do this with and I think it may bring some fun back into keeping if I did not have to worry about sales and all the work that is involved in it.
What to you guys think?
Thanks for the input
Jim Hopkins
Hopkins Holesale Herps
Hopkins Holesale herps

If you are selling albino boas for $200-$300 email me. I will buy them all. Can send out a money order tomorrow. Thank you, Lee

I understand where you are coming from Hoppy. I HATE the business end of the hobby. It makes it not fun anymore. My reasons are somewhat different than yours, but I understand where you are coming from. I used to love doing reptile shows when it wasn't part of our income, now it's work and I already have a job....LOL. Don't get me wrong, I love meeting new people and talking with them, helping that new snake owner out. I love baby time of the year, and seeing my animals grow up to be big snake. It's the rest of the junk I can't stand. It's about doing what you love and finding a way to cope with the rest. Such is life.

Danni SMILE
-----
Jason & Danni
Our Email
Our Website

SMILE SMILE

I have been very fortunate to have developed a core of terrific people who work with me each year when I have baby boas available. Some are retail customers, others are resellers. And I find a few new customers each season that are really interested in the animals, want to learn about them and do their best with them. These friends, new and old, make the whole routine worth while for me.

I agree that there are some elements of the business side that are frustrating. You mentioned only a few (and I don't think I could have been as calm if I had started a rant on those subjects!). And I've been close to making the same decision a couple of times. But for me I still want to be out there meeting new people and spreading the 'Boa Bug' directly!

Good subject....

Gus

Jim,
. I read your post and was gonna reply right away but decided to wait and think about it some. I think I know where you are coming from on this issue. I do not want to sound like I am totally antisocial but I really do like snakes better than most people. I like breeding snakes. I like seeing my snakes lay pretty babies. I like seeing new babies grow and become tame pet quality animals. I like knowing that most of my babies go to good homes. I like conversing with serious herp people. I like exchanging information and being entertained here on the forum. I like going to a few shows every year. I like selling face to face with customers at shows. I like seeing old friends and meeting new friends at shows. I HATE selling snakes over the internet. I hate endless exchanges of emails. A few emails and then closing the deal is fine. I hate shipping snakes. I hate the hassle with shippers and airlines. I hate worrying about my babies while they are being shipped. I hate telephone calls about snakes at odd hours. I actually hate telephones anyway and work nights so most anytime someone calls it is an odd hour for me. So what do I do to do as much of the things I like doing and as little as possible of the things I do not like doing? Firstly I do not have a commercial website with prices or offers for sale. Secondly, I only post classified ads when I absolutely have to. Tertiarily, I try to make my show prices low enough so that I sell as many snakes as possible at the show. Fourthly, I wholesale snakes when I need to. Fifthly (is that a word?), I make trades with other breeders and wholesalers to get the snakes I want rather than sell my snakes and buy their snakes. I have not gotten all this figured out to an exact science but I have found what sort of works for me so that I can maximize doing what I like and minimize spending time doing the things I do not like.
Jeff

>>Well, I have been throwing this idea around back and forth with my wife for about six months now, so I figured that I would throw it out to the group. I am thinking about No longer soliciting retail business and selling to dealers for the most part. Now there is always the people who are looking for specific animals that I may have and contact me directly, But I think for the most part, I am no longer going to deal with retail sales and this is the reason why……..
>>I am seeing an incredible amount of animals out there with all kinds of names put on them. It seems that everyone wants their animals to be a morph or have a special name. Leticia Colombian Boas are everywhere and look amazingly like you average BCI Boa and pastels are no longer pink and Hypo Central American Boas are no “Red Back saddled supreme Boas” and so on and so forth.
>>I don’t want to be a part of that anymore, I want to enjoy what is really my hobby and not my second job or main source of income. I think I would be just as happy selling a group of Albino Boas to a Dealer for $200-300 per head then selling them one by one for $1,000.00 each, Is that crazy? I already work with a few of the most reputable dealers and I am sure that they would happily buy my offspring, after all, that is how they make their money, I make mine by other means. I would be perfectly happy to trade with the dealers for the animals that I want, make a little cash on the side for up keep and cages and enough to take a yearly trip on, I certainly do not need $1,000.00 per animal to do this with and I think it may bring some fun back into keeping if I did not have to worry about sales and all the work that is involved in it.
>>What to you guys think?
>>Thanks for the input
>>Jim Hopkins
>>Hopkins Holesale Herps
>>Hopkins Holesale herps

The Good and the bad in this hobby is extreme! I tried to keep my rant to a very limited thought and not go into all the things that I would change, if I were king for a day, but I do want to clarify a few things and make a few additional points
Point number one, I love Herping! I have taken a few vacation days in the past week or so and just spent them wandering through the Everglades National Park and State parks Looking for wildlife and herping. I am also hoping to join The group at Hiss and Things on their next trip to Costa Rica to go herping down there. I like talking herps with people who are truly interested in them, I love seeing all the new Morphs and what people are working on, the pictures of the babies (such as the one above of the person who bred the two hets together and got 3 albinos and 9 possible hets, the excitement of seeing that for the first time in your cage is great!!!). All these things I love and I have been loving it since my early teens, well over twenty years now! The shows are great and I hope to make it again this year to Daytona (Hermann, you going to be there again this year?) and it is that kinda of stuff that makes the Hobby worth doing…….
Now to the stuff I loath!……
I Loath the no good money grubbing scam artist that are here only to make a buck and really don’t care about the animals and the hobby. You know the ones, the guys that were working at Circle K or 7-11 last week and this week are internet snake breeders with the newest morph of normal looking BCI Boas. They take a nice common boa and try to sell it off as a het for this or a pastel that, when in reality it is a nice Boa and not more (does it really need to be anything more?) these are the people that make it so that I do not want to be associated with them. They have made it so that everyone is suspicious of everyone else and the hobby is not the friendly little everyone knows everyone hobby that it used to be.
I remember back in the days of Herpitafuana (with Tom Crutchfield, Chris Macquade, The Loves and others) where you could walk into the their shop, you knew them by name and they would answer your questions or show what they just got in and what was cool! It was friendly back then, a different looking Boa might cost you a few bucks more then the normal looking one, but you did not have to place a bogus fancy name on it to sell it, It’s looks sold it for you.
I posted this line to get some input from all of you about the way things are. I received several e-mails from many of you and a few posts from other, most of which seem to understand my frustration with the direction of the hobby, Vake, Jeff, Gus and Jason all make good points (Vake was by e-mail) But what was just as equally disturbing was the dozen or so e-mails from people who just wanted to know how they could get a $300.00 Albino boa from me, just worried about making a buck and missing the entire point of the post. To those people I want to point out the fact that YOU would be the ones that I am referring to while I post this rant and YOU would be the reason why I will give up most of my public sale and sell only to selected people with whom I have dealt with in the past and reputable Dealers that I know and I am familiar with.
I have to distance myself from the scourge of the hobby and try to bring the fun back into it. After all if the fun is lost what is the sense of herping, I could just go fishing then~
Thanks
Jim Hopkins

I too miss the old days. I've known Crutchfield for years, and when he went, there went an end of an era. An era that saw the first ever descriptive price list, and saw all kinds of great new herps coming in and actually marketed. Those wee good days indeed. A trip to Florida to go to the dealers was like a sojourne to Mecca ! I remember when the only get together we had was the Symposium, and everybody knew everybody, and when someone pulled out a really nice animal, everybodys jaw dropped !!! Then we oohed & awed, & were truely excited about that snake. It was more fun then that's for sure. We were truely in it for the love of the animals. We took a lot more pride in regards to our facilities too I think. Of course this was before you could make a living at it. Fortunatly, or unfortunatly, depending on how you look at it, it has grown into being what it is today. There are good points to it though, like availability to more species, but when something grows like our industry has, it's bound to get this way, with all the "instant experts" and such. We used to be proud to breed something that was difficult to breed, now people brag about breeding just anything. It's hard to walk the fine line between doing it for a living & also doing it because you really love the animals. Heck, I would love to just sit back & breed the heck out of all my animals, produce great stuff & just share with my friends, then just call a dealer & make one shipment. If that is what you want to do, there is nothing wrong with that at all. Remember though, it's kind of a name game anymore, because there are soo many folks breeding, you have to get out ahead & be on the leading edge. The real question is "do you like business"? For the simple enjoyment of pure business. Where else can someone without any college or formal training make a darn good living doing exactly what they love doing? I'm sure there are, but hey, a couple litters of $1000 albino boas and your making more money than most people have made that have ever lived on this planet !!! Beat that !!! And all you have to do is figure out a way to market your product that avoids all the idiots !!!
When you figure that out, let me know. Here's to the good ol' days, AND the good new days !
Paul Edwards

Hi Hoppy.

Just a couple of points ...

One of the many things the Internet does is allow anyone to do just about anything. And since there are so many sellers, the advice to "let the buyer beware" is even more critical nowadays.

Personally, I'm too old to fall for the nonsense -- I've been keeping herps since I was a kid in the 60's. I feel bad for the animals that are sold, traded, sold again, then traded, over and over. If they live at all it's a very rough existence.

As far as I'm concerned, I remember a post a while back from Bill Parks, I think, who showed us a photo of a truly bubble-gum colored Colombian boa baby that he had recently bought at a pet store.

In terms of clean and pink, this genuinely clean (yes, the sides too) and genuinely pink all over (yes, the top too) pet store boa blew the doors off of just about anything I've seen from anybody on the Internet, even the big names. And yes, it came from a pet store.

I agree with you that "nice boas" are given fancy names in the effort to jack up the price, and unfortunately, those who don't know better just might pay it. There were extremely nice boas years ago, too. No magic breeder's formulas, but rather, the day-in and day-out magic of nature.

There's really nothing we can do about all this, except to follow our own convictions. You should follow yours; I'm sure you'll do well and your rewards will be real.

Best wishes,

Bill