Starting My Own Aquatics Centre :)

[creeker]

OK, I hate to be a downer here, but I feel I must chime in. My background includes 10 years of managing fish shops, and 5 years of wholesaling to about 80 different shops each week. Everyone's ideas here sound great, but in reality some of them could doom a fish business from the start. First of all, you can specialize in certain species, but you must carry all kinds of fish to cater to the widest possible number of customers. Secondly, no one seems to care about anything but price on fish. With the big chains selling many types of tetras for $1 (including Cardinals), Dwarf Gouramis for $2, even Black Ghost Knives for $4.99, it is very hard to compete. They have the buying power of many stores, and wholesalers give them discounts based on the huge amounts of fish they buy. For instance, we gave a 20% discount to any shops that bought more than $500 per week of fish. Most of the smaller shops could not buy that much each week.
Most of the smaller shops I sold to struggled with paying their bills each month. They usually did not have as high a credit rating, so they had to pay c.o.d. or at best net 7 days, which meant either they paid when delivered, or they paid me the next week when I came to take a new order. It seemed like the only small shops that were successful were those that had multiple outlets. When Petco, Walmart, and Petsmart came into the picture, most of the small shops were forced out of business, and this was way before any recession. I'm guessing at age 20, your credit rating may be on the low end, just because you haven't bought that much on credit. This becomes crucial to running your business and keeping it stocked.
You mention that you will be the only one working there. Are you ready for 7 days a week, 12 hours a day of working in your shop? Even the most diehard fish lover will burn out after a while. You would have to have at least one other employee. Think about how time consuming some conversations about fish could be, leading up to the sale, and people waiting for service (no one wants to wait for anything these days.) Dealing with the general public is no picnic either. Just ask those on forum here that work in fish shops now.
If you are serious about wanting to try your own shop, I suggest you work in someone else's first. Get a feel for it, help the owner with his bookkeeping. Check out the profit and loss statements. Get to know the suppliers. Establish a rapport with them. This will benefit you if you do decide to start your own shop. I do like the idea that was proposed about you starting an online business from your home. Way less overhead and actual working time. You also might want to look into starting an aquarium maintenance service, but you would want to get caught up on marine fish keeping first. I wish you luck!

 

[MBOU]

I'm glad you said it first Creeker I was going to say pretty much what you did when I first saw the post but decided not to put a downer on it before anyone else replied

I love that everyone automatically thinks of "what would a customer want" when coming up with their helpful suggestions... but realistically, its going to be the LAST thing on your mind when you set up an aquatics shop...

You need to be thinking more:

Location - Where do you want the shop? Lot of passing custom? High Street? Is there parking? because if there isnt, you probably wont get customers... is there a local Pets at Home or Maidenhead Aquatics or any other local aquatic shops? If there isnt... do you know if there are any plans for there to be in the near future?

Shop - Have you found a shop? Do you own one? Will you be renting one? From who? How much will it cost you? Have you spoken to the council and lettings agencies to see what kind of costs are involved with renting shop space? Bearing in mind it has to be registered as a retail space, you cant just use any building....

Costs - Have you figured roughly what the rent is going to be? the electricity? Taking money out of the takings for yourself to survive? The cost of buying the initial stock! Furnishing the shop and no doubt decorating it a bit too!

Licensing - You will need a petshop license... for this, you have to have a qualification of some kind in animal care (I have a national diploma in animal care and apparently that would qualify). If you dont have a formal animal or aquatics care qualification, you can forget selling livestock until you do.... if you do... have you figured in the cost of getting the license and the inspections you will get?

Suppliers - Do you have any contacts? Have you worked out which wholesalers you will need to buy from to cover all your stock? Have you contacted them to see what costs are involved and what deals they do for new customers?

Equipment - What tanks are you going to have? The Casco units used by places at Pets at Home go for about £5,000 per bay! if not more... John Allan units arent much cheaper... even if you custom build systems, its going to cost you thousands! You cant really just set up a shop with a whole bunch of odd shapd second hand tanks dotted all over the place... What sort of set ups do you have planned? What about all the filtration? Because while some shops do have lots of tanks with internal filters in... it is just 100% NOT feasible to be water changing every single tank in the shop every single week when you work on your own. And realistically... internal filters dont allow you to stock a tank any heavier than you would if you owned that tank in your home. You couldnt put a bag of 100 neons in a 30L tank... So you need to consider the costs of running a system, using something like a pool filter. The pipework and the fittings, someone to drill tanks and create systems for you etc... Have you looked round other shops and talked to them about their filtration? A lot of shops would happily show you if you asked nicely...

Money - Even with the best business plan in the world covering all of the above and a lot more... the chances of you getting a business loan from the bank is pretty much not going to happen. So how do you intend to set up the business? I reckon for a reasonable sized shop (eg- small but not a poky cupboard of a shop) you are going to need upwards of £30,000 to set you up with initial rent, basic equipment, licensing (assuming you are qualified...) and some basic stock on your shelves... have to pay to buy a till and pay the companies involved for a PDQ machine...

And within a week you can add another thousand or so when you want to order more stock. And so on... then every quater, your electric bill alone will run into the thousands...

The pet shop license isnt going to be easy, you will have to have a lot of paperwork because you will need to record your water tests every day (a bummer if you have lots of individual tanks!), need to keep a record of the details of customers buying livestock and so many more very strict rules and regulations...

You will need to sort out all you taxes and registering as a business and all the such like.

To be honest... worrying about what fish you want to stock and whether to sell mature media or give it away... are such minor considerations its not even worth thinking about. Seriously...

That said... I wish you all the best luck..

 

[sadguppy]

Having just seen your response to someone in the coldwater section i'd also be worried that you don't understand the cycling process properly. I agree with the above, it's not something anyone can do. These days established shops struggle to make a living let alone someone new, inexperienced and who doesn't seem to understand the basics of cycling a tank.

Go to college, get that diploma and then see how you feel.

 

[dinsdale]

So, pretty much doomed then! It must be a nice feeling to be your own boss though. I wonder if you would still keep fish at home?
If you do take the plunge, I sincerely hope it works out for you.

 

[CezzaXV]

Some good advice so far. I'll add my little bit.

My mum owns a fruit and veg shop that also sells groceries. Now, this is food. Something that every human being without exception needs. She's taking approx £1250 through the till every week, and it's not really enough to keep her afloat. We're just about breaking even after rent, business rates and paying for the stock, and the only reason we're not pulling out of the shop is that while we're not making a noticeable profit, we do get our food from there which is something. If we can't make a profit with a food shop like this, I wouldn't consider opening a shop for something that would be considered a luxury good like fish.

I'm also not sure whether running a fish shop alone would be possible. LFS tanks are always way overstocked because they're not intended as a permanent home. My LFS is doing a water change almost every time I'm in there, no matter what time of day it is. I suspect they do them once a day and it takes hours. Obviously you can't be changing water and manning the till/giving advice at the same time. I guess the alternative would be to do all of that before you open or after you close, which would mean immensely long hours for you. Not doing it this often means you may be making your fish more susceptible to disease, and nobody wants to buy diseased fish.

My LFS has one guy who's always there, who I suspect is the owner. There's also another guy I see there often, and I suspect he is employed to do water changes and nothing else. Going by the size of my own tank, I'm going to guess most of the display tanks in my LFS are maybe 40-60L bar a few big ones for big species. There are maybe 30-40 of these tanks in there. Let's average it out and say he has 35 50L tanks, and he does maybe 80% water changes. That's 1400 litres of water each water change. I'm also suspecting that for such a high volume water user, the local water board aren't going to let him get away with being on rates. I imagine his water bill is huge. Not to mention all the water going to waste from his RO system.

 

[tomtomtom1230]

If it were me I'd just give filter media away for free, or for what it costs for the media, it'd allow you to build a better rapport with customers instead of profiting from it. A lot of new fish keepers can be quite ignorant when it comes to cycling and by charging them they'll presume you're taking them for a ride. Loyalty schemes are a good way of attracting new customers and keeping old customers too.

yeah i know what you mean there. however id someone is gunna buy a complete new set up from me and i educate them on the importance of mature media and so on. im sure they would be delighted to take a piece for £2.50 plus keeping mature media is more of a pain than it sounds. youd have to keep constantly replacing the media tyhat your selling and keep tabs on which ones are mature or not. plus the filter would have to be connected to a tank containg fish in, would make thew upkeep of that specific tank harder too!

Could you not overcome this by using a tray in two separate sumps? Sump one: the tray is full of new media, Sump two: the tray is full of matured media.

Just change over the newer media say, 4 or five weeks after it's been added to the water column. Just my 2 pence.

EDIT: By the way, sadly, this simply isn't possible without a HUGE budget for EVERY month, not to mention the rent for the shop. You'd need to be in a steady business that's pulling a lot of profit first to help fund this.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Here is what i can tell you- do not try it. You will in all likelyhood loose all the money you invest and suffer from sleep deprivation and no life befond the walls of your store until you finally give up.

I wanted to own a store in early my fish keeping days. My motivation was even less profit oriented than yours. I did not care if the store made a profit, I did not care if I personally made a penny. I wanted a store so I could have more tanks and fish. I had only one criteria for deciding if I would try it or not. that was I did not want to lose my initial investment which I estimated would need to be between $35,000 and $50,000. No matter how I crunched the numbers there was simply no way it was worth the tisk.

You will not sell a lot of hard goods as its almost impossible to compete with online vendors. You will never make it selling only fresh water t6anks fish. Salt water and ponds are where the money is. In fw the money is in the cheaper fish. You can get 500 tetras for 15 to 20 cents each and sell them at a 500%+ markhup.

When you sell live fish, your money is tied up in live inventory. It costs to keep it. If you have any disease issues and fish start to die, you are in big trouble. So perhaps the single most important skill you will need is an expertise in fish diseases and how to deal with them.

I know a number of folks who own fish related businesses. Most sell online out of their homes, some are breeder and/or importers a few are wholesalers. I know more folks who have tried and failed than have tried and succeeded.

My advice is a repeat of what was posted in terms of starting out selling online out of your home. The risks are much lower and hopefully you will be able to move up the learning curve. A second way to get started and one which can keep a newly opened store viable is yo develop a service business. You set up and maintain tanks in commercial locations (restaurants, offices etc). and the homes of wealthy folks who have tanks as decor not because they are hobbyists. This can serve as your cash flow cow when you first open a store. Usually these will be more sw than fw systems.

And then there is the actual business you will be in. You think it is fish care, but in reality it is marketing and sales (after beuing a skilled fish vet). Why would anybody buy from your shop? How will they know about it, what will folks know about you and your reputation in the world of fish? If you are not a well known fish person/breeder/etc. Why will folks seek out you and your store over any other option for getting what they want..

You want to be the sole employee. So three customers come into your store withing a few minutes. One newbie, one intermediate level fish keeper and one very experienced keep with multiple tanks and unusual fish. The newbie needs a ton of info and may or may not buy, the intermediate guy needs some meds and a few particular fish and the expert wants to talk about some expensive plecos and discus. Who will you deal with at the risk of having one or both of the others leave because they don't wish to wait and don't care about what you are telling the one you decide to talk with? And what do you tell the folks who know about online shopping and tell you they can get it cheaper?

If it sounds like I am trying to discourage you, it is because I am.

 

[deftuch]

Here is what i can tell you- do not try it. You will in all likelyhood loose all the money you invest and suffer from sleep deprivation and no life befond the walls of your store until you finally give up.

I wanted to own a store in early my fish keeping days. My motivation was even less profit oriented than yours. I did not care if the store made a profit, I did not care if I personally made a penny. I wanted a store so I could have more tanks and fish. I had only one criteria for deciding if I would try it or not. that was I did not want to lose my initial investment which I estimated would need to be between $35,000 and $50,000. No matter how I crunched the numbers there was simply no way it was worth the tisk.

You will not sell a lot of hard goods as its almost impossible to compete with online vendors. You will never make it selling only fresh water t6anks fish. Salt water and ponds are where the money is. In fw the money is in the cheaper fish. You can get 500 tetras for 15 to 20 cents each and sell them at a 500%+ markhup.

When you sell live fish, your money is tied up in live inventory. It costs to keep it. If you have any disease issues and fish start to die, you are in big trouble. So perhaps the single most important skill you will need is an expertise in fish diseases and how to deal with them.

I know a number of folks who own fish related businesses. Most sell online out of their homes, some are breeder and/or importers a few are wholesalers. I know more folks who have tried and failed than have tried and succeeded.

My advice is a repeat of what was posted in terms of starting out selling online out of your home. The risks are much lower and hopefully you will be able to move up the learning curve. A second way to get started and one which can keep a newly opened store viable is yo develop a service business. You set up and maintain tanks in commercial locations (restaurants, offices etc). and the homes of wealthy folks who have tanks as decor not because they are hobbyists. This can serve as your cash flow cow when you first open a store. Usually these will be more sw than fw systems.

And then there is the actual business you will be in. You think it is fish care, but in reality it is marketing and sales (after beuing a skilled fish vet). Why would anybody buy from your shop? How will they know about it, what will folks know about you and your reputation in the world of fish? If you are not a well known fish person/breeder/etc. Why will folks seek out you and your store over any other option for getting what they want..

You want to be the sole employee. So three customers come into your store withing a few minutes. One newbie, one intermediate level fish keeper and one very experienced keep with multiple tanks and unusual fish. The newbie needs a ton of info and may or may not buy, the intermediate guy needs some meds and a few particular fish and the expert wants to talk about some expensive plecos and discus. Who will you deal with at the risk of having one or both of the others leave because they don't wish to wait and don't care about what you are telling the one you decide to talk with? And what do you tell the folks who know about online shopping and tell you they can get it cheaper?

If it sounds like I am trying to discourage you, it is because I am.

thankyou its good to hear both sides of peoples opinions but i dont think its a fair statement to say i will fail! i mean whats the point in saying that? you dont know me and i am yet to have all the money i need, neither have i got the ball rolling yet so i still have plenty of time to plan things and get it right!

 

[MBOU]

TwoTankAdmin hit the nail on the head with the Tank Maintenance Service being in demand!! Every time a customer asks if we have a job available, i have suggested this.

We have business cards for 4 people doing landscaping/ponds, pond maintenance and tank maintenance. You have to be willing to at very least do pond maintenance during the summer or your work will suddenly dry up but there is a lot of money in the business!

But people here are charging about £35-£50 an hour for maintenance and people are paying it! Fairly affluent area however... but £20-£25 an hour is more than reasonable! And lots of people are having to turn away custom as they are too busy.

 

[deftuch]

Some good advice so far. I'll add my little bit.

My mum owns a fruit and veg shop that also sells groceries. Now, this is food. Something that every human being without exception needs. She's taking approx £1250 through the till every week, and it's not really enough to keep her afloat. We're just about breaking even after rent, business rates and paying for the stock, and the only reason we're not pulling out of the shop is that while we're not making a noticeable profit, we do get our food from there which is something. If we can't make a profit with a food shop like this, I wouldn't consider opening a shop for something that would be considered a luxury good like fish.

I'm also not sure whether running a fish shop alone would be possible. LFS tanks are always way overstocked because they're not intended as a permanent home. My LFS is doing a water change almost every time I'm in there, no matter what time of day it is. I suspect they do them once a day and it takes hours. Obviously you can't be changing water and manning the till/giving advice at the same time. I guess the alternative would be to do all of that before you open or after you close, which would mean immensely long hours for you. Not doing it this often means you may be making your fish more susceptible to disease, and nobody wants to buy diseased fish.

My LFS has one guy who's always there, who I suspect is the owner. There's also another guy I see there often, and I suspect he is employed to do water changes and nothing else. Going by the size of my own tank, I'm going to guess most of the display tanks in my LFS are maybe 40-60L bar a few big ones for big species. There are maybe 30-40 of these tanks in there. Let's average it out and say he has 35 50L tanks, and he does maybe 80% water changes. That's 1400 litres of water each water change. I'm also suspecting that for such a high volume water user, the local water board aren't going to let him get away with being on rates. I imagine his water bill is huge. Not to mention all the water going to waste from his RO system.

a clear and valid point. i would pay someone to take 2 or 3 hours of thier day to do water changes. preferably a school boy or girl. a good way to keep the wages down and give someone a bit of work experience

 

[tomtomtom1230]

I don't want to be a downer but agreeing with Sadguppy's previous post, you won't get very far at all if you don't get your head around the cycling process.