I live in a town with a little under 40,000 people, surrounded by about 10 - 15 smaller towns within about a 20 minute drive. There is one pet store in Cleburne, and it is pretty bad. They are not clean and the animals are of poor quality. Their dogs come from puppy mills or local mutts, that they sell for WAY more then you can get a decent registered animal. They have a small nice selection of birds that do look like they are taken care of reasonably well for a pet store. Their rodents look like they are taken care of but their back room smells terrible. Their fish are bad, if they aren't already dead in their over crowded tanks, they die within a couple weeks of getting them home. Their reptiles are under fed, infested with mites, and not even remotely kept in the proper caging, a normal BP sells for $175. The backs of their reptile cages are peg board like what you would use in your back yard tool shed, and an exposed 100w light bulb.

I want to open a small pet store in town, nothing extravagant just a clean quality pet and pet supply store. I only want to do reptiles and birds, there are enough places to go get dog collars and cat toys. I want to have your basic reptiles but I also want to have some nice morphs for sale. I wouldn't call it a "boutique" pet shop but I do want it to be a place synonymous with quality and people who care. I would rather have a smaller inventory with better quality then have a whole bunch of cheaply made crap.

So I guess my question is, would you rather go to a quality store that doesn't have the quantity or a quantity store that doesn't have the quality? I have to run for now but I'll get back on later and expound a bit.

Mike