Why We Are Idiots For Using Kingsnake.com To Price Our Animals

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Originally Posted by PythonWallace

Your post doesn't hold water.

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Of course it does.

Let's use your TV analogy. I may want a 52 inch plasma but am not willing to pay more than $x,xxx for it. That means I have to buy a lesser brand name or wait for a sale or both. Plasmas were selling in the tens of thousands of dollars at one point; now they're much more afforable.

I want another BP and I have an idea of the qualities I want to see in it. I also have a price point that I'm willing to go up to. For me, not being a breeder or even an avid collector, I can wait years for everything to align and get the snake I want. Some people can't wait, for whatever reason, or don't want to, so they'll have to pay what the market will bear now. There are many more willing to wait or that have to wait because of finances than impulse buyers with money to burn, especially in this economy.

My point is that, depending on who you are and what you have to offer, you may not get the price you think you should just because a few people got together and made up a "Suggested Retail Price" list.

As the seller you have the option to wait years to get your full price. Or you can take a few dollars less and move on. It's all up to you.

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Originally Posted by JohnNJ

Of course it does.

Let's use your TV analogy. I may want a 52 inch plasma but am not willing to pay more than $x,xxx for it. That means I have to buy a lesser brand name or wait for a sale or both. Plasmas were selling in the tens of thousands of dollars at one point; now they're much more afforable.

I want another BP and I have an idea of the qualities I want to see in it. I also have a price point that I'm willing to go up to. For me, not being a breeder or even an avid collector, I can wait years for everything to align and get the snake I want. Some people can't wait, for whatever reason, or don't want to, so they'll have to pay what the market will bear now. There are many more willing to wait or that have to wait because of finances than impulse buyers with money to burn, especially in this economy.

My point is that, depending on who you are and what you have to offer, you may not get the price you think you should just because a few people got together and made up a "Suggested Retail Price" list.

As the seller you have the option to wait years to get your full price. Or you can take a few dollars less and move on. It's all up to you.

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It holds no water. Of course plasma t.v.s, and ball pythons are going to drop in price over the years. There's no disagreement there. That's what happens. The supply of ball python mutations increases every year with more breeders producing them, and the price goes down. No problems there. The technology for plasma t.v.s becomes less costly to produce them, the supply increases, the demand for the high end first generation models disappears, because that market has already bought their plasma, and the prices start to drop. No problems there.

Here is where your friends' theories don't hold water. This is important, and I wish more people had this understanding.

For argument's sake, let's say you have three breeder friends who's strategies are to under cut the market prices a little bit, so they can sell out quickly and try to make the difference back in other ways. Let's also use lessers as an example here. In 2008, friend #1 sees that the market price of a lesser is $1,000, so he goes on kingsnake and offers his for $900 each. Two weeks later, friend B hatches his lessers and goes on Kingsnake to see what lessers are selling for. He sees that this guy is selling lessers for $900, so he advertises his for $800, so people buy his before they buy from friend A. Friend C hatches some lessers a couple of weeks later and does the same thing. He wants to offer his a little lower so people will buy his first, and prices his at $750. By the end of the season, all three are advertising their remaining lessers at $700. In the mean time, every potential customer who has seen any of these ads are calling around trying to get breeders to price match all these other breeders selling lessers for hundreds less than the average breeder has his prices set at, and to try and be at least somewhat competative, the market prices now becomes $750.

Now, the backwards thought processes of these three breeders have now reduced the actual market price from $1,000 each to $750 each in one season, and of course the lessers hatched a full season later must be cheaper than the '08 closing prices, so the season kicks off with a market price of $600-$650 for a lesser. These guys, along with all the bargin hunters they sold to, start the process over, and the market prices crash further and faster.

So in reality, these guys are selling their lessers this year for $500, and counting $100 losses per animal, from the now $600 market price, when in reality they should be subtracting the $500 sale prices from the $800 a lesser would cost this season if they hadn't hacked up the market in the previous years. If they each sold 10 lessers a year fo '08 and '09, they would have each lost about $4,500k - $6k, just on the 2 seasons worth of lessers. Of course they don't have the mental capacity to see how detrimental their strategies are to themselves, much less the ball python market as a whole, so they mark it off as a few hundred dollars and figure they saved that in rodents and extra rack space. Instead of shooting themselves in the feet and bottoming out the market, they could have taken a fraction of that $5k or so they forfeited, and paid for some advertising, maybe filled up the gas tank and splurged on a table at a few shows, and taken out some google ads or something, then sold out quickly at market or above market prices, and had a few thousand dollars extra in their wallets. All the while, their names and companies are now out their being advertised, and the lesser market starts of in '09 at $800 for the rest of us.

That brings me to my final point. You said that if they don't under cut the market, they have to hold onto their animals for a couple extra years before they sell. If your friends are have been forced to "wait years to get full price", then there is no doubt that at least one of three things is going on with them.
1. They are producing ugly examples of the morphs they are working with.
2. They have bad customer service, or don't get back to potential customers quickly enough, causing potential customers to look elsewhere.
3. All the tons of people who are looking for the animals they are working with can't find your friends.

2008 was my first year breeding, and I sold out with zero paid advertising, practically zero free advertising, and with high end market pricing. I know plenty of other breeders, small to huge scale who do the same. I don't want anyone to be able to tell anyone else what they should charge for anything. It just really bothers me that this industry is filled with people who are too stupid to understand that the demand is there to sell out at market prices, and that by constantly under cutting market prices they are hurting themselves exponentially more with every year that passes, as well as the rest of the breeders who are smart enough to understand this simple idea. I know we can charge market prices, or even higher than market prices if we choose to, but we can't realistically charge what these animals are worth when there are so many idiots destroying the market in the never ending cycle I described above.

I don't know enough about the BP market to argue your point. Maybe the idiots you refer to would like to take a shot.

As I said, from a buyer's perspective, I can wait it out until I'm comfortable with the deal. The seller should be able to do the same, whatever that deal is.

Since you, and "plenty of other breeders", can command high end market prices and sell out without a problem, what exactly is the point of this thread? Set your prices where you feel comfortable.

Maybe we can do business someday. :gj:

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Originally Posted by JohnNJ

I don't know enough about the BP market to argue your point. Maybe the idiots you refer to would like to take a shot.

As I said, from a buyer's perspective, I can wait it out until I'm comfortable with the deal. The seller should be able to do the same, whatever that deal is.

Since you, and "plenty of other breeders", can command high end market prices and sell out without a problem, what exactly is the point of this thread? Set your prices where you feel comfortable.

Maybe we can do business someday. :gj:

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Like I said, we can price our animals at what ever we want to, as we all should be able to do, but we can't realistically price our animals at the prices we should be getting when all the under cutters have rolled the market prices down to a small fraction of what they should be. If the lesser market prices are $600, we can maybe charge $800 and still make sales, but that doesn't change the fact that most of these breeders probably paid well over $2,000 for their breeding stock, and would be able to charge a par market price of $1,500 or so right now, and rightfully so, if the undercutters hadn't bottomed out the market over the last 2-3 years.

The under cutters are the ones setting the bar for pricing in this industry, for some ridiculous reason. Breeders who care about the well being and health of their animals, and who won't ship them out before putting on some weight and being sure that every hatchling is an established feeder that will thrive in the average customer's care are the ones who are taking it in the eye, as are the idiots who are collapsing the market, but I feel a little less sympathy for the latter.

Like I said in a previous post, I've bought pastels every year since '06. I only have 1.2, but paid $1,400 for them, knowing that the market would be about $100 by the time I hatched any. These are beautiful animals, as well as ingredients to some of the most amazing creatures on earth, and they will always be in high demand. There is no reason for them to be under $500, ever. I guarantee that every breeder would sell out of female pastels for the next 2-3 years if they were still $600 for females across the board.

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Originally Posted by neilgolli

Below is a post that I made on this topic almost 2 years ago on Ralphs board.
Here is a link to the orginal thread

http://www.ralphdavisreptiles.com/fo...74&whichpage=1

My post is made on page 5.



Posted - 06/27/2007 : 12:13:31 PM
This industry is different than most, joe blow cannot walk into best buy, purchase a few items and then next year be shooting tvs out their rear end. People are not prepared for the work or care thus need to move their product and are afraid they will never be able to sell their product next to the big boys so they must drop their prices, it takes a little intestinal fortitude to run any business and most people just don't have what it takes to actually be successful.

The other enormous problem is that people want to look at this as a business, want to make their money back but don't want to spend money to sell their product. No offense to KS but people who want to sell 10, 20, 50 ,100K worth of animals and only want to spend a $100 a year for their marketing budget on KS are the ones who complain the most about stagnant product who drop their prices because its not moving. Within weeks they'll drop their price $500 but would never think of dropping $500 on a banner, some business cards and a table at a show where they can display all of their product rather than just discounting a single animal to make it go away.

On the other hand the guys that do spend the money to go out and find new customers, often go about it terribly wrong. They have one bad show or don't sell anything at a tiny show and give up, feeling its pointless when in reality people want to buy from people they are comfortable with. They want to see your name on KS and other sites, they want to see you at a few shows know your going to be around and if your sitting behind your table with a stick up your butt, your arms crossed and frustrated who in their right mind would want to buy from you.

This business is literally what you make it. You want to wholesale your product you can, you want to make an extra $10,000 a year or literally a million a year, its entirely possible, but its a business, a new business and its a hell of a lot of work. There is absolutely no better way to make a living in my opinion than what we do however you have to fight for it and work damn hard.

I completely sell out every year without any trouble and do very little trading, I'm not afraid to hold onto my animals and dont care what others sell their stuff for, I get what they are worth to me. I sell some early and I sell a lot at the end of the season at 300 - 500 grams, by then many are out of stock, the whores have run out and come November I normally get the prices that in September people thought I was crazy for asking.

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Excellent post Neil!

The drastic price drop is rediculous. Even considering the increase in supply there has never been a shortage of demand. Prices should naturally drop but not to such drastic degrees. When a market becomes saturated with a product then a dramatically lower price is expected. This is not the case with the ball pythons. I know of no breeders, large or small, that have a surplus of animals sitting around that they can not sell at a decent price. They sell every year, thus the demand is still there. Certain morphs have dropped dramatically; Yellow-bellies, pastels, pinstripes, etc. There is really no justification for the prices dropping from $1500 plus two to three years ago to $150-$300 today. These are key ingrediants in making some amazing animals and are building block mutations. They will always be in high demand. I know a several breeders that are happily keeping all female yellowbellies and pastels because they are not willing to part with them for the "current market price" of $150

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Originally Posted by toddmbecker1234

The drastic price drop is rediculous. Even considering the increase in supply there has never been a shortage of demand. Prices should naturally drop but not to such drastic degrees. When a market becomes saturated with a product then a dramatically lower price is expected. This is not the case with the ball pythons. I know of no breeders, large or small, that have a surplus of animals sitting around that they can not sell at a decent price. They sell every year, thus the demand is still there. Certain morphs have dropped dramatically; Yellow-bellies, pastels, pinstripes, etc. There is really no justification for the prices dropping from $1500 plus two to three years ago to $150-$300 today. These are key ingrediants in making some amazing animals and are building block mutations. They will always be in high demand. I know a several breeders that are happily keeping all female yellowbellies and pastels because they are not willing to part with them for the "current market price" of $150

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and i will be one of those,if i am going to get screwed on prices,then it will be combos and higher priced animals atleast:)

A bit of relief for those of you concerned about plummeting ball python prices: I think that current breeders of quality animals know that they can set their prices well above what the poor quality breeders are charging and still sell. Take a page out of their book.

For those of you who are worried about your "investments" (I hate calling snakes "investments", they're living creatures for goodness' sake) going bad, don't worry. Focus on breeding true quality animals and provide premium customer service. There is still room in the market for expensive top-of-the-line examples of morphs.

Be Rolex, let the undercutters be Timex(or whatever analogy works for you).