Price drops

[Mike Cavanaugh]

I've been producing and selling ball python mutations since 1997 ... Here are some of my thoughts on prices after doing this for 12 years.

Prices go down every year ... sometimes a little, sometimes a lot ... in the past I used to get really pissed ... now I accept that I have absolutely no control over it and I plan for as much as a 50%-60% drop each year on some mutations and adjust my business plan accordingly.

When I've priced my animals above market value I've been flamed and accused of ripping people off.

When I've priced my animals at market value I've been told that I'm being unfair to my customers and smaller scale breeders by competing with them directly and that I'm forcing them to drop their prices so that they can sell their animals and compete with me.

When I've priced my animals below market value I've been called a market crasher, scumbag, and price dropper.

After twelve years of doing this I've realized one thing ... no matter what you do, someone will be pissed off. I think some of it is jealousy, some of it is greed, and some of it is just that the internet seems to be a magnet for angry jerks.

I've put more money into this market than most people spend on their homes ... I got into lessers when the price was $40K, spiders at $10K, stripes and pins at $20K each and on and on and on. Shoot, I paid $5,000 for a het albino male 14 years ago.

I've made every single dime of that back and then some, even with people dumping prices on all of those projects year in and year out. I've done that because I had a sound business plan, a good marketing strategy, and I worked my a$$ off.

Something I like to tell people all the time is: "If the success or failure of your business revolves around how other people are pricing their animals, you've lost before you even started".

Love what you do, do it to the best of your ability, treat your customers well, and price your animals for what you feel is fair and reasonable ... and if anyone gives you poop for it ignore them.

Hope this helps.

-adam

I agree with everything you said here Adam.

This conversation as I see it though isn't about the normal dropping of prices that happens each year. It is more specifically about the people selling even way below the level of that normal, generally across the board, drop. Sure their has always been some people that do this, but lately there are a BUNCH of people doing it.

In other words, say spiders were $5,000 last year. Because of the economy and everything else, the average spice of a spider this year has dropped down to $4,000.

The $1000 drop is to be expected. It sucks, but just about everyone at this point in the game expects it to happen to a certain extent.

This thread though is more specifically about the people that see spiders have dropped to $4,000 this year and in order to dump their animals ASAP price them at $2,500.

Then someone else that sees the $2,500 add, who also wants to dump their animals obviously isn't going to price higher then the $2,500. So they match it or even go lower.

This vicious cycle that plays out every single day on queensnake.com is what is destroying this market and people are rightfully pissed off about it.