Who owns a lfs?

Exactly, Got Nailed. While I totally agree with Harlock's original reply, probably 90% of the business at our little pet shop was people coming in to buy their feeders (fish, rats, mice, etc) and their other pet foods. When a petco opens up across the street, you can't compete with their prices on that stuff and most people will go there, since it's just as convenient as coming to the little pet store. (or probably more so, since they have a gigantic parking lot to go with their gigantic store)

I'd never discourage anyone from opening their own business, all I'm saying is that to make any money at it, you'd have to limit your employees to just a couple and so you'd have to be there ALL the time. If that's your thing, great! But it sure wouldn't be for me....
 
Lol 2 times I think that’s been read wrong. I’m thinking about the people (were I live Sunday after church) that come in and get some fist to shut up there kids. You know the ones that know nothing about a tank but it holds water you put fish in it. You can spot them right out because there the ones that the post of you should of heard what some people were talking about at the PetCo the other day. I looked but could not find a post.

These are the ones that make it bad for the LFS.

As for the people coming in and getting feeder fish there good customers as long as you can get them in there a few times, they will keep coming back. That’s why I like the idea of starting a store around a fish club. There are plenty of younger kids that will breed those feeders for store credit, causing the price to be about the same as at a chain. I do like the idea of getting as much as you can from breeders in the community before getting them on the out side.

Come to Roanoke, VA and open one up. Give me a 2 months notice and I will breed all the Tetras you need but I don’t do the Neon’s, and “Blind cave fish”. I have been selling them to 3 local shops $13 a dozen. So there making .75 to $1.50 a fish. They know where there breed at because they come get them right out of my grow out tanks. I would love to start breeding more than just Tetras but there is only so much of a return on the time v/s money.

I do think if I can get a fish club going with a person like me in it someone in the club would make a killing of us.
 
i have only what I see around me to base this opinion on, but I'd have to say that the intorduction of wal-marts, petsmarts and petco's does not necessarily destroy "mom and pop" pet stores. I live in utah, in the salt lake area, and there are plenty of places for me to choose from. There are at least 4 petco's, 6 petsmart's and 10 wal-mart's within a 25 mile radius of my house. Even with all of this competition there are at least 6 good mom and pop type pet stores which are still in business. All have as good or better variety of fish than the large retailers and of these 6, 3 manage to survive selling fish stuff alone. Again this is in Utah... not really the biggest market in the country
 
I want to thank everyone for their input! I live in a small town and the store I'm thinking of opening is a small one too. Mainly fish oriented, I would sell other pet stuff like collars etc but concentrate on fish as being the main product.
I have worked in the customer service industry since I was 13 (12 years) and the entire town knows my name and I know all of theirs, I would never sell someone something that I know they couldn't keep. I've been keeping fish off and on for years but have only just become very serious with them in the last few months. It is something that I could do for the rest of my life.
I would only have myself and my sister as employees and feel that I could do it because I have only been on two vacations since I was born, so I wouldn't miss taking them at all!
I'll let you know how it goes if I do decide to go ahead, the main problem is that there isn't much shop space in my town - that is the first obstacle!
 
Does anyone remember "You Got Mail" where Tom Hanks' chain wiped out the 'Shop Around The Corner'? Unfortunately it is the way of the times. Any Canadians here remember Simpsons & Eatons? Chains based on service not discount. They're gone. I think it sucks and I think society isn't a better place for having Big Box stores.

However, there is still hope. Consider Big Als. A chain of near mega stores, but they are knowledgable and do care about the customer. Also, if you live in a small town, and the nearest good source is 2.5 hrs away, you've got a niche. Do some market research. If you can establish a decent client base without fear of encroaching discount stores, I say go for it.
 
There is no way any "cheap" stores will open in my town. We have a population of just over 2500 people - not many, but a lot of smaller towns are less than 30mins away, and they all have lfs or pet stores that do OK, what I plan on doing is way better than those ones so I am hoping to snag a few of their customers :)
 
I've found afew stores here in Wisconsin off of manufacturers web sites (i.e Marineland, All Glass). More often then not I've found more in the yellow pages while I was in a town. Unfortuantely most of them were out of buisness or I simply couldn't find them. Even after I bought a GPS map program for my laptop to use while driving out of town I still couldn't find many of them. One thing about opening a buisness that you should know, most go out within a year. Afew things that would affect that in a small town would be need, visibility, and advertising. You can't count on hitting the phone books white pages for a year like wise with the yellow pages even if you pay the extra for that. It sounds like there is already some compition in the area so you might not have as much of a market as you think. You could ask the local stores in an subtle way about how much they do in sales to get an idea if there is a serious market out there. You never know.

Now as far as cost goes, the buiness I manage shoots for 69.5% gross profit. In other words we make 69.5% more then we pay for our food. Take out cost of gas, electricity, water, franchise fees, employee wages, and any other operating costs including repair and maintenance and lease/loan for the property. I'm going with a ball park figure of arround 10-15% actual profit. So if you only do $1000 a month you can expect say $200 in profits at 20% actual profit that's $2,400 a year. $10,000 an month is $2000 at 20% with a more likely profit of $1000-$1500 a month which is $24,000 to $36,000 a year. That's $240,000 in sales a year. My numbers may be off but seriously think about it. If that's what you can expect for income in a year can you do it? Even after cost of setting up and openening the store? I hate to be a downer but that's buisness. I have never worked in a pet store so who knows maybe they are more profitable. Anyone know what percent profit some of those ma and pa stores have? Heck even the big chain stores if you know.
-Neo Sithlord
 
What I can't honestly understand is what is with the HUGE markup LFS stores put on their accessories.
I USED to be on fairly friendly terms with the owner of one here where I live. I have this inner desire to want to frequent local mom and pop stores when it comes to buying retail items, but there comes a time when you just have to do what is fiscally responsible.
I mean, ****, when you go into a fish store where you've bought nearly every fish you've got and you want to buy a new filter or something and its 4 or 5 times the price you can pay online you just have to wonder.
If you believe what they say, they pay more wholesale for their equipment than I can get it for online!!!!!!!
I've always thought that a supplies only LFS would be the way to go. That or have your fish marked up high and your supplies marked low.
 
Fish and pet stores are massive around where i live. i have 9 locally owned stores within 30minute drive from my house. then there are 3 large 'pets at home' stores and a large 'ripples' and stapley water gardens, again all within 30minute drive.

but with all this competion one hasn't closed down yet and what ever time off day i go into any of the stores they are packed with people.

my dream job would be to own a fish store which has it's own show aquariums like the sea life centres, so people pay to see all the show tanks, marines, cold and tropical freshwater and sharks etc. then they can see how fish look fully growen how they should be kept etc, before buying anything.
 
A couple of ideas...

Don't know how much help this is to people who want to open LFSs in small towns but my local LFS in London is a very healthy business due to the fact that they have a very good rep and excellent staff, but also they provide these two extra services i suspect are very profitable:

First they have many of the local offices on account and run a maintenance service cleaning and selling tanks and fish all over the local area. As it's in the heart of London it has plenty of offices that want fishtanks but don't have time to maintain them. There's 3 tanks in my building alone.

And second they provide temporary set ups for funtions. I saw Jodie Kidd in there a couple of months ago arranging to get giant goldfish bowls on pillars lining the sides of a wedding reception.
 
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