I used to give a lot of my plants and fishes to Choong Sua before it closes down. For me, it is a pity, because it is a very nice shop selling pretty unique fishes. The owner is also very generous, often sharing his cuttings and when he receives new plants, he will trade with me. Unfortunately, he couldn't meet his numbers, and have to shut down his shop.
My feel is that, it has become difficult for shop owners dealing in plant sales, but for fishes, it is still fine.
Let me give an economic twist to this argument. Most shops used to be able to enjoy some monopolistic competition advantage through product differentiation (ie. selling slightly varied plants) and by virtue of their proximity to individual clusters of planted hobbyist. With that, these shop owners tend still make some profit for plants.
With the proliferation of accomplished hobbyist being able to cultivate exquisite plants at negligible cost (since they keep these plants anyway), the hobbyist has come out as a low cost supplier, greatly suppressing the price (eg. various types of once exotic moss). Shops still largely receive their plants from farms, which means their unit cost is higher than the hobbyist. In addition, the willingness of hobbyist/fellow forummers to deliver reduce the shoe leader cost that might have given the friendly neighborhood fish-shop it once held advantage.
In my humble opinion, it is a change in market structure, due to ready supply at low cost. From a consumer standpoint, it is great. It is an economic phenomenon, which is difficult to stop. Depending on what you believe in: demand will create supple or Say's Law: Supply creates its own demand. Either way, this phenomenon looks set to continue.
My fear is, like pirated CDs, whose artiste are vehemently protesting against, the very lively online market which we pratronized may one day work against us by in that shops (which we are still very much reliant on for new plants) no longer wishes to take in new plants, because the cost to do so is high, but the duration in which they are able to earn abnormal profits are short. In the software world context, piracy hinders innovation.
For fishes, shops are still doing fine, because not many hobbyist has mastered breeding, hence the problem is less severe. There are still shops who made a pile selling fishes in vogue (eg. the infamous LH). However, as competition heats up with fellow fish shops, profit margin reduces. Also, just how many fishes can we keep! There is some saturation point in my opinion.
I used to think that there is one particular concentration of fish shops which seems to have some "cartel" arrangements and that they do not undercut each other. In contrast, at other places, we see 2 neighbors having price wars. Very interesting market I must say.
Just my 2 cents worth. Hope it didnt bore you
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Originally Posted by Justikanz
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