Price Isn't Everything

[Washout]

Selling spiders cheap is the same as Wal-marts clearance aisles, overstock that needs to be sold to make room for new stock.

Oh man now your stepping in a big pile of <bleep>. Wal-mart and its business practices are horrible for everyone. Those kinds of practices cause a lowering of prices for the manufactured goods, thus setting off a ripple effect that then lowers the wages of the people making the goods, and at the same time lowering the pay of their own employees and lowering the overall quality of life for everyone involved.

Because wal-mart touches so many industries they cause a gigantic domino effect. That can eventually lead to many bad things happening to whatever they touch.

In theory super cheap spiderlings do the same thing to the spider market. You get less money for them so people become unwilling to breed them because it's not economically viable anymore. If it is true that the big breeders keep species going then anything they don't breed may be apt to disappear from the hobby.

However even saying all that the industry is probably still too new to know what happens when a big breeder stops breeding something like OBT's, curlyhairs, or Brazilian Salmon Hairs that easily produce tons of slings. And as far as I can see dealers still offer these species for sale and breed them occasionally.

 

[Wade]

However even saying all that the industry is probably still too new to know what happens when a big breeder stops breeding something like OBT's, curlyhairs, or Brazilian Salmon Hairs that easily produce tons of slings. And as far as I can see dealers still offer these species for sale and breed them occasionally.

If the big breeders stopped breeding or selling these species it would have little or no effect on their availability, because all the private hobbyists will continue to breed them and sell/trade them to each other. It doesn't take a full-time "professional" breeder to breed these species. I believe that most of these species being sold by the full-time breeders originated with hobbyists even now, after all why take time away from more lucrative projects to breed them when you can buy them in large numbers VERY cheaply from a private hobbysist who suddenly finds him/her self overloaded with thousands of spiderlings with no means to sell them?

Many aspects of the T hobby/business can be compared to other businesses, but some cannot. If I choose between buying a TV from walmart or from a local dealer, the transaction ends there regardless of how I choose. I can't use my TV to go home and start making more TV's and sell them back to the market! You CAN do that with T's however, and I think this has had a big impact on the market. I think dealers are already focusing more and more on the high end (meaning the harder to get species) and less and less on the low and middle level species, and leaving that market more to the private individuals. They may continue to carry those species to some degree, just to balance out the list so they have something for everyone, but they won't depend on them to keep the business going. This will tend to make dealer prices to be much higher than prices from private individuals, but then again the dealers will have the species the private individuals don't.

Long-term, however, anything could happen. If enough desireable species prove challenging to breed, prices on them will remain high and the dealers will continue to have a niche for themselves. If most species become bred widley among the private hobbyists, however, this could result in a marketplace dominated by trading or selling cheaply, leaving little room for the professional dealer. I'm not going to get into the question of wether or not this is good or bad.

Just some speculation from a private individual!

Wade