Help us fix our LIVE SALES!

[TopShelfAquatics]

Option 4 : the first hour of the live sale post all the corals on your website.

I appreciate the thread it shows you are actually listening but this isn't about fixing the live sale shortcomings it's just asking us how often we are willing to hit the refresh button.

In way less words

How often are you guys willing to refresh during a live sale

A: Every 5 minutes
B: Every hour
C: Every 30 minutes


What we don't want to do is spent 8 hours shopping for corals weather that's 30 minutes at a time or 5 minutes at a time. We want to go to any website and find more than 80 wysiwyg frags so we can log in, pick our corals out and be done in 20 minutes.

While we understand that live sales are not for everyone, we have a lot of customers who truly enjoy live sales. It has become more than just sitting there waiting for corals. A lot of people have friends that join in and they can converse all day about reefing, brag about the pieces they snatched up and get some amazing deals. We keep our website pretty well stocked for the most part. Also if we dropped everything at once chances are a handful of people would get all the freebies and cheap pieces. It wouldn't really be fair to others.

 

[TopShelfAquatics]

@TopShelfAquatics i thank you for hearing the community but I agree with some of the others here. I just don’t understand why live sales have to be a priority. Since everyone is doing them right now and they are getting a lot of hate why don’t you guys just not do them and post all your stock on the website. Think about it. You would be the only big company that has so much on their website. You would draw in all these people that are sick of refreshing and make bank. Personally if there was a vendor out there that didn’t hold back their stock and posted all they had that’s the only place I would buy from as long as prices were fair

The stock issue isn't something that generally applies to us, we have anywhere from 350-600 corals on our site at any given time for people to choose from and it never falls bellow 300 unless directly after a live sale. If we were to have say, 1200 corals on our site there would be some issues:
1) Thats an incredible amount of work
2) There would be several repeated corals which we try not to do very much. I try to max out at 5 of the same coral on the site at any given time.
3) We are mostly an aquaculture facility. This means we rely on growth to have corals available. Having that many frags at any given time severely depletes our colonies and that leads to one of two outcomes; standards are ignored to get new corals into the systems OR we have long periods of time without having particular corals. Neither of those are options for us.

 

[AZMSGT]

Nothing worse than sitting at the computer for 6 hours and you can only buy 3 of 8 things you want. When I go to the store, I buy what I want and move on. These sales waste my time and disrespect me as a consumer. They are made for people who can click quick and those of us that can’t are up the creek.

 

[IKD]

There’s clearly enough audience/demand to keep doing them (700+ people on the WWC live sale). If it’s not of interest, then show your vote by not attending or buying. There’s plenty of corals to buy from every day on TSA or other vendors. This is just one method for selling. No one makes you go shopping on Black Friday either (unless you have a wife like mine LOL)

 

[IKD]

Dup post

 

[Copingwithpods]

While we understand that live sales are not for everyone, we have a lot of customers who truly enjoy live sales. It has become more than just sitting there waiting for corals. A lot of people have friends that join in and they can converse all day about reefing, brag about the pieces they snatched up and get some amazing deals. We keep our website pretty well stocked for the most part. Also if we dropped everything at once chances are a handful of people would get all the freebies and cheap pieces. It wouldn't really be fair to others.

Although I disagree with all of that I do appreciate the fact that you guys keep your site pretty stocked up on a regular basis compared to other vendors who usually don't have more than 80 in stock at a time. There are actually a few pieces currently up on your site I'm eyeballing.

 

[wrasse man]

I personally couldn’t think of a worse way of spending a spring/summer day or any day for that matter behind a computer hitting f5. No thanks. Post’em up on your site and throw a sale once in a while. Live sales do nothing more than gin up a race for that “ooooohhh its the super special unobtainium for an inflated then discounted price coral!”

 

[Dvanlier05]

Being from Chicago I dont mind the all day sales during the winter. Now that its getting warm out, the hourly drop was great last sale. I could jump on to look at corals and then go back to my weekend till the next drop.

 

[Jeff Jarry reef]

Live sales are a blast to me if I win or don't win the coral I'm trying to get. Thank you TSA !!!

 

[jsvand5]

Why not just dump all of the corals at the live sale price on your site at once? Then people would have more of a realistic chance to get what they want without wasting all day in the hopes that you can click through check out faster than everyone else.

 

[kevin_e]

I would love to just go to a website on my own time and buy reasonably priced coral. I can buy a lot of acros, many of which are high end, for $15-50. Not everyone has that luxury and are being taken advantage of. Coral vost are so ridiculous and I cant believe the market is allowing it.

 

[CoralManz]

flash live auctions with buyout options

 

[Copingwithpods]

Why not just dump all of the corals at the live sale price on your site at once? Then people would have more of a realistic chance to get what they want without wasting all day in the hopes that you can click through check out faster than everyone else.

In short because shopping at your convenience gives you too much time to change your mind. Now throw a couple hundred people in a pot all looking to score those same corals and now, well, now you either buy it or lose it no time to think. Great sales strategy really.

 

[The District Reef]

Traditional live sale with 4-5 pieces dropped at once is my vote.

 

[__Jreef__]

I like the one hour format but can't be online all day however I check from time to time - recently I just wait until the sale is over and use the extra discount code for any leftovers what I like at fair price.

On the last sale I just ended getting one Acro but that's ok it's a nice piece and I'm happy to finally scratch this one from my I want list.

I also want to mention the TSA VIP discounts via txt are a good idea but I wish I can see more of these more often when they're not live sales.

Thank you @TopShelfAquatics for asking for our feedback ;Happy

 

[131696]

Get them off this site ,put them on there main site and on sale all at once.if they put 10 corals an hr on this site there gone before you even get a chance.no more live sales on this site They don’t work.or if you do put them all at once on sale at the same time

 

[131696]

Yea look at WWC they are big but they losing alot of money.you see pics of WWC stores corals everywhere beautiful corals but you go to there site they have very few there.there on eBay auctioning. wish they just set a price and sell it faster On there site. And move a lot more corals that way.I don’t even bother with auctions either waste of time.if I want something I don’t want to fight for it everytime.Put everything on there main site everything and sell it all at same time.

 

[JustPoprocks]

I’ve always been intrigued by a sale with nothing but packs.

Maybe drop a few packs every hour with your free or heavier discounted one ($5 frags and such) throughout the hour along with swag.
Some people could just by one pack and be good instead of only buying one coral and spending a to on shipping and sitting around all day.

 

[131696]

1 million subscribers here going for 1 coral.not right in my book.hobby is better then that give everyone the same chance at getting what they want .put it on main site a lot better that way .you would have less do that way if put all on sale at same time everything.come back Monday and start filling orders.then picking which corals you want on this time to put on this site that’s to much trouble also for you.get My point I hope .let the gamblers go gamble on eBay and fight for corals there but not here anymore.

 

[thaistalyn]

I'd like to include another idea/twist that tries to eliminate the issue with 8-12 hours of sitting in front of the PC refreshing for a live sale.

I'm sure @TopShelfAquatics team plans the live sale with pricing and inventory that will be dropped throughout the process. Why not provide a listing of coral that will be dropped by hour or half hour and mix in the "flash items" as sleepers in the list. That way you can plan your day ahead of time to pick the hour or couple of hour slots where you set up your popcorn, your favorite adult beverage, and send the wife or girl out to get her nails done!!