Help us fix our LIVE SALES!

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Which live sale format do you prefer?


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TopShelfAquatics

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So we have noticed a lot of debate on the topic of live sales lately. We wanted to give everyone the opportunity to help us decide the format for our next live sale. We will start a pole and you guys can let us know which one you prefer. There will be three possible format options and everyone can let us know which they prefer.

Option 1: Traditional live sale formatting. Corals get posted in batches of four to five pieces every five minutes or so. While this format does keep the action going steadily all throughout the day, it does require anyone trying to snatch up certain pieces to be on their computer or phone all day long.


Option 2: Flash sale formatting. A wide range of corals get dropped every hour on the hour. Doing the sale in this format allows customers to not have to be on their phone or PC all day long. You just get on right before the batch drops, check out with all the pieces from that hour that you wanted and then have the rest of the hour free before the next drop. However throughout the hour we also release heavily discounted or free corals for those who choose to stay.

Option 3: Same as option 2, but with drops every 30 minutes instead of hourly. Batches would be a little smaller and would keep the action going a little more steadily. Again in this format for those who choose to stay we will drop heavily discounted and or free pieces.

All of our customer's opinions are highly valued and we want everyone to have the best possible experience when shopping with us. It's all about everyone having some fun, posting some memes and getting some sweet corals at great prices! Also if you guys have any ideas that may help improve the over all experience please let us know, we would definitely love to hear them!
 

Cherub

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I only hate them because vendors hide most of their inventory for these live sales and try to pass them off as good deals. If it was a good deal then why can't I buy the bad deal on the website? WWC has 3000 corals for sale this weekend, but less than 20 acros on their website. I find this incredibly shady.
 
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TopShelfAquatics

TopShelfAquatics

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Is a more traditional model like putting everything on the site at once and letting customers shop at their leisure an option? I don't understand the live/flash/impulse stuff, my preference is to shop at those with accurate inventroy and fair prices :)

Our site is always loaded with pieces that you can certainly shop for at any time. Our inventory updates as the pieces sell out. And we regularly have traditional sales or offer coupons to get a little extra discount. This thread however is pertaining strictly to live sales.
 

PinHeadBunny

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I only hate them because vendors hide most of their inventory for these live sales and try to pass them off as good deals. If it was a good deal then why can't I buy the bad deal on the website? WWC has 3000 corals for sale this weekend, but less than 20 acros on their website. I find this incredibly shady.

Let's be honest, World Wide's online acro inventory is always abysmal at best. However I understand why when a company is prepping for a big sale they wouldn't make all of the inventory available. It would be a pretty boring live sale if it was only 100 pieces. I don't think it's shady, it's just smart business. I will say though Top Shelf generally had a solid online inventory most of the year. Yes the prices can be high at times, but I've snatched to some awesome deals during theirs and other companies live sales.
 

Cherub

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Let's be honest, World Wide's online acro inventory is always abysmal at best. However I understand why when a company is prepping for a big sale they wouldn't make all of the inventory available. It would be a pretty boring live sale if it was only 100 pieces. I don't think it's shady, it's just smart business. I will say though Top Shelf generally had a solid online inventory most of the year. Yes the prices can be high at times, but I've snatched to some awesome deals during theirs and other companies live sales.
I do have to disagree. Why would it be smart to sell their corals for "less" in a live sale? That is counter productive to sales goals. There are plenty of people who would just buy from a website and not deal with a live sale. Live sales are not a requirement to be a coral vendor and realistically their goal should not be to have live sales to begin with. Vendors useed to do this when they had an over stock on frags. WWC does this as just their standard business model. They have no interest on selling frags on their website or you would see the 3000 frags on there now.
 

jschultzbass

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TSA is generally one of the best places to buy from. I have a lot of their pieces bought from live sales and some direct from the website. As mentioned, their in-stock online inventory is the best out their. Just look at it! I like the dropping batches every hour myself. The problem I have is the live "sale" isn't really a sale. It's just corals posted with about normal if not still elevated prices than you can find anywhere else. The prices can be ridiculous. Take the ARC Fireworks. They are priced about double what most coral vendors are selling them for. And even when it's posted on a live sale (or even if you look right now they are on "sale") is still more expensive than pretty much every other coral vendor.
 

andrewey

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Hey @TopShelfAquatics ,

I wanted to give you kudos for getting feedback from the community! Even though I'm not your traget audience because I don't shop via live sales anymore, I appreciate a company that's willing to illicit feedback and make those participating even happier. Kudos to you guys!
 

PinHeadBunny

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I do have to disagree. Why would it be smart to sell their corals for "less" in a live sale? That is counter productive to sales goals. There are plenty of people who would just buy from a website and not deal with a live sale. Live sales are not a requirement to be a coral vendor and realistically their goal should not be to have live sales to begin with. Vendors useed to do this when they had an over stock on frags. WWC does this as just their standard business model. They have no interest on selling frags on their website or you would see the 3000 frags on there now.

It's smart for them in the sense that they move an incredible amount of inventory in just two days. As opposed to letting pieces sit on the site waiting for them to sell. The pieces can sit possibly grow and have to be refragged thus creating more work for them. I'm not saying it's great for customers, but from a business stand point it's very good for them.
 

tautog83

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Instead of doing them every 3 weeks , wait and actually make it a sale . As far as format I have 0 interest in sitting in front of my computer for 7 hours straight to lose the one or two frags I might actually want . Last "sale " you had a jkr rainbow acro for like 80 for a single branch and then a multi branch piece was $247 ...what? I love the quality but at least for me if you dont sell acros that are in the 50 to 75 range I dont even look. I know you do usually have some but you can only have so many garf bonsai or PC rainbows
 

Potatohead

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I dont have the time or patience for live sales. Maybe it's my 50plus age range. I'd rather just go to your site and get what I want.

Imagine if you had to do auction style at the grocery store. Up next... a 10 lb bag of flour! Only one we have today, 30% off!

;Facepalm
 
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TopShelfAquatics

TopShelfAquatics

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I dont have the time or patience for live sales. Maybe it's my 50plus age range. I'd rather just go to your site and get what I want.
This is one of the main reasons why we try to keep a healthy selection of corals on the site. We understand they're not for everyone but the people who do do them tend to have preferences on how they're run and we want to make sure they're taken care of as well
 

Copingwithpods

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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.
 
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TopShelfAquatics

TopShelfAquatics

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Imagine if you had to do auction style at the grocery store. Up next... a 10 lb bag of flour! Only one we have today, 30% off!

;Facepalm
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1589579799989.png
1589579799989.png
 

tsouth

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Choice number 2, followed by 3 - but I am very interested in trying out option 3. The last sale that was every hour was great, and it allowed the nice pauses in between to carry on with my day's errands.

To add fuel to the fire - I will say that I understand that TSA has overhead costs, marketing costs, rent, maintenance, etc etc. so the prices are what they are.

Do you think that if the livestock were set at typical live sale pricing at all times, that your turnover would increase so dramatically it would increase your income and outshine live/flash sales?
 

MelReefer

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@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
 

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