Neptune Announces Its Merger with Bulk Reef Supply

vetteguy53081

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For those unaware . . . . . . .
Neptune Announces Its Merger with Bulk Reef Supply
Funded by Silicon Valley private equity firm, Bertram Capital, Neptune Systems and Bulk Reef Supply (BRS) are joining forces. The announcement follows the June 23rd acquisition of Marine Depot by BRS.
 

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Im confused by it tbh. Im not understanding the synergy here. I anything it appears to compromise their position in the market place.

Why? Their brand appears to me to built on the concept that they are selling 'good quality gear that they themselves would use in their tanks'. They dont care about which brand of gear they are selling, so long as it is good quality gear at a decent price point. Great - I get that brand strategy and I like it. They are supposed to be 'vendor neutral'.

Now they buy Apex/Merge with Apex - so now their neutral position is compromised. They are in bed with Apex. If they reccomend Apex gear (lets say future gear) - will I trust them? No - they are in business together through ownership. They cannot go against their own products (might even be Directory misconduct if they did) - so now they have lost their value proposition to me - I simply cant trust what they are reccomending to me, which was the original sell they built their brand on in the first place.
 

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Im confused by it tbh. Im not understanding the synergy here. I anything it appears to compromise their position in the market place.

Why? Their brand appears to me to built on the concept that they are selling 'good quality gear that they themselves would use in their tanks'. They dont care about which brand of gear they are selling, so long as it is good quality gear at a decent price point. Great - I get that brand strategy and I like it. They are supposed to be 'vendor neutral'.

Now they buy Apex/Merge with Apex - so now their neutral position is compromised. They are in bed with Apex. If they reccomend Apex gear (lets say future gear) - will I trust them? No - they are in business together through ownership. They cannot go against their own products (might even be Directory misconduct if they did) - so now they have lost their value proposition to me - I simply cant trust what they are reccomending to me, which was the original sell they built their brand on in the first place.
Pretty much my sentiments.
 

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If BRS remains completely impartial with their product recommendations I will not boycott BRS and their associated companies. This is smells fishy to me.
 

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Just my 2 cents. All retailers are Biased toward products they carry. The manufactures have ad dollars and special buys for retailers some more than others depending on the amount of units they sell ( more sales larger dollar amount ). I think the best information on products is still us the end users.
 
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vetteguy53081

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Although this can be exciting for the purpose of one stop shopping, I as a former pet retailer have seen a local company years ago do very similar and when the economy turned in 2008, their doors closed and so did access to many products.
My concern is :
- They’re moving very quickly with acquisitions
- They tend to back up certain products only
- companies like Apex offered exemplary customer service. Will they do the same or will this change?

I’ll stop here as I favor BRS and the rest remains to be seen
 
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ying yang

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I say good luck to them in their expanding business as thats what majority off businesses want to do.and i cant stop them even if didnt like it lol
Ive learnt alot from brs youtube videos so gratefull for that indeed.i never bought from them and doubt i ever will as dont live close but if i did and they had a product and cheap enough with good reviews and good customer service then i would continue to buy if used to before the mergers and lots of other sources for reviews if dont trust brs to make my decisions
 

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- companies like Apex offered exemplary customer service. Will they do the same or will this change?
countless others on this and other forums would strongly disagree with this statement…. Myself included…
If anything, BRS will help Neptune’s CS, because on their own, their CS has been terrible.
 

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Im confused by it tbh. Im not understanding the synergy here. I anything it appears to compromise their position in the market place.

Why? Their brand appears to me to built on the concept that they are selling 'good quality gear that they themselves would use in their tanks'. They dont care about which brand of gear they are selling, so long as it is good quality gear at a decent price point. Great - I get that brand strategy and I like it. They are supposed to be 'vendor neutral'.

Now they buy Apex/Merge with Apex - so now their neutral position is compromised. They are in bed with Apex. If they reccomend Apex gear (lets say future gear) - will I trust them? No - they are in business together through ownership. They cannot go against their own products (might even be Directory misconduct if they did) - so now they have lost their value proposition to me - I simply cant trust what they are reccomending to me, which was the original sell they built their brand on in the first place.

Couldn’t agree more with everything you said. It’s very true, (ex. With the BRS Facebook Group) if someone posts a product in the BRS group and asks for others opinions on the product. A member of the BRS team quickly comments about their disliking of the product and immediately everyone will agree (just b/c it’s a BRS team member).

In reality from how I see it, it’s because if BRS doesn’t sell the product they don’t want anyone to know about the product. That’s just my take on what I’ve seen.
 
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vetteguy53081

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I say good luck to them in their expanding business as thats what majority off businesses want to do.and i cant stop them even if didnt like it lol
Ive learnt alot from brs youtube videos so gratefull for that indeed.i never bought from them and doubt i ever will as dont live close but if i did and they had a product and cheap enough with good reviews and good customer service then i would continue to buy if used to before the mergers and lots of other sources for reviews if dont trust brs to make my decisions
Their shipping is quick and cheap- worth a shot
 

ying yang

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Their shipping is quick and cheap- worth a shot
Im in england so i think shipping costs would make it much more expensive than just buying from amazon or a cheap company here.
But what i see from brs you guys and gals in america are lucky to have them.they seem good company.
 

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You all are making “something out of nothing” must Be a pretty boring life. Go to bulk reef supply and go look up any product. Bulk reef supply has many of their “own” brands they sell labeled with their name. This is true for supplements they sell and products. Most of the time, the BRS product are just as good as some of the big name brands and dont need to pay wholesale fees, the product is cheaper.
 
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Forty-Two

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You all are making “something out of nothing” must Ben a pretty boring life. Go to bulk reef supply and go look up any product. Bulk reef supply has many of their “own” brands they sell labeled with their name. This is true for supplements they sell and products. Most of the time, the Bree product are just as good as some of the big name brands and because they don’t needs to pay wholesale fees, the product is cheaper.

I think you're misunderstanding my post. Im simply saying it confuses me. The marketing strategy and the marketing position doesnt make sense on the face of it. I would assume there must be a strategy or details that are unknown - hence the purpose of posting for discussion.
 

dmy535

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I think you're misunderstanding my post. Im simply saying it confuses me. The marketing strategy and the marketing position doesnt make sense on the face of it. I would assume there must be a strategy or details that are unknown - hence the purpose of posting for discussion.
Goes back to my comment then... they sell plenty of their own products, which I find better in quality most of the time anyways....and although they have their products to sell, they still do an excellent job pushing the other brands too not just their own
 

Forty-Two

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Goes back to my comment then... they sell plenty of their own products, which I find better in quality most of the time anyways....and although they have their products to sell, they still do an excellent job pushing the other brands too not just their own

You've made an excellent point with that observation - however I would argue what is unsettling consumers in this market segment is that there is a difference with this purchase and strategy.

Previously - they were selling in essence a 'no name brand'. In several of these areas, it was where there wasnt a strong market presence for a brand in the first place. For example - RODI filters, or the 16 bit hole saw drill kit. Im not an expert, but I couldnt list a specific RODI brand or hole-saw drill-bit brand that Im particular about. I just want something that works. This is a 'neither here nor there' area of decision making. Same for many of the low involvement areas of purchasing products for a reef tank.

However Aquarium controllers is a different game. Now we're in the area of high end electronics, and selling a key piece of tech for an aquarium - because it collects data. I would argue its in the area of pumps, flow, lights etc. Not only that - but BRS can start gathering and analyzing data collected from the cloud. Now they have a better way to market and sell products by using the data of Reef tank owners.

Not too many people care what a recommendation is on an RODI filter, as long as it works. Same with a drill-bit kit. Aquarium controllers, lighting, and pumps - this is a different market proposition. It appears that they are looking to not just supply, but corner the market on key pieces of gear that are critical to the running of a Reef tank. That starts to unsettle the market, and consumers start asking questions about what the intentions are.
 

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I wouldn’t be surprised if BRS sold so much of Neptune’s available stock that it was a cost cutting purchase. If they already sell tons of Neptune products and are in a way dependent on 1) stock from Neptune 2) the price of said products and 3) Neptune’s manufacturing and rollout of new products they just cut out the middleman on a product that they’ve pretty much already singlehandedly made the general public need and understand.
BRS is pretty much the only company that made operating an Apex easier. Plenty of customers purely use their videos as a resource when programming/ making adjustments. I have zero doubt that BRS is the reason Apex got so popular. It just makes sense that they capitalize on what they’ve built and now they can control quality and customer service much better alongside having such strong financial backing that they can order significantly larger batches further bringing costs down.
I expect BRS to buy out as many companies as they can that fall under one of two categories; 1) Companies that sell BRS 50%+ of their stock. These people cater to BRS because it’s their biggest customer so it would just make sense. 2) Companies that hold another aspect of the hobby that is important, of which it’s main product is a necessity in the niche. In other words, I think BRS will buy out a tank manufacturer. They sell a stupid amount of them as is and they have the warehouse capacity, a significantly better margin would bring in a lot of cash and would make eating freight on those purchases a smaller pill to swallow.
 

Forty-Two

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I wouldn’t be surprised if BRS sold so much of Neptune’s available stock that it was a cost cutting purchase. If they already sell tons of Neptune products and are in a way dependent on 1) stock from Neptune 2) the price of said products and 3) Neptune’s manufacturing and rollout of new products they just cut out the middleman on a product that they’ve pretty much already singlehandedly made the general public need and understand.
BRS is pretty much the only company that made operating an Apex easier. Plenty of customers purely use their videos as a resource when programming/ making adjustments. I have zero doubt that BRS is the reason Apex got so popular. It just makes sense that they capitalize on what they’ve built and now they can control quality and customer service much better alongside having such strong financial backing that they can order significantly larger batches further bringing costs down.
I expect BRS to buy out as many companies as they can that fall under one of two categories; 1) Companies that sell BRS 50%+ of their stock. These people cater to BRS because it’s their biggest customer so it would just make sense. 2) Companies that hold another aspect of the hobby that is important, of which it’s main product is a necessity in the niche. In other words, I think BRS will buy out a tank manufacturer. They sell a stupid amount of them as is and they have the warehouse capacity, a significantly better margin would bring in a lot of cash and would make eating freight on those purchases a smaller pill to swallow.


Ive realized its simply for the data. That's why they are buying Apex. Its a gold-mine if you're a retailer in this space.
 

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Aquatic acrobat in your aquarium: Have you ever kept an eel?

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