!!!SO I’VE BEEN THINKING!!!!

[Braves Fan]

Personally,,, if I were you,,, and I wanted to expand my business into another type of coral,,, I would pick a coral,, a coral where there is a void in the market,,, so to speak,,, a coral where you wouldn't be competing with every other vendor and back yard vendor out there,, a coral where you could eventually work your business into the "go to guy " for this coral,,, Chalices

I know,, slow growing,,, but you have to look at what other vendors are selling,,, importing wild colonies,,, chopping them up,,, most vendors have a few token chalices for sale on their web sites,,, I know back in the day,, I saw video's of Jason Fox's chalice tanks,, but look on his site,,, very few chalices to had,,, it would take some time to acquire enough frags ,, grow them out to fragable colonies,,, nothing worth doing is easy,,, in the long term ,, might be a good investment,,, we all see coral swings in this hobby,,, Mushrooms are hot today,, but I think,, not for much longer,, when you start asking $900 for a mushroom,,, the end is near ,,, tomorrow something else,,, at some point ,,, chalices will be hot again,,, if you are ready for it,,, have the stock in your tanks,,, have plenty of chalices that can be fragged,,, or maybe I am wrong lol

 

[Husker]

In my opinion, I think you would have to be careful about how this impacts your brand. Battlecorals is one of the strongest brands in aquacultured SPS. I think this is mostly linked to you in your expertise, experience, and success with SPS, which gives you credibility when reporting the colors, growth rates, and ease of care of certain frags. This ties in well with your personality and eagerness to be helpful to customers. Sometimes spreading yourself too think can weaken the strength of that brand. Just something to consider (and this is from someone who has a connected Soft coral tank to my SPS tank).

 

[Gablami]

I agree with the comments that recommend that you stick with SPS. Instead of diluting your time and work into all the other types of coral, I think you should focus on DOMINATING sps. You should be THE acro guy that everyone buys from. WYSIWYG is a great idea. Larger frags, cheaper prices, best corals! Use that 11' x 4' to grow more SPS. I've seen it in my field, you need to have a niche and a specialty. Lots of people can sell mixed reef corals (and lots do), but you should work to constantly widen the gap between you and your competitors in acropora. Then you will dominate forever and embody the name BATTLECORALS!!!!!

 

[Second Shot]

Think it would be pretty nice to have you offering maricultures/wild that maybe you held on to a bit longer than most to get them used to aquarium life. These could be the start of your wysiwyg.

 

[Battlecorals]

Some really good points being made here. I defiantly agree that there is the potential to dilute the brand with a move like this. Everyone's got "bread and butter" corals, and I think the lines between hobbyist and vender are getting pretty blurry as it is these days too lol. Another double edge sword I think. Especially for the sps vendor. As sps have become easier to keep and maintain, so has the amount of people keeping them. The customer base grows, but so does the amount of vendors. A lot of them come and go, but some manage to pull it off. I feel extremely fortunate that I have managed to find myself in the later category,but still take each day in stride, and take nothing for granted, As I am fully aware that my entire collection could be wiped out in an instant. Knock on wood

I am really listening to your guys here. I guess it still all comes back to keeping a thriving stock of captive sps healthy enough and in a great enough supply to keep the train moving. I'll be quick to admit I'm back on the fence now for sure with this decision. This is a transition phase here at Battle central with the move and all, and I have been rapidly collecting new sps specimens since the new shop was rolling, so I've got a trove of luscious gems coming down the pipe. As was started before, that's how I do this, and ultimately how my brand has established its hold over the last 8 years now. Captive sps is the long game. That's one thing I'm sure of. Well you guys have got me thinking a little harder now. The last thing I want is big tank full of coral I can't sell. Especially if those could be acros in there instead!

Again, I cant thank you all enough for the open an honest dialog.I really appreciate the comments and input. It's very true, my ultimate goal from the start has always been radiate my own passion for these specific corals, an effort to provide the Finest sps available. Perhaps my focus should remain where my own interest are the strongest.

 

[Brew12]

I do like the idea of you branching into more than just SPS. I would also love to see you expand your SPS collection and variety.

I think you should try to offer high quality, harder to find beginner corals. You could even open a new section called "Battles for Beginners". It seems like people are always searching for pulsing xenia, neon green finger leathers, candy canes that aren't just neon green. I don't know how, but it can even be hard to find green slimers and basic monti caps and in a variety of colors. I'm sure there are plenty of other harder to find introductory corals you could market. Use these corals to teach new hobbyists basic care and husbandry with an end goal of helping them transition to your designer acros.

The only thing I would avoid if I were you? Zoa's. Everyone has them in a ton of colors and they are almost always available somewhere. Could you sell some? Sure. I would be more worried about this "diluting" your brand than anything.

 

[tautog83]

well i dont believe you should sell maricultured stuff at all . the idea of aquacultured sps i think is awesome, although while theres always a chance of pests , i know if i purchase a bunch of sps from you im almost 99% sure it will be pest free . so if i have to pay an extra 10 or 20 bucks for a frag that i know is all captive grown and pest free so be it. As far as being able to sell non sps, like you said theres a million vendors so you arent really going to carry something "unique". when it comes down to it, hammers , torches, frogspawn are always going to be easy sellers. the idea is to keep prices for stuff like that on planet earth. ive seen what a 10-12 head hammer costs at the wholesale level and with normal pricing , lots of money to be had and also a fast grower! the market for zoas is still silly , sadly most of them already have crazy names on them so you have to play along or else you will be "false advertising . im sure if you sent a couple vendors a battlebox they could trade ya for some designer zoos so you could start growing them out

 

[Davy Jones]

I really like the unique frogspawn, hammer corals, Ricordea/yumas and anemones. SPS you got down pat, and i have never been too fond of chalices personally. There are plenty of zoa vendors out there as well. Just me .02

 

[Ty Hamatake]

Dude, this came up literally just in time. After a conversation with my wife last night, I spent a half hour this morning looking at my rather bare sand bed picturing what types of LPS would look good and where. My vote is "PLEASE PULL THIS TRIGGER!" If this new stock is anywhere near what your SPS is, you will succeed (possibly from me single handedly )

 

[Bryman]

How about clams? Seems very difficult to find decent clams these days.

Bring in rare stuff like blue squamosa, teardrop, and unique color morphs.

 

[AcanthurusRex]

So far I've only purchased from WWC and Battlecorals. If you sold a few popular LPS I would have purchased some of them from BC. I've bought a number of SPS from WWC just to amortize shipping cost when I was really after an LPS to put in a shady spot.
I am hesitant to buy from vendors that sell mariculture. Given a choice I will not.
I'm mostly concerned about parasites especially fish parasites requiring me to QT corals for 3 months. Any effort to mitigate this risk will get my business.

 

[vanpire]

Establishing your biz model and expanding it to adjacent markets is natural and smart.

Of course, there are many examples but I like Southwest airlines the most. It has its biz model and slowly expands into other markets but always maintaining the same biz model. Amazon is another biz that comes to mind.

I think Battle Corals should just do that and it would be great. You don't have to do it in niche markets, just offer the same biz model you are doing with SPS to other corals.

What do people like most about Battlecorals? You get more than you expect at reasonable prices. No need for "special sales" quarterly or semi-anually. Go into zoas, LPS, mariculture, what not? I like one stop shopping where I can combine what I want and pay only one shipping fee.

 

[Michael Cronmiller]

Do for sure....pull that trigger

 

[Maacc]

I am definitely in the pull the trigger camp. Start simple and relatively small, you can always ramp it back if you feel overwhelmed or like it's hurting the core sps focus.

 

[Battlecorals]

I'll admit I'm still really on the fence now lol. You guys have brought up some extremely good points. The arguments for and against are pretty solid to me in a lot of ways. Maybe if I see something that's extra nice the next time i have the opportunity, I'll grab it and see what you guys think? Clams are not a bad call either actually. They do tend to do well in the same kind of environment as sps in my experience. I hadn't thought about clams at all in fact.

 

[Amoo]

LOL Battle-Clams, the ultimate compromise

 

[Battlecorals]

LOL Battle-Clams, the ultimate compromise

Post of the day for sure! I love it. I'm down. Maybe I could engrave their shell with the logo even!

 

[Velcro]

My vote is to use the dry tanks to bring in more wild SPS. Ain’t nobody got time for non-sps coral.

 

[Amoo]

Post of the day for sure! I love it. I'm down. Maybe I could engrave their shell with the logo even!

I'm thinking I just won myself a free sample

 

[Battlecorals]

My vote is to use the dry tanks to bring in more wild SPS. Ain’t nobody got time for non-sps coral.

This was actually my original plan. kind of like the LRO thread this weekend. I thought I'd get large orders in and house them there, pre QT even as a kind of stabilizer system before i really ran them through the ringer. The thought of actively knowing I've got any kind of pest up there really scares me though. kind of goes against everything i do lol. It would however increase my wild colony survivability a lot though. I am so hard on new arrivals it's not even cool at all.