You're ascribing a weird amount of altruism to businesses who are here to make money.
They are absolutely not running holiday sales out of the goodness of their heart. They are wisely using human buying patterns to optimize profit during this time.
You think BRS is doing their giant giveaways out of the goodness of their hearts? Someone has run the numbers and determined that x amount of money spent on giveaways leads to y amount of increased sales.
Yes vendors are doing nothing wrong by raising prices just as much as consumers are doing nothing wrong by complaining about them.
I mean, yeah but
BRS doesn't have to make videos, someone ran the numbers and saw that more educated reefers spend more money in the long run and keep coming back as customers.
We can go back and forth all day but ultimately nobody is forcing us to buy the ballbuster bounce blastomussa or whatever is next on the chopping block. Frankly, if someone is willing to pay for it then good for them and good for that company to understand that
market.
I do feel like there's no reason to offer giveaways beyond that obviously sure it increases sales, but honestly I'm not sure that offering a sale or not would change the public opinion behind a vendor, but you really have two choices. Offer a black Friday sale of some kind and play the price game, or look like a chump when others do the same and you choose not to.
Sure, prices go up. Don't blame the vendor, blame the customer for not understanding what a good price actually looks like for their products before they buy them .
If I see Single vineyard chianti classico from a good year at $35/bottle, that's a great price. But to be upset when someone at a restaurant offers 20% off bottles and you order the same bottle for $45 +tax and tip, yes, I do feel like that makes you a fool. Either you want the buyer experience or you don't, and if you don't then you need to be intelligent enough to shop around or wait for something to show up at a good price.
I'm not here to draw arguments, I'm here to say either you play the game and play the price, or you don't. Nobody is forcing us to buy the corals, but vendors run on thinner margins than I think most people realize. It's definitely below 20% margin when you factor in losses and most of your money is made on water and coral /inverts. You can argue all day but ask your lfs what they have to pay in just rent for a month on their 5-10 year lease. It's insane.
Anyone thinking a price hike is reflective of a holiday and not global economy and demand is blowing smoke -- the pricing is likely there to stay.
why do you think Waterbox can ship salt so cheaply? Do you think they honestly ship empty aquariums in containers?
They have a salt product and they fill the tanks with the packaged salt to save money on shipping container prices.
Lots of creative stuff happens on the vendor's side to make ends meet. You can call it robbery but meanwhile we pay Spotify and Netflix monthly for things we don't even own ourselves.
But go ahead and tell me that lfs is a problem when people are subscribed for 4-5 of these services sometimes monthly anyway..... I'm not here to gain anything from a vendor. I'm just saying you guys are full of yourselves for getting upset about black friday pricing when there are so many bigger problems we spend our money on but are afraid to say anything about how wrong or corrupt they are in comparison. We just put it undera carpet and ignore it. We work for money, not for fuzzy feelings. Same with vendors. Stagflation is real. Raising prices just proves all my points.
If you don't want black Friday fomo price manipulation to happen, stop shopping Black Friday events and stop supporting vendors who do Black Friday.
All I know is vendors don't owe reefers Jack diddly squat, and if it weren't for things like volunteers on forums and video material by content creators, business or not, the hobby wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today because nobody would be educated enough to understand the purpose of a reef mat, or gyre flow, etc.
But to be honest, it's a hobby. A reef isn't a necessity. Prices go up because people pay them. As more and more automation happens, and people entering the hobby become more and more detached, reefing will continue to move into being a luxury product.
