Why is this hobby so expensive?

[sfin52]

You have importer , wholesale lfs everybody has to make a profit not just keep bills paid. Each has employees, and bills to pay and the owners need profits for themselves.

 

[NoahLikesFish]

Ok, after seeing a few posts today about the crazy costs involved in this hobby I thought I'd put my two cents in. I understand that reef keeping is purely a luxury but frankly I still don't understand where some of these ridiculous prices come from when it comes to fish in particular... I'm in Thailand and have been looking to get some difficult to keep butterflies so I started doing some research online and found that fish I can buy here for the equivalence of $10-$12 are being sold for around $200 on liveaquaria.com (which I assume is still a fairly competitive price as it was when I was in the States)! (This is for a Pakistani Butterfly.) I understand the prices of some of the corals a little better (although they're crazy prices as well) but how can the price of fish inflate that much from collection? The collector fisherman are barely paid anything! I know this is a somewhat rare species but the same goes for many others as well...
Is it really due to the price of shipping, fish losses, and overhead that make these prices justifiable or is somebody in the equation making a pretty penny?...I mean it is what it is but if everything is in the price then why is it so difficult for your average hobbyist to even be able to get a hold of certain fish?

What are you guys' thoughts?

shipping

 

[MaxTremors]

When 70-80% of the collected fish are dying before they even reach the hobbyist, costs have to cover that somehow.

Then add in that overnight shipping in the States is $50-150 per box right now and many companies offer free shipping at a certain dollar. So that $200 fish might be one of four that made it. Say I pay $12 per fish. That's $48 just to have one to sell. Then add in shipping to the States which is a couple hundred per box and shipping to the end user. That one $200 fish might make someone $30-40. Those are terrible margins in the business world.

Oh, and all new employees think they're worth $25/hour? Costs have to go up to cover that.

Call me crazy, but I think if you work fulltime you should be able to afford to live in the community you work in.

 

[Tim617]

I had my last reef tank from 2003 to 2009. Getting back in the hobby again. Prices FOR SURE have gone up a lot.

 

[rtparty]

Call me crazy, but I think if you work fulltime you should be able to afford to live in the community you work in.

And that is totally fine but prices at the business WILL have to reflect those wages. As a business owner I can't magically pay people more than we bring in

 

[MaxTremors]

And that is totally fine but prices at the business WILL have to reflect those wages. As a business owner I can't magically pay people more than we bring in

If your business isn’t bringing in enough money to pay employees a livable wage, then your business isn’t bringing in enough money to have employees (I mean ‘your’ rhetorically). Historically, for every 10% the minimum wage has gone up, the prices of goods most affected by inflation have risen 0.3%(1). The argument that the people whose wages would go up if the minimum wage was increased would actually be worse off because the products they’re more likely to purchase would see massive price increases because they are produced by low skill laborers (groceries, fast fashion, cheap home goods, etc) has been thoroughly debunked. Raising the minimum wage would absolutely cause some business to have to close, but I would argue that if your company’s success depends on, or if your company can only exist by taking advantage of low or unskilled labor and paying them a non-livable wage, then it probably shouldn’t exist. No single person should have to work 2-3 jobs, or 60-80 hours a week just to barely survive. And the other thing is that those employees who make $7.25 an hour are subsidized by tax payers with SNAP benefits, Medicaid, housing assistance, childcare, etc, taxpayers are footing the bill for those companies to exploit laborers. Personally, I’d gladly pay an extra 3% in prices if that means minimum wage employees get a 100% raise.

https://www.le.ac.uk/economics/research/RePEc/lec/leecon/dp06-9.pdf