Expo

I just realized that normally right now we would be going insane packing up to leave for Expo. Trying to get the animals packed up, trying to get orders out the door to make packing up what was left much easier, making sure everything that is staying behind has fresh water, and pretty much running around in circles knowing it all won't get done.

We always considered the week prior to Expo as being HELL WEEK, because nearly everything came to a head right around then and the workload seemed to reach it's peak. Honestly, more than once we thought we shouldn't go to that show because of the workload facing us when we got BACK, but then on the other hand, the chance to unload a bunch of mouths to feed was too much of a PLUS to ignore. One year on the day before we left, when packing was the most furious, we got over 30 phone calls from people wanting to know what I was bringing to the show, place orders (which meant I needed to pull some animals OUT of the packed boxes), and sometimes only just to shoot the breeze (like I had nothing better to do).... :eek1: I had to stop answering the phone before I popped every blood vessel in my brain!

Anyway, I sure do miss seeing baby snakes hatching out, but as for a LOT of the work associated along with that, nope, not in the least. :nope: It REALLY REALLY was a lot of work, that more than a few times I thought would REALLY REALLY kill us.....

I hope everyone taking animals and what-not to the show this weekend does well selling stuff. And to those looking to buy, I hope you find the exact gems you have been looking for. Connie and I will probably be stopping in sometime to walk around the show and try to make the CS gathering on Saturday evening. Maybe we'll see some of you there.

We are really looking forward to meeting you Rich. Glad you get to have a relaxing weekend at Daytona for once!

Hope to see you around Rich....and don't worry, I'm running around going crazy trying to get everything done.....I can see why you don't miss it!

Rich - I think there are more than enough of us still running around like crazy this week to make up for you not having to this year! And just think - you can sit back and look at all of us and say "I remember when"....

I am really looking forward to it - even with all the crazy stress leading up to it and I certainly do hope we get to run into you at the show or our GTG.

whippet said:

We are really looking forward to meeting you Rich. Glad you get to have a relaxing weekend at Daytona for once!

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Tara is. I already met ya at MARS the one year!

Interesting.... I had a dream about Expo last night. Guess I am going to have those yet for a while. Can't remember much of it, but it seemed to be the end of the show and we were trying to get all the stuff that didn't sell packed up. You know, that was normally the worst part of doing a show. Looking at all the critters that didn't sell and wondering why they didn't.

And speaking of the MARS show, coincidentally, Tim Hoen (the promoter of that show) was briefly in my dream as well. When we lived in Maryland we used to be friends with Tim (and his then wife Diane) and spent many a day snake hunting together.

Anyway, I doubt anyone who has not actually vendored at a show realizes how much stress and work it really is. For a while we were doing a LOT of shows, but when I realized that those long stretches of not being able to feed the babies because they were being taken to the shows were having a toll on them, we cut them back to where we were only doing Expo in Daytona the past few years. Heck, I remember one year we did a Tampa show one weekend and the next weekend did the Chicago show. Now THAT was a killer. Plus I can down with a cold or something heading to Chicago, so that entire weekend really was no fun. Try doing a show while you have "Nyquil brain" sometime...... :bang: Someone would buy a $30 snake and pay with a hundred dollar bill and I couldn't even figure out the change to return to him... And lord only knows what happened when someone put a stack of deli cups in front of me and asked me to give them my best deal...

Oh and before I forget, anyone doing a show for the first time taking baby snakes, please give them water during the weekend. You would be surprised at how quickly baby snakes will dehydrate over a weekend at a show. We used to pack the babies with water dishes in the deli cups and remove them Saturday morning and replace them on Sunday when packing up. Just in that short time I could see that they were beginning to get stressed without water, so the later shows we kept the water dishes in with them and removed them when sold. At lot more work trying to keep the deli cups clean and attractive looking for prospective buyers, but it was a LOT better for the animals.

My babies will be traveling with Official Serpenco Water Bowls, thank you!!

I haven't vended at a reptile show, but I have vended at other kinds of trade shows and it is an amazing amount of work! I am not surprised you don't miss it, Rich. I am looking forward to meeting you, so I can thank you for your cornsnake business that contributed so much to the hobby and for hosting this website!

Nanci said:

My babies will be traveling with Official Serpenco Water Bowls, thank you!!

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You know, at one of the Expos when FWCC did their rounds checking permits, a couple of the officers noticed my water dishes and started commenting that they should make it a rule that all vendors must have water dishes for the animals throughout the show. And I'm standing there thinking 'Aw hell.... Here we go... Everyone will think I put them up to it and want to burn me at the stake....." I used to work for FWCC a while back doing programming.... :uhoh:

As an animal lover, I would back that.
If you have water dishes as easy to use as yours, why not?

(My husband made me some, our biggest problem so far is that Home Depot does not carry enough of them all at once).

I used to work for FWCC a while back doing programming....

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Rich...that's not so bad.

My first job after graduating from college was as an IRS Agent. No...I'm not joking.

OK, now I gotta ask: What are these special Rich water dishes? Are they made custom? Anyone have a pic? Do I need one?

Irish Eyes (Mrs.Z) said:

OK, now I gotta ask: What are these special Rich water dishes? Are they made custom? Anyone have a pic? Do I need one?

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Nope, you need at least 50!!
They are specially drilled pvc end caps that fit in the deli dishes for hatchlings. No chance of the baby tipping it or getting bedding in it. The very best option for watering small babies. Gotta give this man alot of credit, he came up with the PERFECT solution to a problem that has been bugging me for years!

Where do we get them.............??????

John3:16 said:

Where do we get them.............??????

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I'm not adept at linking things...
but just contact Rich Z!!

John3:16 said:

Where do we get them.............??????

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Here's the link to my website -> http://www.serpenco.com/shop/customer/product.php?productid=16137&cat=252&page=1

I still have some left before I would have to crank up the milling machine and make more of them. Been gradually cleaning up the workroom, so I can actually GET to the milling machine again. Hopefully it still works. Had the start capacitor go out a while back, so I'm not sure how long the replacement will last. Been a couple of years now since I last used it.

Hey, those are fantastic! I can see why they would come in VERY handy at shows where you're selling babies.

Actually I needed to use those water dishes for the babies as they hatched out, and the shows were just a secondary use. I found that setting them up in the deli cups when they hatched out contributed to getting them feeding quickly. In a confined space, even reluctant feeders would sometimes get pissed at that squirming live pinky mouse (I always started off babies with live pinks for this reason), and would often bite it in anger. Then once they bit it, the feed response would kick in. I found racks at the local hardware chain stores (which have since been discontinued) that would hold 640 deli cups in a floor space of 2 ft x 2 ft. I was using 5 of those racks during peak season.

There is a pic of one of the racks in this thread -> http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94001

I never really found anything that seemed more space efficient or effective for baby corns.

Some thoughts on Expo 2010...

Well, it was an interesting experience going to Expo this year, to say the least. I didn't have a clue about how it would hit me walking through the door as a walk-in. This was the first time Connie and I had gone to a show since we retired, so this was actually an experiment to me to see if I was going to be slapped in the face with regret and anguish, or I was going to be comfortable with my decision. I knew Connie didn't have nearly the trepidation I did about this decision, beyond wondering if we could do this retirement thing FINANCIALLY. She does miss her geckos, but the snakes and mice were merely a workload she shouldered solely to help me live my dream.

But first off, about the show. We talked with quite a few vendors there, and their reaction to the show was all across the board. Varied from people saying they did great, to others saying they weren't even close to meeting expenses. Some were saying they were not coming back next year. All in all I would say that more people were there at the low end of satisfaction than the high end, by a wide margin. Truth be known, when we walked in through the door, it was obvious that the number of vendors was WAY down from last year. Someone told me that there were 100 less tables on the floor this year than in 2009. From the look of the W-I-D-E aisles between table islands, I would say this is pretty accurate.

Attendance seemed rather light to me as well, but then again, I didn't think last year was all that great neither. And honestly, like Connie and myself) a lot of the crowd seemed to be there mostly just to look, and not to buy. Certainly the general economy had a big bearing on that aspect, I'm sure.

Prices of corns seemed very low to me, for the most part, and from what I gathered, sales were highly contingent upon pricing. But then again, higher priced corns never really did sell quickly and furiously anyway.

A fair number of people were concerned about FWCC's presence at the show. They were saying that the officers were brusque and antagonistic in their attitudes. Some commented that they were openly swaggering while they walked down the aisles, as if they were looking for trouble. Some were pissed that an auction got cancelled because FWCC officers demanded a permit for that charity event. Pretty much from appearances, people were just not happy at all about how FWCC suddenly seemed to view them as adversaries. Not sure what was going on there, because in prior years, those officers we talked to were courteous and seemed to want to be helpful. Perhaps something has changed, and for the worst. I know here in north Florida, the commercial fishermen are absolutely being harassed out of of business by these people, so perhaps this attitude has now swung over to include reptile keepers as well. Damn shame when an antagonistic and adversarial attitude intrudes into the relationship between a permitting agency and the permittees. Doesn't bode well for the industry here in Florida, that's for certain. Who needs more stress in their lives?

The cornsnake auction Saturday night was very well done. Robbie always makes it quite a show and it's quite well worth attending if you have never done so in the past. That reminds me, I still have video of it in my camcorder, although I fear that I may have cut off Robbie's head during the "filming" because I didn't take into consideration that he was going to stand on a chair while speaking. Rats.... Oh, in case you haven't heard, Kathy Love won the Bernard Bechtel award this year, and I had the honor of presenting it to her. Congrats, Kathy!

Anyway, I guess you are wondering about how I felt about the experimental aspect of walking into Expo this year. Quite honestly I felt good about it. It was actually a lot more fun going to the show without the stress of DOING the show. No stress overload packing up animals, worrying about sales, trying to keep things organized during the show, and not being distraught about all of the animals that DIDN'T sell that we would have to haul on back home to take care of longer till they sold. This was a SERIOUS piece of cake! And several people commented to me that they felt I had certainly picked the right time to retire. I guess with sales being slow for many of them, plus the apparently change in temperament with FWCC, they are thinking that things will get worse before they get better. Perhaps. But none of us have functional crystal balls, so all you can do is to hope for the best. Everyone has to do what they feel is right for them. And even when you do, you will STILL be trying to second guess yourself, hoping that you will be proven right in the long run.

But in my case, 30 years was certainly enough. If I had to pick a time to retire, this was the year to do it, all things considered. I do miss the egg hatching season, and if it were possibly for me to do ONLY that aspect of it, and offload the rest of the word to workers, then I would have continued on. But, alas, that just was not possible, as paying people to do everything else would have had us paying out more money than we were earning, so retiring really was the best course for us. It was a good long run, but it was just time to hand off the baton.

And actually Connie said she enjoyed herself as well, which honestly she has NEVER said about a show before. Prior shows were just WORK, for the most part, whereas this was just about all FUN. And yes, we BOTH actually had fun that weekend, and quite honestly are looking forward to coming back again next year.

I totally lucked out, the FWCC completely skipped my table! No one even asked for my permit. They walked by and peaked a few times but that was it. Beginners luck? :shrugs:

Sales weren't so great that I'll say I'm definitely doing it again, nor so terrible that I'll say I won't. I didn't have any top sellers available at the time of the show so I knew it would be slow, and figured it would be a test run. We'll just have to wait and see how I'm doing financially and what I have available to put on the table next year. I had a fantastic time though, and as usual, didn't have nearly enough time to talk to everyone.