Rounding second base, heading for third...

Originally Posted by Rich Z

Man, I hear what you all are saying, but unfortunately the world just won't stop for me so I can work on the price list exclusively. All I can do is the best that I can do, and that will just have to be enough. Or not. Certainly I am not going to get stressed out about it either way at this point.

Rich just take it easy....slow and steady wins the race...

It simply would not do to kneel over now!

Even if you don't get allll the adults out til spring, your workload will become less and less.....
Maybe when you can catch your breath, try to list 10 a day or something...something doable.
Just breathe, big guy!

Originally Posted by starsevol

Rich just take it easy....slow and steady wins the race...

It simply would not do to kneel over now!

Even if you don't get allll the adults out til spring, your workload will become less and less.....
Maybe when you can catch your breath, try to list 10 a day or something...something doable.
Just breathe, big guy!

No, that wouldn't work. People would "tentatively" order some animals, but want to hold off shipping till more animals were listed. Then when they were listed, there would be continual changes made to their orders as newer things were listed. Which would become a logistical nightmare in a hurry. The reason I have an automated price list is to help keep the available inventory straight. Any changes made need to be done manually, and are a real pain in the butt to do.

Originally Posted by Rich Z

No, that wouldn't work. People would "tentatively" order some animals, but want to hold off shipping till more animals were listed. Then when they were listed, there would be continual changes made to their orders as newer things were listed. Which would become a logistical nightmare in a hurry. The reason I have an automated price list is to help keep the available inventory straight. Any changes made need to be done manually, and are a real pain in the butt to do.

Ok..so just pay attention to the first part of my post...
and don't forget to breathe!!

Originally Posted by MohrSnakes

Just send me the list and I'll put some prices on them and then send you the money for the prices I decided on.

I still like this idea...

Just a FYI, this sale of adults and subadults is going to be a bit different from how I did things previously on my shopping cart program.

Shipping larger snakes is a whole different ball of wax from shipping babies.

I weighed a sampling of adults and figure that we are talking about a half a pound per animal. I then did some testing on FedEx's shipping calculator to see what the cost increase would be for each animal in a typical shipment. Although the increases weren't exactly linear (actually the increase per pound was not really too logical....), I saw that it approximated $5 per pound in increased shipping costs throughout most of the reasonable range I would be expecting. Of course, once the cost went over $120, then it would become more cost effective (but perhaps not all that convenient) for a buyer to use Delta Airlines shipping instead. I am not even taking into account the additional expense of a cloth bag for each animal, which should be taken into account, but I am trying to not over complicate this process. But in any event just based on the figures I saw, I am adding $2.50 per animal to the base shipping price. Sorry, but I have to do it this way to keep from losing my butt on shipping costs. Shipping larger and heavier animals is just going to be rather expensive to do.

Secondly, I am not selling any of these specifically in pairs. Males and females will just be priced and sold separately. In the past I tried to encourage sales of pairs when selling babies, but my guess is that adult females will be in much greater demand, and I am pricing them accordingly, expecting to have a bunch of lone males left over when the dust settles. They will just be harder to move, which means that I may have to eventually bulk them out at much reduced prices, so the prices on the females need to reflect this fact of life.

Thirdly, I am going to try to prevent having a bunch of left over shipping supplies when everything is finally gone from here. As such, there may be some brief periods where I have run out of boxes and/or bags, and have to delay shipping until I can get a new batch ordered and delivered here. In the past I would just order a LOT of this stuff (which is why my porch has become a storage area for all this crap), with the knowledge that I would use it all eventually anyway. Such is not the case now, so I need to keep that all down to the bare minimum.

Of course, everything will be first come, first served, based on the order actually being PAID for.

And I hope anyone looking at that HUGE list of animals being sold will fully realize that taking pics of them all is just not even a remote possibility. It would take me forever and a day to do so, and quite honestly, I have no intention (much less enough stamina) to do something like that.

Everything has been taken off of feed as of last week and the temps will be dropped to brumation levels on October 1. The mouse colony is in the process of being killed off right now.

I am on my next to last page of the adults/subadults to have that all completed on my shopping cart program. With any luck I may have this done tonight. But darn this is tedious........

But yeah, rounding third now and heading for home plate..............

Rich, is there a possibility of picking up purchases?

Did he say...he might be done...tonight?
Knowing the hours you keep, Rich, I have a feeling that may be "tommorrow" technically ;-)
Ah well...maybe someone will come IN to the chat room and keep me company!

Originally Posted by Caryl

Rich, is there a possibility of picking up purchases?

Perhaps... But bear in mind that Connie and I aren't planning on hanging around here any more than we really need to.

We actually used to allow pickups here, but when people started wanting to drop in and spend several hours here and only buy a single $30 animal, well, we had to stop that cold. Not trying to sound mercenary, but we had to then, and STILL have to now, put a value on our time. Well, I have erased and rewritten this paragraph at least 10 times and it STILL sounds mercenary to me...

Bear in mind that the facility is not set up as a retail store, so things aren't labelled in such a way that you can easily just browse looking for something in particular. So you would have to basically order what you wanted off of my site so I would know what you wanted. Which would be a good idea anyway. Otherwise something you wanted could get sold while you were heading over this way.

Originally Posted by Rich Z

Perhaps... But bear in mind that Connie and I aren't planning on hanging around here any more than we really need to.

We actually used to allow pickups here, but when people started wanting to drop in and spend several hours here and only buy a single $30 animal, well, we had to stop that cold. Not trying to sound mercenary, but we had to then, and STILL have to now, put a value on our time. Well, I have erased and rewritten this paragraph at least 10 times and it STILL sounds mercenary to me...

Bear in mind that the facility is not set up as a retail store, so things aren't labelled in such a way that you can easily just browse looking for something in particular. So you would have to basically order what you wanted off of my site so I would know what you wanted. Which would be a good idea anyway. Otherwise something you wanted could get sold while you were heading over this way.

That makes sense. I actually wouldn't expect to browse for hours - not that that wouldn't be fun! (I'm really hoping to get my hands on a caramel blood male, and I'd be delighted to pay that $30 you mentioned. Oh, wait - that wasn't your price list, was it? ) I was just thinking that a trip to Florida some weekend sounded nice. I'd actually probably spend the same as paying for shipping, but it would potentially be more fun. Paying before driving makes good sense.

You don't sound mercenary. Your time IS worth something. Hey, it's a business, right?

Well, things are moving along pretty well. One of our workers wants to get into the leopard gecko breeding business, so he is taking them all off of our hands. I think this is the hardest part for Connie, as she has really gotten attached to a lot of them. The babies have gotten more and more personable every year and now even newly hatched babies will sit contentedly in her hands. So yeah, she's having a rough time letting go of them. I told her repeatedly that she could keep them if she wants to, but she wants to be free of the burden of taking care of animals too.

Most of the mice have been killed off now. So in about a week, the mice will all be in the freezer. Couldn't get anyone interested in buying them as a breeding colony, which is a real darn shame as they have been excellent producers for us. But that's the breaks, I guess. No longer something I need to worry about.

All the adults and subadults will be down into brumation in about a week. Then the only thing we will need to do with them is give them fresh water once a month, and ship out any that have been sold. In any event, they all need to be gone by January 1, as that is when they are due to come up out of brumation, but we won't have any mice here to feed them. I do have a few people talking about taking some larger quantities of them, so that will help.