Dropping a wholesaler, and need replacements...

[Anonymous]

I've decided to drop ERI as a livestock wholesaler, and am looking for replacements. I'd love to find wholesalers with the same large selection each week, but I also need someone who is going to eclipse their, IMHO, poor customer service and fish quality.

I'm currently using Fish, Fish, Fish out of New Jersey, and Mary, of course. Mary has the best fish I've seen in our history of 7 distributors, but her selection is limited each week. Not a fault, of course, but when a customer wants a niger trigger, I want to be able to get it the following week for them.

With 55 total tanks (now plumbed and filling with saltwater!) almost there, I need to get all my crap together before I'm ready to blitz the livestock orders to stock it up. My customers don't mind paying more for quality livestock.

Whom do y'all use? Also, please let me know why you would recommend them.

Thanks in advance.

Peace,

Chip

 

[DBM]

I'll recommend a couple of U.S. wholesalers for you. Try Wayne's in Hawaii and Steve at Cortez Marine (I'm not sure if he's just concentrating on Mexico or if he's still doing Atlantic and Philippine), the reason I recommend these guys is their integrity- all net-caught fish. I know a couple of L.A. based wholesalers who provide great service and selection but drug-caught fish.
Try your best to support the few wholesalers that support sustainable collection practices. :lol:

 

[dizzy]

Chip,

I'd second Mary, Steve, and also recommend Elwyn Segrest. I would be careful about slamming wholesalers in this forum if I were you. I think most of them work pretty hard and defaming people is pretty serious business. What comes around goes around I guess.

 

[ERIfish]

Chip,

As the founder and owner of ERI I am somewhat disturbed at your post. As I mentioned in the email I just sent to you, please contact me personally and I will personally address any and all problems you may have had with our company. All of us at ERI work really hard to make sure that we do the best job possible and I can assure you that we will do everything possible to add you to our long list of long-term, happy customers all over the world.

As I mentioned in my email to you, we are currently in the process of building out a new 30,000 gallon facility. Once completed this warehouse will boast, what we feel, will be the most sophisticated marine livestock holding system in the industry along with in-house biologists whose only purpose is animal care, health and nutrition. The simple fact is that our business has outgrown our facility which means that we must have done something right along the way. With 2 degrees in marine sciences I have an extremely strong interest in bringing the healthiest animals possible to our customers and you will see a host of new and exciting animals for sale by our company in the future.

Kind Regards,

Rob Miller

 

[Anonymous]

As the founder and owner of ERI I am somewhat disturbed at your post.

First off, thank you for not blowing your top immediately at my post. It was not my intent to disturb. I've got quite a bit of pressure on me since the LFS I work at has entrusted me with a 55-tank brand-new saltwater section, upgrading from the 6-tank rag-tag section they've had for the 6 years they've been in business. I'm just a little frustrated, and I tried not to just say "They suck."

As I mentioned in the email I just sent to you, please contact me personally and I will personally address any and all problems you may have had with our company. All of us at ERI work really hard to make sure that we do the best job possible and I can assure you that we will do everything possible to add you to our long list of long-term, happy customers all over the world.

Well, thank you. The e-mail you have sent probably went to my work address, and I'm not there again until Tuesday due to the holiday, but I will respond immediately Tuesday morning.

As I mentioned in my email to you, we are currently in the process of building out a new 30,000 gallon facility. Once completed this warehouse will boast, what we feel, will be the most sophisticated marine livestock holding system in the industry along with in-house biologists whose only purpose is animal care, health and nutrition.

Of this I had no idea. Perhaps it's just the salesperson I happen to be dealing with, but it had seemed to me that the reason why I wasn't getting the service I wanted was due to the person on the other end of the phone. I will be happy to be proven otherwise in this situation.

The simple fact is that our business has outgrown our facility which means that we must have done something right along the way. With 2 degrees in marine sciences I have an extremely strong interest in bringing the healthiest animals possible to our customers and you will see a host of new and exciting animals for sale by our company in the future.

Thank you. What I did neglect to state publicly in my post I shall rectify now, that there were certainly some orders I placed with you that exceeded my expectations. Some of the pieces of livestock were 'mind-blowing' and my customers have certainly taken notice since I started working with your company. (We actually now have a couple of people coming up from New York City to buy from us, and they're about 5.5 hours away.) It has been the last 5 or 6 orders that have declined rapidly, but hopefully with our e-mail dialogue we can improve that situation.

Again, you have such an impressive availability list each week, and since I am going to be ramping up the ordering about 15-fold each week starting about a month's time from now, it's the perfect opportunity for both of us to iron out the difficulties.

Thanks in advance for the e-mail, and I look forward to working things out with you so it can benefit both our companies.

Peace,

Chip

 

[john f]

Dizzy,
If it is Chips opinion that ERI was giving him poor customer service and lower than expected fish quality, why can't he state it here?


Mr Millers response was not reassuring to me. He basically blames any service problems on a new facility project (who cares?) and then goes on to boast about his degrees and how many customers he has.

It would have been better for him to apologize for any problems and attempt to correct them.


John

 

[dizzy]

Dizzy,
If it is Chips opinion that ERI was giving him poor customer service and lower than expected fish quality, why can't he state it here?


Mr Millers response was not reassuring to me. He basically blames any service problems on a new facility project (who cares?) and then goes on to boast about his degrees and how many customers he has.

It would have been better for him to apologize for any problems and attempt to correct them.


John

John,

Chip can do as he sees fit. I just noticed where he said they were on wholesaler number 7 and they haven't even fully stocked the system yet. I've been in business a long time and I don't think public forums are the best way to handle business problems between buyers and sellers. (At least not until all reasonable efforts have been exhausted) I thought Rob Miller was able to do a great job of smoothing out the situation and I don't think Chip meant any harm. Personally I would just take my business elsewhere if I didn't like the service or the quality. I further think that shipping fish from the West Coast to the East Coast involves a certain amount of stress on the fish. I have heard rumors that if a store turns in too many DOAs or complains too loudly they will probably not get the cherry pick stuff from the wholesalers. I have also heard the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so who knows.

I think Chip should try and visit the places he wants to buy from and see first hand what type of operation they are running. If they don't welcome visits from buyers, I would go elsewhere.

 

[MaryHM]

Due to the nature of this forum, we have a rule about not naming names. The specific wholesaler did not need to be mentioned in this post. Please refrain from doing this in the future or I will have to go in and edit/delete posts. Let's all have a productive forum and keep problems to a minimum!

 

[ERIfish]

"Mr Millers response was not reassuring to me. He basically blames any service problems on a new facility project (who cares?) and then goes on to boast about his degrees and how many customers he has.

It would have been better for him to apologize for any problems and attempt to correct them."

John f,

I don't see where you possibly could have gotten these ideas. I didn't and don't blame any of these problems on our new warehouse project in any way whatsoever. The only reason I brought it up was to let Chip know that we are making a concerted effort to improve our company and the livestock we sell. In the same way, I mentioned my education to assure Chip that I am not just a lay person trying to blindly push live aquatic animals for pure profit. I have devoted a good portion of my life to researching ways to improve our natural aquatic resources and in this respect I take a personal interest in the quality of what we do. This philosophy is echoed and mirrored by my employees and, for the most part, sincerely appreciated by our clientele. If I did not care about any of this I would not even have taken the time to respond to Chip's post.

As for the apologies, if you had been privvy to the email I sent to Chip maybe you would retract your observation. If memory serves me correctly I think that I apologized twice in the same communication and promised to personally rectify his problems.

It has been my experience that it is almost impossible to make everyone happy in business all of the time. The only thing that we, as a company, can do to approach that lofty goal is to remain receptive to our clients' criticisms and respond accordingly to the best of our ability. We can't get it right 100% of the time, but we DO care and we DO try.

Sincerely,

Rob Miller.

 

[MaryHM]

And with that said, I think we shall allow Rob to have the final word.

Everyone, please refrain from using names in the future!