Exotic Amphibian & Reptile Center
St. Louis, Mo.
James Brumley, owner

How’s business?

Pretty good. Not bad. This is our busy season, and we breed a lot of reptiles here, so things are starting to hatch.

What’s new?

We’ll start advertising all the babies for sale. We do a lot of baby snakes and lizards and stuff. We have a website, and we also just advertise on kingsnake.com.

That’s about it. We’re adding new lines of dry goods all the time.

What is your best-selling livestock?

Bearded dragons. They stay small; they’re personable, easy to care for.  --KI

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Anonymous Retailer
Suffolk County, N.Y.

How’s business going?

Business is touch and go, but it’s okay. The ponds have stayed steady. The pet store itself has declined slightly. We’ve maintained the customers we already have, but there isn’t any new business being generated.

Any trends in your business? What’s selling well?

No, not really. It’s the same stuff. We’re sticking with what works. All of the pond stuff is doing well. We breed reptiles here, so we can lower our prices on them. Anything we breed here is selling well because of the lower price.

Fish is doing okay. We mostly do pond fish. We do special orders for other kinds of aquarium fish, but we don’t even keep tanks around. I do keep bettas. We sell koi and goldfish, and they’re selling steady.

Anything new?

No, we’re staying with what we’ve always done. We’re a small pet store, and we have people in their niche who stay on top of their areas.

What is your bestselling livestock?

Bearded dragons are selling the best right now. We also breed cockatiels here. The stuff that’s doing the best is the stuff we breed ourselves, because we can lower the price.  --EM