Buying Wholesale Reptiles | Reptiles With Podcast S04EP38 (REPTILE PODCAST)

Welcome back to the Reptiles with podcast. Today we have another controversial topic. So we're gonna talk wholesaling reptiles. I know that it can be a little bit of a tense subject because when people think wholesaling reptiles, the first thing that they might think about is imported animals, they might think of too much death or a mass death. They might even think parasites and all this stuff. They might think sickly animals. They might sickly reptiles. You're an idiot. But we're here with Alejandro and Alex, the owner and the wholesale manager of Imperial Reptiles. They have a wholesale division and we're gonna see what they're doing better than their competitors. So let's have that topic. This podcast time! You're so disgusting. It's amazing. Great. Nice, nice, nice. Amazing. You've had a great weekend, right? Yeah, great. If you do this weekend. Um. Specifically the reptile. I don't care about anything else. Well, I won't say what I did today. I'll say I went to Ron St. Pierce. I was just trying to just hung out in the tent. Fire in. How was that? It was good. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. You got to talk in oils and lizards? Yeah, we talked. Cool. I didn't have to say it like that. That was the idea we talked. Let's just leave it at that. Yeah. Okay. Nice. I don't know what else they did. No. Oh, wow. What'd you do? Nothing reptile related, so I guess Tino doesn't care. Yeah. I don't know. All right. So wholesaling reptiles, tell me about Imperial's efforts wholesale-wise. What's going on? Well, this kind of is something that I guess was a natural progression of things as we kept growing. This was the next step. It was kind of just sourcing things ourselves. Kind of how we started, why we started wholesaling is just we needed more stuff. Yeah. Plain and simple. We needed more access to people's animals. When I was in Miami, I was able to handpick everything. I went to everybody's facilities and handpicked everything by hand. When we got up here and we started receiving things shipped in, the quality of the stuff really went down. And that's really when I realized that there is a bigger issue at hand when it comes to wholesaling animals and receiving animals from these companies because at the end of the day, it's a living animal. It's perishable. Let's talk about it in a business sense. It's a perishable good. Right? If you don't have access to select what you're getting and the company's only, what's it we're going to say, like their only like term to service or like their only thing is that the animal's going to arrive breathing, right? Breathing or if you don't like it, you know, you can let them know. But for the most part, breathing is what they say. Then you're kind of like, shit out of luck. And I didn't think that was right. I felt outed, you know, as a business and as a customer, I kind of felt like, damn, that kind of sucks. So I kind of wanted a better access to things. I wanted to have a selection of things that I could offer the customers, pretty much hand picking, being direct to us. I don't have to worry about it going somewhere else. And it just comes directly to us and we can hand pick and then select to our customers. And then naturally, of course, there's going to be access, right? And then what do we do with that if our customers aren't buying everything? Well, we can offer to different companies. Now, access doesn't necessarily meet that quality. And I guess that's where the distinction comes into place, right? It comes into like the procedures, how we care for the animals, how long we have the animals before they go on to sale are actual like suppliers, you know? We're not just dealing with anybody. No matter where they are in the world, we're not just dealing with anybody. And we make sure that we're initially getting great stock to start off with. And it just starts off like we'd never send somebody to somebody that they couldn't put, you know, for sale on their shelf. I was going to ask, how many places do you think, I guess, percent-exwise, or ratio, like are just retail retail? Like, in what sense? Like in the sense that they just bought an animal from, like, say another company and then put it for sale on their own company. And then now they have that animal for the... Obviously, they have to bump up the price in order to make any kind of profit. But how many places do you think are like that rather than wholesale, actual wholesale operations? Well, I don't think any places would be like that. That would be practical. It would be profitable. It's not possible. Yeah, no. I think that something... So people might think that Imperial is buying stuff from other wholesalers and then wholesaling that. And I think that that... Well, that is not something that is happening. No. You guys are bringing in specific countries. I mean, that's... Yeah, that's why we brought Alex aboard. Alex had been doing that on his own with OTW Exotics. And we were able to kind of link up and bring... It was OTW again. Out of this world. It was only the weener. On the way. So he was kind of doing that on his own. And I think you were limited by space and you were kind of limited by five facilities. And it's kind of something that I was able to facilitate. We were able to bring him over here, give him a salary, and have him do what he's good at. And he communicates with these people really well. He's able to let them know what we want. And he's able to communicate that extremely well with them and make them understand that, hey, we're not messing around. What we want is the quality stuff. Now, what countries are we working with? Right now, Africa, Suriname. Africa is not a country. continent. It's fine. It's fine. Where are we? Ghana. There we go. Ghana. Ghana, Suriname. Nicodawa, hopefully soon. Egypt, hopefully soon. Solomon, hopefully soon. Malaysia, hopefully soon. All of the above. Europe. Yeah, all of the above. Pretty soon. But like routinely, like what we've been doing and something that Alex was doing before was, you know, bringing in Suriname and then bringing in the entire continent of Africa. Yeah, there's nothing better than the smell of coffee in the morning. Okay. There's also nothing better than the smell of reptiles in the morning. Psych. Reptiles with coffee. That's the smell you want. The strongest coffee. All right. We have it for you. Don't know over the description or go to coldbloodedcaffeine.com and use the code REPTALS WITH to get your reptiles with coffee today. Procedures, something that is down pack here, you know, things don't go from, you know, from other country to then. Yeah, from a bag to a. Yeah, from a bag to a. Yeah, from a bag to a. Things don't do that. Can you talk about the procedures and? Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't want to give away everything that we do with the animals. I just wouldn't. But the animals definitely when they come in, we make sure that everything gets hydrated. We make sure that things that need to get treated, get treated. And we get them feeding when they're ready to get fed. You know, a lot of it when it comes to this stuff, I think it's timing. You know, when you're bringing in these animals, it's the timing of stuff. You can't bring in a fresh animal and pump them with medicine. You can't get in a fresh animal and pump them with food. You can get a fresh animal. And some animals, you can't even pump them with water because if you pump some of these fresh animals with water, they just like, oh my gosh, water and they just drink, drink, drink, drink, drink. And clean water before they're in the house. And they just kill themselves. Yeah. So it's the knowledge through time, through mistakes, tons and tons of mistakes and you know, trial and error and talking to people and asking questions and seeing when you go hand-picked out at facilities, you know, seeing how they do things and asking, again, asking questions and trying to make sense of this thing because acclimating an animal, right? Yeah. And as a pet and keeping animals, a breeding animal are completely different things. And that as you get more advanced into the hobby and, you know, whether you get into business or whatever aspect of the hobby you're in, you'll, you can make those clear distinctions. Yeah. I'd like to emphasize that once you get an animal in, that doesn't mean you can immediately pump them full of anti-parasotides. The amount of people that I've talked to, they've asked, oh, how long have you had this animal? I'm like, oh, a couple months. And then they say, oh, have you treated it? Yeah. I'm like, no, it's not ready for that. It has to be a good weight. It hasn't even given us a reason to treat it. You know, the animals, pooping fine, eating a bunch of food, you know, like, I guess, like, it's just not common knowledge. Like, people don't even think about it. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, I even think we have parasites, right? Yeah, yeah. I think every animal has a parasite inside of our... Absolutely. So it's normal for these animals to have parasites. You know, parasites are not necessarily a bad thing. Overload of parasites are a bad thing. You know, when these animals are, you know, stressed out and, you know, they're not kept correctly, you know. I've talked so far. Yeah, but it's the industry that created the... What do you mean? Just the whole parasite thing. Like, all parasites are bad. We need to get all the parasites out right when they get here. Imports are bad. I think, honestly, for a lot of it, so for instance, let's say, like, you're a platysk echoes. They don't really... They're not hiders. They don't hide in the wild, you know. But what they do is they use their camouflage to go ahead and blend in. Because of that, they receive a lot of UVB exposure. Not necessarily something like the beauty of the dragon level, but when you come in in a captivity and some people will shove them into bins, it's like, hey, no, that animal's not going to do well. You need to have that animal give access to UVB because, yeah, most animals are going to come in with some form of parasites. And because of that natural UVB exposure, that natural heat, that natural diet, they are easily able to keep that parasite load down. Their immune system is fire, but all of a sudden stress, dehydration, in a bin, that animal's not going to do well. That animal's going to die because you are not providing that animal what it needed to survive in the wild. Yeah. Yeah. And I think with your platysk, that's a big mistake for most people. They think, like, oh, we're not going to put any amount of UVB on there. We're not going to give it any kind of, like, just sticking an abandoned bee down with it. Yeah. And all the thing with parasites, you know, with snakes specifically, you know, everybody's always worried about damage and imported snake, it has mites. Yeah. You know, everybody always assumes that imported snake has mite. And I think that... So humans don't get mites. You're so good. We deal with more mites from our captive bread suppliers of snakes than we do with our wild cop suppliers. And that's just... And now you should say that there's mites here. Yeah. Yeah. And you're going to say there's mites here. Like, I mean, I'll be open to talk about it. I mean, the last time we had a mite scare was one of our local suppliers, which we're not going to name. He brought them in. We noticed them immediately. They immediately, like, everything was sprayed, treated, locked in a room where it's near nothing, and the customer came, picked it up, and off he went, and nothing ever popped up. Yeah. When you deal with hundreds of snakes, thousands of animals, by this point, over the years, I mean, you're going to... You're bound to encounter things, simple things like mites, because let's be honest, mites really, like, scary, like, abundance of mites is. But if you have one animal that pops up, you know, you get it with mites, it isn't the end of the world. It's easy to control if you have procedures in place. The actual concern is not the, oh, I found one mite. It's that mite might have touched another animal with it. Correct. But that's somewhat their fault for not quarantining the animal. Not knowing what they're looking for, not being prevalent about, like, hey, for instance, one of my animals when I first got it, all my animals, regardless, go through, like, at least a three-month quarantine, right, put them on paper towels, or sometimes cocoa, depending on what they need, very sterile conditions, fresh water and a bin. Sometimes I'll add a heat pad for it if I know they need it. Yeah. And that animal doesn't... I service that animal last. I feed that animal last. The animal doesn't see any other animal at any point. And a lot of people think, like, they don't do that. You need to do that no matter where you're getting it from, no matter if it's captive for it, no matter if you know the seller, you need to be quarantining your animals, because anything is possible. Anything can happen. Yeah. And then we treat it when it comes to snakes. And I'll say 95% of snakes, because there is a certain percentage of snakes that can't be applied with the medication that we use. I would say most pythons and boas, some collubers. Yeah. You know, they could... I mean, for the most part, all animals can handle a soak with a little bit of donut dish soap, and, you know, that cleans them up, gets them between their scales, pushes out any gunk, and then you just dry them off, put a little bit of drink on them. We use the front line, which we have a whole blog on the website with how to treat, you know, an animal if you find it with mites, and you could use the products that we put on there. So, like Yoshi said, it's just a soak with water at first so that they can drink, and then we add some don dish soap. We, you know, kind of mix it up, make sure those... It creates like that bubbles and suds, get in between the scales, and it pushes out any dirt or any mites that might be in there and floating in the water. And then if it has mites, you'll see it, you know, you'll see them floating in the water, and then you'll have to treat anyways, but regardless, we treat every majority of snakes that come in. Yeah. And if you're not, and for real knock on wood, we really haven't had any issues, you know, very, very, very late. And today we got mites. Yeah, but yeah, it's good to keep things clean, right? It's good to keep things thriving. It's good to keep things alive. Another concern that a lot of people have when they think of wholesaling is the amount of death. Everybody thinks that, damn, like, you just got a shipment in, half of the animals are dead. And in my experience, that's actually not the case when you have a solid supplier. How would you say, you know, what would you say you do to avoid death? What do you do when animals come in a little bit skinny? And then what are, like, dispel some of the myths about the import death? Yeah. I mean, you have a, you want me to... I mean, the import death, it kind of is a thing, but with, like, larger quantities. And then again, dealing with the supplier, I mean, it depends who you're getting from. Yeah. And the animal. And the year and what country. I mean, there's a bunch of factors that play into death. But I mean, if you bring in the right time of year with the right supplier, you should only be looking at, like, five percent. Yeah. And at the end of the day, like, we have to remember that the supplier is a business as well, right? The business wants to create a rapport. They want to make good business. They're not going to send you bad stuff. They're going to do some sending you shit. Correct. And I think that's where it all starts. You know, like, it's not... We're not 20 years ago, you know, this is... We're 2023, you know, we got the internet, people... It's easy to communicate with people. And they're in the business to do good business. So it all starts with receiving good stuff. Like, the stuff is coming in really good. I was going to say, even if you think the extent, like, they say the argument, oh, it's wild cod, it's wholesale, you shouldn't be complaining, you know. You're getting the animal for best to nothing. And that's part of the problem, right? That's why we wanted to do something different. Like, that shouldn't be the answer. You know, at the end of the day, like, we should have some respect for these... They're living animals. You know, we should have some respect for them. And no matter what the cost is, the business that is purchasing this animal from us, you know, they're a mom and pop shop, you know, like, they have employees, like, they have bills to pay for it. Like, they need that animal to live. They don't need that animal to go on a shelf and die on them, or worse, that animal go on a shelf, go to a customer, die on the customer. So it's just all encompassing. And it's difficult because it's live animals. Right? So you said the whole thing with death and, you know, people perceive and think, oh, it's a lot of death. It's a lot of death. And that's the problem, right? People think a lot. People don't know anything, right? Only the people that are in this, people that have worked in a reptile shop, people that have worked, not even a reptile shop. Like, I mean, a reptile shop, like, ours, you know, that has a lot of movement, that has a lot of things happening more than just selling, you know, pet supplies and pets to pet owners. We do more than that. That's pretty much it. I think that even if the death, because death happens, is unavoidable in some cases. Yeah. Do you think that even if it's a little bit, like, let's say, like a 5% that it's worth it, that it's still worth it, that we can still do it? Well, in every industry, there's loss, right? When you look at a food industry, you know, how much food is thrown away out of public every night, right? You know, out of restaurants, how many, you know, plates are thrown out, you know, when it comes to, let's say, vehicles, how many vehicles are just lemons and don't make it to the end because they didn't pass some sort of inspection. I think in every industry, unfortunately, there's loss and like... Is that not different when we talk about life animals? And that's what it comes to. I mean, it's livestock, right? You know, but unfortunately, there is a livestock industry. And when you're talking to life in any industry, there's going to be loss, you know? It comes to what I was saying. It's like knowing what you're getting yourself into. You know, right? Unfortunately, it's their livestock, man. Anything that lives dies. Yeah, I think that it's definitely not a... Like, the dead stuff is not as bad as what the public might seem. And something that does get done here that I think is important is just because like, a retail company like this also has a wholesale division doesn't mean that their wholesale customers are getting B-grade animals because the retail side wants to keep the best of. It's like, oh, this is B-grade or this is questionable right now, let's make sure that this animal's thriving before it goes to anybody. Correct. You know, we'll treat them with antiparasidics if we got to treat them, you know? Anything, if we really got to take an animal to a vet, you know, we have a local vet that we would have to take the animal to, you know, the animals that we have a tagging system, anytime that an animal is not fit for sale, it is in the back of house, it is not in the front and it gets tagged and, you know, it gets noted and we keep an eye on that animal, you know? Everybody here, you know, when they're working the front and they're servicing the animals, they're also looking at the animals, you know? And if something is questionable for sale, it gets taken to the back. Everybody here loves animals and everybody here kind of, you know, loves working with the animals and, you know, they may not necessarily, you know, enjoy the retail portion, I don't think, you know, there's many people that enjoy, you know, working retail. But I think that at the end of the day, you know? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think there's a good thing, a good thing happening here. You know, it's the good thing about having a lot of stock is that you're able, you're like physically able to put aside the questionable stock and you could, you know, sell the good stuff and while that stuff is, quote unquote, getting quarantined, getting special treatment, by the time that there, you know, the quote unquote good stuff is gone, that stuff's already thriving. It might be or, or, you know, the truth of the matter is sometimes like that good stuff just kind of just, you know, just wasn't going to thrive at all. You know, and that's like, that's like the hardest part. You know, that was a lot of the conversations that I was having with him before I really decided, you know, that we wanted to take the step was that something that, you know, we were willing to do because that is the reality of it. Yeah. You know, if you want to support us, head on over to modernreptoshop.com or in the description where you can find our merch. And the best part is, is that a percent of the proceeds from the merch gets donated to conservation. One more time that's modernreptoshop.com or head on over to the description. I think some of the problem that people have though is that any death is too high a cost. And so with, we were talking earlier about another podcast about a PETA scenario where they were, they had put a post, we've talked about it before off the podcast, but that 75% of animals are reptiles. Well, I think it was, everything was reptiles. It was reptiles. Yeah, 75% of reptiles die within, for the first year within the new home, within the new place that they're in, whether that's an import animal, I just bought it from a pet store, captive born, whatever that 75% are experiencing death. Do you guys think that that is inaccurate or close to accurate number? I have like, I don't know, my response to that is like how many people die within their first year of life. You know what I mean? Two. You get what I'm saying? Like newborns, like people, like people die every day, dude. I'm pretty sure that the number may be high of animals that go home, you know, may die, you know, misinformation from customers not taking care of their animals. You know, how can we control everybody? You know, how can we do that? I don't know. You knew you want to know something. Yeah, Alex was laughing when I first said it was like, there's no way it's that high. I mean, I don't think so. I don't think it's that high. I think the numbers exaggerated, but just. I don't think that they have actual data. Yeah. I don't think it's real data, but it's just a number they threw out there to generate a response from people because they could. But to say that, oh, there is no, you know, death, you know, but our customers come back and they're happy, right? We don't deal with a lot of customers that are coming in here. I was thinking that too. And happy with the majority of the animals that they buy. We've been open two years. I'm like, am I seeing 75% of the customers that I've put in here? Or am I seeing 25? Sorry, because they're the ones that are still alive. Am I seeing 25% of the customers that are coming back? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'd say at least 25. Yeah, it's a fourth of all. And there's more coming. Yeah, we have a lot of regulars. We have a lot of regulars. Yeah. For sure. Now, how do somebody, how do you become a imperial wholesale customer? You be a business. Yeah. Describe a business. That's fake, bro. So if you are into, if you sell reptiles, right, if you vendor shows, if you have an online store, if you have a retail shop, if you have any business that involves animals, you know, we are here to help you and provide quality animals and hopefully soon even supplies. Quality. Quality. Speaking of quality, I was going to ask you, think that from a wholesale perspective, a wholesale of import wild-caught animals reduces the, or I guess, destabilizes a possibility to have a captive-born market for certain animals. For instance, let's say with savannas. Savannas have basically no captive-born weight. Very few people are breeding savannas on their captive. You know why. And I was going to say, I'm like maybe one, they're difficult animals to just keep and regular because they, you need space, you need time. All this stuff is a factor, they're monitors. And people usually don't care of them properly anyways. But do you think that because of the import numbers, that keeps the price low of wild-caught imports, that it makes it hard for someone to go ahead and develop a captive-born market for them? All right. Yeah. He's not in the talk. I'm not going to say that. Yeah. He's buffering today. No, I don't. I think in any essence, in the current market, the way it's set up, I think it helps the person that's actually breeding them. There is 5,000 baby savannamonters imported, ranched from Africa. And I've got 20 US captive-born and bred savannamonters for sale. So for the customer that is looking for US captive-born and bred, because they want it to be US captive-born and bred, they can find that customer and it will be easy for them to find them. Now the problem is, what's the difference between a US captive-born and bred savannamonter and a captive-hatch savannamonter from Africa? It could be a lot. It could be. Yeah. You could be looking for really high-end, for instance, friggin' what's it say, arid's only. I would argue that the stress from that shipment from country to country, the difference in barometric pressure, temperatures all around, that is, honestly, that is a big difference. But I would say specifically with savannamonters, I was going to say quality of an animal. Like with arid's only, he breeds umm, uramastic, gary and he has some very beautiful animals, very neon yellow, neon orange, but imports don't look like that. Yeah, but hardly. Because he's line breeding, he's developing a captive-born stock. If we can't get somebody to breed them enough where there's enough supply captive bred that's reasonably priced, then we wouldn't need to offload more for the wild. But how do they accomplish that if everyone wants the keeper the faster, the easier? It's time. The answer is time. The answer is time and somebody doing it right and not being a gatekeeper. The answer is, hey, let the time go by, let a lot of people breed these animals and eventually we might not need to bring in, let's say, a thousand uramastics. But then is wholesale possible after that point? Yeah, absolutely. Because now there's an abundance. Yeah, there's still, I'm still a captive-born. A captive-born. Of captive-born. You know, the breeder of that abundance of animals, a lot of, or some of them don't have the capacity to move that amount of animals. No, yeah, yeah. They don't have, so there's still needs for distributors. It would be the same case. With isopods or springtails, I have too many. I don't have any storefront. I don't have a website. I don't have any care to deal with customers at all. I bring them here and I'm like, hey Alex, you want to buy some? It's a, and it kind of becomes that. So as, you know, if that were to be the case where there would just be more captive-bred animals available for sale than there was imports and it was easier to get them captive bred, then the imports would kind of just phase out and then people would just buy the captive-bred stuff. Is somebody, enough people that are both hobbyist and business savvy enough to reproduce them in mass over the next few years? But you don't think that because of an imported wholesale market that that deterreds people from wanting to do that? No dude, it's supply and demand, right? And the, when you're talking pets, people like colors and people like patterns and people like different stuff. Savannah monitors, there's been an albino that popped up, never bred anything. There's been like an ivory or something that popped up or something like that and never bred. So I think that is a part of it. I'm pretty sure if there was an albino Savannah monitor bro, you would see a lot more captive bred Savannah monitors. The thing with the Savannah monitors that they breed super young, you know, when I labeled those adults and you guys were like, those are not adults. Well for me, adults are sexually mature. That's sexually mature. They are laying eggs at eight, you know, like eight months old in the wild. Most animals do. They are reproducing laying eggs like two years. That's the size that they breed at. So, you know, I think with that, nobody's figured it out. You know, there's a couple of people that do, but that's what they figured out that they breed super young and really small. I do think it's a case by case, but depending on the animal. I think it's with Savannah. I mean, that's a very, very cheap monitor. You know, anybody gets out of it. They eat them over there. Yeah. Yeah. The skin cancer is huge. Do you think there's, is there an attempt being made to kind of push these animals into the proper hands to go ahead and reduce any wild caught animals? Like for instance, oh, we're going to wholesale the people that let's say like Arizona, we're wholesalants them so they can go ahead and start producing some captive orange stock. Some stuff. Yeah, some stuff. Let's say tomorrow the cat eye geckos became super popular, right? Like the most popular thing in the world. Now what we're going to do is we're going to be like, yeah, we got 10 of these cat eye geckos. Let's get off for some really good deals for half of them to this guy that I know is going to breed them. So that way he can start to breed them and then, you know, I'll bring some new stock, new stock, new stock. Now he has a plethora and now I'll get some of the babies, Captain Bread, and then create more of an awareness. I know you specifically have instances where you specifically did that before. So many of times, yeah, just hand it off basically. Yeah, you see a nice amount on your own. Oh, I'll give it to so and so. Yeah, I did my own thing. I definitely kind of just give it a cost just to see what they could do with it and pretty much it. And it's not so much that the import market needs to go away more than it is like, no, nothing wrong with imports. Yeah. It's like wild caught imports would be the issue. There needs to be an understanding. That's it. And that's it. There needs to be an awareness that the goal for all of that is to create more Captain Bread stock for a healthier hobby in general. So the import and the wholesaling side of it will never go away. So what about animals? Like we said, Savannah Monner is very difficult. Let's say machete snakes is another instance. Do you think that these animals are animals that we should not be importing anymore? We should not be offering a wholesaling more because nobody is able to do this right. People are struggling very hard to do this. I just I think if people wanted the breeds of animators that would breach Savannah Monner because they're just too lazy to breach Savannah Monner because they see like that. What am I going to do? Breathe this more for, you know, they're going to have to hold. No, I mean, if you truly love the animal, you would do it regardless. Well, you don't think that's because the price is low because prices low. That's a business. That's a business. Right. You're in a if you're a business and you're in business because business got to make money, which for I don't know why whenever we're talking animals and money, like there's always like people, some people get really touchy about it. But there's no need to be right. You know, it's a business. We got to make money. And as a business point, right, if you're looking at Savannah Monner's and you're just trying to breed regular Savannah Monner's and you're like, all right, well, I got to make this profitable. It's just not there. But the business isn't going to breed a Savannah Monner or it'll be a hobbyist and all for that every hobbyist, if you love Savannah Monner's, you should try to breed your Savannah Monner. Exactly. But what I'm saying is that the people are lazy and they don't want to do it. Like if you truly love the animal and you don't care about the profit, then you would just do it. If you truly want to establish something you believe in, then you do it. I know, oh, sorry. I know Northern Lights. Ashley. Yeah, Ashley. She, she says she's been, she's an importer from Canada. She's been importing a machete snakes. She says, yes. Several of them die. Like almost all of them. Those are really difficult because they have worms in them. And so she is like, oh, I'm going to take it upon myself to go ahead and keep all of the ones that I get back and try to keep them alive to try to and import frogs that they eat, all the stuff, try to do it better so that now he's not experiencing some of my death in the animals that he's selling to her customers or your friends or whatever. If you're listening to this, you're a reptile lover. All right. And what do we all need? We need supplies. So we got you covered. Head on over to imperial reptiles.com and use the code reptiles with to get a specific discount special to us and our listeners for your reptile supplies today. One more time, that's imperial reptiles.com. Use the code reptiles with with the instance of animals did in the case of the machete snakes and like what you said is that an animal that we should be bringing in and stuff. We talked about it, right? That's why we don't bring a bunch of them. And that's why they're not a front for sale for pet customers that we are a reptile specialty store. And not only do we sell beginner animals, we sell intermediate advanced animals, the machete snake falls under that and intermediate advanced. We have access to it. We have access to good machete snakes. The person who's getting them is taking good care of them, sending good quality stuff. They're feeding. We've sold it to multiple customers that have had no issues getting the animals feeding on lizards and things like that. So if we have the access to and there's people out there that are understanding what they're getting themselves into and have a goal in mind with what they want to do with that snake, I think that is like the sweet spot, right? We're not bringing in 100 of them. There might be three or five. I would say that that's a good point just in general about running a business and just having the dignity to know like, hey, we don't have to sell it because we can sell it. It's like we're not going to do the thing just in abundance because we can. It's like we play it smart. We know the kind. We know what our kind of like the images, what we're trying to. The word isn't coming to me. What we're trying to show the customer base, what we represent. We don't have black racers or southern toads on our website. Yeah. Look at them. Look at them. Look at them. Look at them. Look at them. Look at them. This guy's like, oh, I'm going to try. Yeah. But is there an animal that you guys like a specific animal you're like, this needs to be imported more because there is a there really would be a captive bred demand for this. A lot of animals. Like give yourself. In Ghana, Cephalus. In English. Exactly. I mean, blue, I crested dragons, any of the Malaysia stuff, any of the surname, colubrid, I mean, all that stuff to me. That's to me. Yeah. It's got to be that. No, I don't think there's a demand. I mean, I don't think there's a demand. It's like in the general audience, like a I would say the pinnacle for the Retta hobby, for it to thrive, the retail locations, the animal needs to be able to sell in a retail location. Easy. It's a little bit extreme. What animal do you think fits the retail market? That's maybe one of the corks. Okay. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I really think that people can't get another one. Yeah. I'd say I have two. Your amastics and giant plateletons. No, there's there's no demand for you. Have the bread of your master. Yes, sir. I think that's not jerry. No, it's because of gary are ugly. No, it's they're not ugly. What do you not? A lot of really nice. I mean, I would say that I think that the guy we do have a good chance of hitting the retail market because they sell very well. There's albinos. Oh, I didn't even know. Oh, so fucking cool. We saw high quality. High quality. So fun. Eight. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that you're a master. I think that that that is a good one. Mm hmm. Species. Doesn't matter. No bugs. Yeah. Vegetables. Like easy, you know, the whole hot dry. And I think that's the best and colorful as hell. Amazing. Will come up to you and eat. Yeah. These square up. I love your your masters are really cool. Your masters are very. You're a master of losers. And I'm saying the play the lizards dude. Look, I like them already visually. I myself have bought three imports and they're doing fantastic. I mean, I'm I wouldn't say myself. I'm an expert in it by any means in any field, but the fact that I've been able to take care of them, I've done one for at least a year, you know, they're doing really, really well. And some of these imports will eat out of my hands. No problem. I'm like holding the food and they're like, Oh, absolutely. Please give me some. And I'm like, imagine a captive born animal like this, like a baby play the lizards would just be fantastic. Actually, that could be a beardy. Why don't you do it? I will eventually. Yeah, you got to get the animals got to get the animals to good ways. I want to try that. You got to do it. So then we can stop in for you. Yeah, there you go. I'm going to stop and keep for the new. Oh, you don't want to buy them. We'll buy them. There you go. People always think that imported beans a wild animal. No. Oh, yeah. You would see like, let's see a more market and you put the thing as imported. They're like, Oh, there's a fucking no ask you. Yeah, is it wild? Yeah. Well, if they if they understand the difference, yeah, well, I think that's what I'm saying, like the majority of people see imported and they already associated. It's a wild animal. Yeah. When like a lot of these animals are captive hatched, they're a farm, they're a farmbread animal or they're just a captive bread animal from another place. And they're legitimate farms. Yeah. Legitimate farms with legitimate collectors and systems and they harvest eggs. They have incubation rooms. They know when their babies are hatching, you know, like they have everything in place like legitimate farms. So what do you have to say? What's that? I'm going to say sub. Maybe not gone. Not all of them. But when I said there are some farms and there are some legitimate farms out there, like we can't negate that either. They have like a really nice farm in Peru where most of the came villagers come from. Oh, yeah. I would say Peru. I mean, it's our guy in Suriname. The endo stuff is usually. Endo. Yeah. Yeah. And when I used to get myself from. Do they had something over there? Yeah. Africa is the only one that's that's a little different, but we have created a demand almost for the animals to stay alive in Africa because we've created value for them to not just eat off the animal because for as far as I understand, like it's in poverty over there. You know, they need to they need to find food. They need to do all of Africa. We're saving. We're saving the savannah monitors. We say that by bringing them here and for whatever they sell for. 49. 99. The baby savannahs this week. The United States does do this. Do you have any farms? Yes. Turtle farms, man. Yeah, but only turtles. No, well, I don't see any farms for like a race or a coke whip. I mean, would you consider you would consider Ron St. Pierce plays a farm? No, I would. That's a farm. Yes, but that's the standard then for their farm. No, we call this farm over there because they're not so advanced, I guess. I don't know. That's really. No, that's really. No, for real. For real. No, but I would say that the closest thing would be like the style that like Ron St. Pierce. Because it's in because it's more developed. What do you mean? Like we're more developed nation. We can provide, let's say better enclosures, larger enclosures, more specific animals, higher detailed animals, you know, do you think that the goal? Are you saying the United States is better than ours? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, because I'm saying your markets, your markets are better than ours. They've got fire animals, a fantastic amount of animals than the ones produced in the US and for the stuff that I like, for the stuff that I like. I have racks. But that's one of the reasons they produce amazing animals. They have to give their snakes UVB. That's why it looks so good. My ball python looks fine. At least one of them. At least one of them. Do you think that there is a push to go ahead and get these farms where these animals are being held to like a higher standard? Well, I think they have been. I mean, we just don't know it, but whoever is dealing with the farms is helping them. They're flying over there, they're showing them different things and they evolve over time. That's what I say that over time, things are just getting more complicated all around. It definitely isn't like how I think you mentioned like the wild wild ones. It definitely isn't like that anymore because we've all heard stories. But now that we've been in this for such a long time, we can see that it's not really exactly like what it's. It's not all that crazy. It's pretty, what am I going to say, it's pretty consistent. You know what something that I always thought? I always thought back when I was doing important exporting for general goods, right? I always thought bringing an animal used to take days, but it doesn't. No, no. It's a date just like our fucking shipping here. Yeah. So the animals, believe it or not, are just, they're not traveling as much as people think. You know, and it's not like, oh, somebody grabs an animal, let's say from the wild and it stays in a bag or in a bin until like not fed, not taken care of. It's like, no, like it gets. Yeah, that doesn't. Well, yeah. Some places that. Well, there could be some places, but I'm saying the majority. And but that's why those people don't thrive. And yeah, they may do that for a little bit of time, but they're going to get knocked out by their competitors because their competitors are doing it better. Yeah. Why do you think there's not more tours of farms then? Why do you think more people? I know, uh, Dan Maliri shows the endo news. Because it's a supplier. Why would you try to give your supplier? But more, you don't have to necessarily say who they are. You just say, Hey, this is what they're. Yeah, but they're already enough or they're just going to be like, I need to find it. That's what they did here. Yeah. What they did here, man, you know, it's a security thing, you know, you never want to give away your information of where you are. Well, look at how many times somebody like videotapes are fucking placed and then they get robbed. You know, like that's another thing. That literally happened to. But isn't that, it's pretty, it's kind of convenient. It's smart from a business standpoint because like, yeah, I don't want to give away my secrets. I don't want to show where I am. It's from my security, my safety, but also it's for your, your client's safety, you know, because they don't see how you're taking care of these animals. They don't see the day to day and what's going on. That person isn't giving them the main care. It's the importer. What? You're saying that they, you, the clients want to see the farm in your, but why? See how the animals take care. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure. When customers come here, we're pretty transparent about how things are cared for. We don't, I don't like, switch an animal into a bedroom clothes and be like, oh, yeah, this is how we're keeping it. I'm like, no, no, no, this is, this is high in stuff. This is how we're doing it. That's, that's the, that's the deal. Obviously, I don't take people into the back room because, you know, like you said, there are some animals we need to put more focus on, make sure that they're doing well. And I just wouldn't want to see it because at the end of the day, we're a business and I just, the customer that's here for their pet does not need to see, you know, this of animal monitors that look really thin, but yet are pounding crickets, you know, and gaining weight and don't have a full understanding of what's going on. So that's it. It's having the full picture and being encompassing of everything, you know, just knowing the, the reality of the thing. Yeah. I think that people need to understand that it's not the importing part of it is not as scary as what the public's might make more than public's. What the public might make it seem. I mean, you know, you can get it. You can get a sitting animal anywhere. Yeah, that's a fact. You can't. It doesn't have to come from another country. You can get one from next door. Yeah. You can find one on Craigslist. It's crazy. Literally. Literally. Literally. But yeah, no, I think that, I think that, that there is a clean practice here, you know, I, that's just the way I've always liked things done. You know, I, I don't see the need to not be that way. I hand, like I said, I handpicked everything at the Miami store. I had like my one or two days a week that I would go and hand pick everything. And I think that was a huge part of our success. And I just thought that other people should, you know, other businesses should have access to that. Like there's no reason they should be getting crap. And I think that this conversation is important because from the time that we've been in this, we know that there are sketchy places. Yeah. That's a fact. And being able to have this conversation brings transparency and say, Hey guys, like, there is a clean practice here. If there, if you're a store, if you're a vendor, if you're a specialized breeder, whatever it is, if you want to make a wholesale account, you can and be a part of what it is we're trying to do. You have very safe practices because we all want a better hobby for tomorrow. Absolutely. And if this is something that, you know, you think you may want to do or, you know, it's something that you think you may want to work in, you know, just watch what we're doing. You know, you don't have to necessarily see everything. Just watch what you're doing. And, and you'll get an idea for how to do things the right way. It's not very complicated. Treat people nicely, you know, be a decent human being, treat the animals with respect and in return, you know, things just seem to have finding a way to just work out. Yeah. I've asked you before off camera. Is there any reason you put yourself would not want to be an exporter? Like to export animals within the United States that are wild cop. Like export to? Yeah, yeah, you're exporting to other actors. Like native, you're saying native animals in the United States and exporting them elsewhere. Yes. Is there a reason you won't do it? Are you like, because you haven't done it before, I don't think. No, I haven't done it. Yeah. I really haven't had the opportunity to as well. Is there demand for like, yeah, like a black man. Yeah, rattle snakes, coach whips. Yeah. Yeah, for all that stuff. I mean, you know, but what's the legality on that stuff? Well, the other countries don't have. Well, in the goes, of course they do a lot of high permitting systems to do it, but it's not like the US. It's impossible for what for exports. And you say that it's not impossible to do it in the US. So why is that not something that you currently are just we haven't gotten to it. You need to have. Is that something that you would? Yeah, that's what they would do. The native stuff. I don't know. I mean, that would be the it does depend on the species. Of course. You're not going to post. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. I mean, it's not to post the idea to do things. But you would post. Southern church. And spade. But yeah, no, I think that with the native stuff, I didn't know that there were like demand for like native shit. Also where? Because it's like the places I can get it. Yeah. It's like what we're getting. There's demand for it because it's not here. So it's not over there. So they're oh yeah. Those are big here. Can you imagine other countries? Yeah. The blue. No, they buy a shit. Where? Lots of black razor. Russia, Europe. Yeah. Why? They're fired. People buy them over there. They can't get them. What else? In the US. I'm not going to give away. Green tree frogs. No, we don't do green tree frogs. We're like a rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes are huge. Everyone wants rattlesnakes. Because green tree frogs, their populations is decreasing and decreasing and decreasing. Because of the pubis. I don't even know. Yeah. I mean there is a lot of natives that aren't doing well. Partly because we are a developing nation, we are taking their territory from them. So it's not like there are many species you can just send over. I mean it's a lie. It is what it is. It's true. No, no. It's like the whole. No, no. Like the wild caught versus other kind of words that people try to use. It's like it's the same stuff. It's the same words. To like the things that we can't say. So you're saying imported and farm bread and casa. No, because those are specifics. But when people try to say like, that's all we'll say things like. Field collected. That's a wild caught animal. That's what we put on our website. But it's the stigma. Nobody wants a wild caught animal. Correct. 100%. So you got to use a synonym. Yeah. But they still get it. It sounds nicer. No, no, they don't get it. People are stupid. They don't get it. Well, there's difference because a wild caught animal is an animal. A fucking wild dude. The field collected when you're like, yo, you're in the field. Come here, man. And they just come back. It's different. The connotations. I mean. Yeah. Education and everything is knowing what you're getting yourself into. You know, and that's just what it, that's just. That's it. That's anything. Chuck says rescue is just just flipping animals. That's like, yeah, to the next end. I mean, that's the definition of the word. You're taking the animal in and bringing a new home. You're flipping it. You know, whether you do it for money or not, it doesn't matter. Whether you're like, ethically or not, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, unless they're working for donations or whatever, but like, yeah, that doesn't exist. Yeah. Based on donations? No, like they run a whole rescue based solely on donations. There's some, but they don't have that as their only like income. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Rescues are a little bit of love. You have to want to do it. ♪♪ you