Morph Market is SOLD to Dubia.com | Reptiles With Podcast S04EP30 (REPTILE PODCAST)

Today we are here to discuss some huge news for the reptile community. Something that will affect you not only as a buyer but also as a seller. Today we're talking about Morph Market being sold to doobia.com. This podcast time! You're so disgusting! Welcome back to the Reptiles with Podcasts. It looks different because this was impromptu. We have a different cast. We're here with 100% of my time at reptile. It's my first time alone. Is it really? It is. Oh hell yeah dude. Alright so as I said in the beginning of the video I already recorded something real quick talking about the Morph Market thing. In the past I have been public and critical of Morph Market. And it's not that I hate the platform. I do think it's a good platform. It gives people an opportunity. I get a lot of business from Morph Market. As somebody who is in the e-commerce world, I have concerns of course with some of the things that they're trying to do. Especially coming from a branding point of view. Coming from an independent growth thing. How do you stick out when all your competition is in one place? Right. 100%. Yeah so if you're watching the podcast and not just listening you're going to see that I'm going to be reading some stuff. We took a bunch of notes. We're going to go over a couple things that have been said this week about this merger or buyout. Would you say it's like a merger or a buyout? No it's a buyout. A buyout. It's 100% a buyout. Okay cool cool cool cool. All right so we're going to go to the first folder. I guess before we start how are you feeling about the buyout? Well I think it's great for daring. Right. Yeah. Greatfordubia.com coming from I mean I love business. Yeah. Right. This is why I got into it. I love reptiles. I love business. Looking at it I think it's absolutely awesome. I think it's great for the reptile industry. Right. That moves like this can be made. It really opens the door and it says president right for what other companies can do. So in that sense I think it's fantastic. We talk about Morph Market a lot. We use it here in the store. It was actually like our final platform that we landed on. We were really big on King Snake and Fauna before Morph Market. Yeah. And it really took a little bit because it was mainly for ball pythons. Right. When it was first out. Yeah. It was mainly for ball pythons. So it took us a while to get on there but we finally did. It was good. And that's kind of what we always talk about. Morph Market. And this is this is a big thing. Yeah. And I would even say that like it would make sense back then why we were staying away from it. And I mean, I'm avoiding it but because it was all ball pythons and this was a store with variety. And now most of the inquiries we get are not ball pythons. Correct. Yeah. You know, so they've done a very good job with growth. But let's get into some of these Facebook posts. So first we have. Is this from Darien the new CEO? Yep. We're going to hit one of his first posts about things. So I'm going to read a couple of things here. All right. It says, I've got some exciting news to share that's been in the work for quite a while. I'm thrilled to announce that I'm officially owner of Morph Market, which is a significant change for both me and the reptile industry. Over the past 20 years in the reptile community, I have gained a lot of experience as a keeper, breeder, live insects, supplier and pet store owner. I think my experience has given me a unique and well-rounded understanding of our industry. And I'm excited to join forces with the current Morph Market team to bring you innovations that will serve our community and the animals we love in even bigger and better ways. I'm so grateful to John for his help and support throughout this process and for his willingness to work alongside me moving forward. John and his team have already done some amazing things with Morph Market, but the potential of what we can accomplish together is limitless. That's where I'm going to end that first one right there. What do you know about Darion? I didn't know much about Darion. I knew of Dubia.com. I knew that Dubia.com. There's a fly flying around here. Yeah, yeah. He's been bothering me. Um, we knew, I knew that they had a couple stores in Kansas that were absolutely beautiful. And I mean, if you haven't seen these stores, look it up. If you look at our shop, you'll see some things that I wanted to do here and the guy didn't do it right. But that was definitely some of the things that I wanted to implement in the shop. I mean, they're absolutely stunning. And he also has another reptile supply website. So I was in the following of that, but I didn't know much about him as a person. I didn't know he was very vocal about business and stuff on Facebook. So I didn't really follow up with him back then. Now I'm there. But yeah, that's about the extent that I knew of him and about what he did. Cool, cool, cool. All right. Next one, we have the comments from Morph Market. Today we're announcing a significant milestone for Morph Market. And we are excited about the future of the platform. Moving forward, Darion, Drollinger, Drollinger. Yeah, I don't know if I can butcher him. Of Dubia.com will lead Morph Market with his strategic vision and expertise as owner and CEO. Darion brings with him a skilled and knowledgeable team that will be joining forces with the existing Morph Market team. This collaboration will usher a new era of innovation that will enable Morph Market to serve the community in even better ways. All right. Next thing I'll be reading. We are super excited to be working with Darion for the future of Morph Market. Our vision is highly aligned. His experience, resources and connections all point toward a very bright future for this business and the reptile hobby. Skipping a paragraph, we know this may come as a surprise and hope that this article has answered many of your questions and then reach out for support. Now we have some of John's comments. I'm going to skim through here. Darion brings with him a skilled and knowledgeable team that will be joining forces. For those who don't know, I think that's literally the same thing. Yeah, pretty much the same thing. Warded differently. He recognized the need for quality of live food and founded dubia.com, which has become the world's largest producer of dubia roaches. Insane. Crazy. Actually, just saw that he posted about like unused. Building? Yeah, that's like 10 million. Instant boner. You say instant boner. Yeah. Warehouse is getting me going, man. Hell yeah, dude. Later he gained, he says later he gained valuable insight into the retail market by building two pet stores in Wichita, Kansas. He is currently creating an aquarium and reptarium to serve as an educational platform. Woo. Oh man. Dude, this guy, what was the word that I said the other day? A mogul. A mogul. Yeah. Yeah. This is a mogul. Good for him. And the last thing that I'll read real quick, Darion was one of the most passionate champions of our hobby. He doesn't see the business as a zero sum game. I have no idea what that means. But believes that our pursuit of excellence will grow the entire industry. I have to agree with that little comment. We got to stick on that. Yeah. Yeah. Like John, his businesses are not focused on breeding reptiles. So there is no bias or conflict of interest running the platform. Okay. So far, how do we feel about that? How do we feel about a large company having a buyout in what is the strongest marketplace? I mean, like I go back and good for them. Yeah. Right. I think it's fantastic for Dubia and fantastic for Darion. What it means for us, you know, that are in business at posts on these websites. I think we'll have to wait and see a little bit, right? This is how they take it. If we thought about it in like the broader sense in the general, like mainstream markets, this is like if Apple bought Amazon. Yeah. Because they're a product manufacturer and they're buying a marketplace, the largest marketplace. Okay. That's the way I saw it. And just by judging those two things, does that sound dangerous to you? If let's say tomorrow Apple bought Amazon, would you have concerns? I mean, it sounds a little bit dangerous, right? And the way I kind of look, I mean, I don't know, can I say the word monopoly? Yeah. Yeah. All right. So it's kind of like a monopoly. Yeah. Right. The way it's set up and it's kind of like the power that the consumers have given more market in a way, right? Where they've given them pretty much like the okay to be like, no, you are our only marketplace that we want to deal with. And when you only have one and there is only one and they make the rules and who can post, when they post, not only that, they have algorithms, which we can talk about later, they're talking about putting algorithms in place to shoot certain people higher than others. Yeah. It gets dangerous. It does get dangerous. And you know, if some of you listening are big morph market fans, we're going to be speaking 100% honest. Like I said at the beginning, I have personally been critical. I do like morph market as a platform. But I think that in the community, there's a lot of buddy-buddiness, which is keeping things from being transparent and honest. And you know, there are some popular people that I don't want to say, oh, they're in bed with morph market. Like if it's like a conspiracy, but they're all their friends, you know, so nobody's going to say anything bad. But I think that it's important for us to be able to talk about some of these things that are going on. So we could think about how we are going to act towards this movement, which I do think can be a very positive thing for the for the industry in general. But I do think that it shits on specific facets of the inventory of the industry, actually specifically speaking, reptile shops. Yeah. And that's one of those things like where I'm speaking from is clearly from a business owner standpoint, I own a reptile shop, I post on morph market, and I have to compete with everybody that posts on morph market. You know, for some of you guys, I know you're hobbyist and you enjoy this and posting on morph market is fun. And you know, it's engaging. You connect with other people that love about more market. If we don't saw a morph market, this guy doesn't get paid. Yeah. My employees don't get paid. So it's important for some of these things, you know, we're always going to have to compete in whatever platform, but it's important that things remain fair and, you know, even. Yeah. And we've been speaking a lot from a buyer's point of view, or sorry, from a seller's point of view, you from the reptile store side, me from a breeder side. But like I said in the beginning, this will affect buyers also. This will affect you, especially depending on how you are going about finding new animals for sale. If you're going to Google, which is something that we'll talk about, we'll talk about SEO and what exactly that means. If you're going to the, you know, through Facebook or whatever, like they're doing a lot of changes that will affect the buyers themselves. So let's talk about some morph market goals. And then we'll watch the video that more market release. All right. Darien writes on Facebook, my primary goal right now is to get morph market to number one on Google. The first comment here from Thomas Bailey, SEO baby, then Damon Hall. Here may, here may be some low hanging fruit in terms of moving up Google's ranks. Backlinks. Morph market already has a review system in place, tie it to trust pilot and trust index, type review systems to instantly get thousands of backlinks. Backlinks. So I'm going to explain what all of that means. That's a whole bunch of nerd talk. And as somebody who specializes in e-commerce, as a matter of fact, that's my whole fucking job. Yep, 100%. I literally work for Imperial. I developed the website. I've worked on SEO. SEO means search engine optimization. And what that pretty much means is that there's, it ranks keywords on Google and let's say you were to, let's say you wanted to buy something on Google and you're like, damn, I need to find something for sale. You're going to search ball pythons for sale on Google, right? Instead of going to Morph market, you're going straight to Google. And the people that have proper SEO search engine optimization with certain keywords that have placed proper backlinks on different websites, reviews, et cetera, those are the people that will rank higher. For example, when I started working for Imperial a couple of years ago now. You're on page three or end of page two, where were we? Page three, we're ranking on page three for general reptiles, first sale. That's those were the keywords. And right now we are ranking first page very high. You know, and that's work that I've implemented through many different things. And throughout the process of Morph market and great business plan for them, but we have given them all of that. Every time that we post an ad, every time that we, yeah, write a description of a ball python for sale that it gets clicks and clicks and clicks and clicks. We've given them all of the power of that domain. So now for example, when you search ball pythons for sale, it's no longer, oh, XYZ reptiles, new and good reptile distributors. Now it's Morph market and then everybody else. And as a buyer, that makes your experience a little bit better because now you're like, oh, I'm just clicking on what is the reptile version of Amazon, which for you, it's great. Now as a seller, that's difficult because now I'm like, so what the fuck is the point of me having this website? Yeah, modern reptile. Now you're going to have your ball pythons and you're always going to be at least number two because Morph market is there wrecking your shit. Yeah, yeah. And they will go on it a little bit later on in this podcast about they're going to talk a little bit about wanting to remove the need for a website, but there's concerns there because you need to figure out a way to be able to brand yourself, right? And that is the way to stick out in the community. If you put yourself, if all of your money, if everything is going straight to one platform where all of your competitors are at, you're at a loss because there are bigger breeders than you, you know, and you don't have a way to stick out against them. And that is a fact. Yeah, well, Morph market was talking about pushing the little people and pushing the smaller breeders, but I just don't see how that's realistic. You get what I'm saying? Yeah, I just don't see that. Especially because, you know, I wouldn't say I'm not going to say that all the small breeders or all the, you know, hobby breeders are are like bad breeders. No, no, not at all. Not at all. I would say the majority of quote unquote bad breeders are smaller or hobbyists. People that are, you know, like doing it in their garage backyard and, you know, people that have no repercussions if something goes wrong. Exactly. You know, this, this isn't somebody coming from the industry. It's just a hobby side of it. But you know, not to generalize too much. We'll start watching some of this video and we'll see how we feel about it. 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. Head on over the description or go to coldbloodedcaffeine.com and use the code REPTALSWITH to get your reptiles with coffee today. Check out this list of improvements he'll be bringing. First and foremost, the addition of many new features to MorphMarket have made the platform a bit difficult to use and understand. That's my fault. One of Darien's first initiatives will be to simplify things. So that is welcoming and friendly even to new users. All right. Real quick. We'll talk about the site usability. I personally haven't experienced much issues with the site. I thought the website was pretty easy to use. Yeah. Some people are having issues. I'm not trying to roast everybody, but get what your shit dog is fucking 20%. But site usability, I'm fine with it. They did already start. This is the thing. They started updating the photos and the category. The category photos. They made it more SEO friendly. Some photos that don't have a lot of colors helping the size of the photo be smaller. Like Google picks up on all of those things. All of those things matter. The next thing they're going to be talking about is external advertisements, which I don't know what that means, but let's do that. MorphMarket will be reinvesting more money into advertising to bring additional buyers to the marketplace and hobby. So they're saying that they want to bring buyers from outside of the house. Correct. So at doobia.com is really good at advertising on Facebook. And they run tons of advertising on Facebook and their advertisement gets thousands of reactions. So I think that's what they mean by external advertisement where they're going to advertise outside of the normal places to try to hit different people that have nothing to do with reptiles, which I think is great. That's the way you do it. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Now. But something that doobia has already done is that they've added a whole purchasing reptile stuff to doobia.com, which if you go and do good to the company now, they have reptiles for sale, then reptiles by category, turtles for sale, ballbaitos for sale, whatever for sale, this for sale. And when you click it, it goes to MorphMarket, setting up backlinks. That's what they're doing right now. So now I do get a little worried about what that means for specific people, but we'll keep on going. The next category we have here, they're going to be talking about local shopping, which I think is cool. Well, MorphMarket does have the ability to search in areas near you. This functionality is not obvious. Looking at easier to find breeders and animals near you will open up a whole new set of buying opportunities without the need to show. Okay. So local shopping, I actually have gotten plenty of inquiries from local people. I mean, I've done, you know, have had people come to the shop be like, Hey, just come by the shop and they'll buy my ball python and they'll shop around the store. You know, and that's been great. And as a buyer, if you're worried about animal shipping, if you're worried about, you know, anything that involves not being able to see the animal in person, like that is your place to be. That is a great feature of the platform. I don't think it's the easiest to find right now, which I think he's been public about. But once it becomes easier to find that that's going to be great because you're going to have a plethora of people breeders and even stores that you didn't even know were there before. So that is a great, great thing. Capacity limits on membership plans will be increased so you can list more animals for sale. In the past year, we've added many capabilities to manage animals, clutches and lineage. More features like labels, QR codes and husbandry activity tracking are coming soon. Sellers will be able to transfer animal records directly into buyer accounts. Okay, so they covered two topics right there. The first one being increased capacities. So the first thing I'll say about that is I don't think that there's a need for any kind of capacities that's just me personally, especially because of something that they're going to be implementing, which if they implement it the way that I think they're going to implement it, there should be no categories. And that is payment processing. They're going to be same way that you are able to buy stuff on Amazon directly through Amazon or eBay or Etsy. Instead of buying from Alex's marketplace, you're buying from Amazon, which Alex marketplace distributes through Amazon, right? And you're able to purchase through Amazon's payment processing. So if more of market does something like that, they can take a percent of your sales. There could be a charge per sale. If they implement a charge per sale, I do not think there's a need for any kind of capacities. You should have specific memberships based on tiers, but no capacity, just extra features. And one of those features actually is this free animal management. So with the free animal management, or sorry, sorry, with the animal management, I think that it should be free based on your tier, right? But that only worked for breeders. Yeah, does it work for me? No, it doesn't. Because you have here thousands of animals versus the couple hundred that I produce at home. The good thing about the animal management thing is that as a breeder, if somebody wants to buy something for me, they can have all the records and I can transfer all that. You can just transfer it. Yep, which is great. And then as a buyer yourself, if you no longer have to worry about, oh, what was the feeling? Has it ever missed a meal? Does it commonly miss meals? If the person's taking track of sheds, is that going to, that might be there? Something that I would worry about is that there are people that have a lot of, I mean, you're creating jobs for people just in more market, you know, because who really is going to have the time to sit down and track a thousand animals and sell those animals? You're going to need to hire somebody. Correct. But at the end of the day, there has been a couple animal management companies that have come and go throughout the hobby and they haven't kept up with it, which is made it. I think I have a note here that says like, oh, that their programs have been like obsolete. You know, like, oh, we have a QR program and then it's like popular for a year and then nobody fucking uses that shit anymore. Right. And they don't update it. They don't update it. They don't do anything that has glitches and it stays there and it just never works properly. So I hope that this, this, I do, I personally need something like that. You know, and I haven't found a good way to do it. I know some people use like spreadsheets, but I just haven't found a solid way for me to do it. And also, I don't like to be in the fucking snake room with my dirty ass hands touching my only laptop. Got you. Yeah. All right. So this next thing that they're going to touch on is wholesale market. I like that. Darien's experience with his own pet stores and connections to the pet store network will enable us to create a world-class wholesale market. This will make it easy for breeders to find homes for every animal. How you feeling about the wholesale market? I think that's cool. I think some, some breeders can be touchy about the wholesale subject. Yep. You reach out to them and they kind of get offended that you even asked them if you're going to sell wholesale. So having a section where breeders that want to sell wholesale can go directly there to, to meet stores and connect with the source, I think that's fantastic. I mean, I could use boas. You know, I could, there's a lot of animals that we have like a hard time sourcing breeders for. So I think in that sense it's going to be extremely helpful for like our situation or people that are in similar situations. I do think that that is the best, the best feature that they have currently for reptile stores. Right. Now, a concern that I have is that, is that wholesale market public? I, you know, I read somewhere that some of these features, you know, they were going to make like, you had to have like a specific account for. Okay. So for things like wholesale, purchasing crocodilians, things like that, they were going to give people like a, like a limited account that only certain people can go in and see that type of stuff. Okay. That's cool. Cause my concern was like, yo, like if everybody has access to the wholesale, they, it might diminish the value of the retail or the breeder price of an animal. Yeah. You know, if you see, oh wait, this fucking normal ball python, they're selling 10 of them for $5 each, but they're selling them for $30 for one of them. Where they at? $5. That's an example, bro. But yeah, I mean, that's the thing that I worry. 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. The next thing is something that I am not about. It's the social media platform. And that's just a personal thing of mine. I'll let him talk about it before we get into it. We've all seen the hostility from the major social platforms as they have regulated and shut down our accounts. We will be providing a social experience within our platform as regulated by us and not big tech. They're going to fucking have their own social media platform. All right. Not a fan of this. Look, as a matter of fact, I'm going to read exactly what I wrote about this. I said, I'm not a fan of. The reason why I believe they want to do this is because a few years back, we were all on Facebook, doom scrolling and selling animals. We lost that privilege due to Facebook rules, which I believe were always there. But we just did it anyways. We were like, fuck that shit, right? But the reason why those two worked was because with or without those two worked with or without animal sales is that we were already on Facebook spending on godly amount of time. As a business owner, I do not want to have another platform to have to slave over. But if you're not there, you're left behind. Yeah. And then a comment they make is that they're going to be regulating. What does that mean? That sounds like a very strong control over the industry. And then the question is, are we giving this platform too much power? There is not one way to operate. I think the word is autonomous. Okay. Okay. Maybe I don't know. I'm not a genius. But we're not fucking robots. There's different ways to go about things. That was the word you're right. Yeah. Okay. Autonomous. Right. We're not there's different ways to operate throughout the business. And if we all have one way of doing it, no one will ever stick out. Correct. And the point of being in a market place is finding a way to stick out against your competitors. And if we're all just there, all competitors, all the same, what the fuck's the difference? And then how the fuck am I going to compete with somebody who has thousands of pon thousands of thousands of animals and 10 million followers? Right. Oh, you should do better. Yeah, you're right. I got to work my ass off, but I'm trying. And morph market used to be a place where I can compete with those people. And I feel like over time that has been slipping. Okay. You know, and like I said, morph market is a great platform. It gives me a lot of business, but it's those kinds of things that I start to find myself fresh area with absolutely, you know, and something that I personally think is scary is when morph market or rather big tech, big industry is buddy buddy with some of the suppliers because then now the people that follow that persona in the industry are going to be like, no, I want to buy from them. You know, like your morph market should not be the influencer. Correct. You should be able to be like, no, like I'm separate from everybody and so that way everybody's equal if you catch one. No, I'm catching the same. Yeah. All right. So this next thing that they're going to talk about is the big thing payment processing. We will finish out our work to facilitate the purchasing of animals through our platform. This will reduce friction on closing sales, which currently requires visiting and maintaining other websites. Payment processing. We've been talking about that one for a while. We knew this one was coming. Yeah. That's that's the big one. As a matter of fact, do you think that that is a bad thing? You know, not necessarily, right? It's a little annoying on the business end that now we just have to open up another account and have a different, you know, a different, you know, thing to have to keep track of to make sure the funds are coming in and that, you know, there's no lapse in that. But I think I think it's great for the consumer, right? I think there's always been huge fear in this industry about getting scammed and scammers and not getting paid. This will kind of serve as an escrow service, right? You know, everything has to be everything is going to go through more market. So if the person you're buying from doesn't fulfill their end of the bargain, their end of the contract, they don't send you a good animal. They don't send you the animal. The payment is held. Right. The payment is held. It's more market. So you're going to get your money back and more market is going to tell that seller, hey, buddy, you can't sell here no more and cancel their account and boom, they're gone. And now a good thing, a good thing for more market talking about business, right? This is what we do here, right? Whenever you and I are together, it's all business. All business. The good thing for more market is that they're creating almost like a bank system for them. Yes. It's the same thing like, for example, Starbucks. Why does Starbucks have rewards? It's because you put your money in there. We give them the money to invest. And they invest that money. So money sits there. And you're like, I'm going to have coffee next time. And they're like, dude, the $25 that you spent, I just made it into $50 and you don't get to see that. Yeah. So not only did you pay me $25, but I made $25 on your $25. And that's a good thing for money on the coffee. And there you go. And money on the coffee says profit on profit. And that is a good opportunity for more market. Now they do hold all the liability there. That is so something else on the, so I have done another more market podcast, which I've spoken on plenty of times on this podcast about that one is a, has been one of the most popular podcasts that I've done. And something that I did say on that podcast was that I was going to come out with a competition for more market, right? Mind you, it didn't happen. Why didn't it happen? So the investor, he pretty much paid for the platform. And then we couldn't keep, I mean, it's hard work guys. This shit is not easy. They're doing a very good job at what they are doing. The investor put the money up front. We couldn't keep track of the payments of putting the platform up. And then the person that was developing it, I was kind of like more like the middleman, trying to get the vision across how to operate or whatever. And then the person developing it, they, you know, and he's a very good friend of mine. So I'm not going to shit on him, but he couldn't keep up with the workload that there was and having a full time job. This is hard stuff. One of the things that we were going to have on that platform was payment processing. And we were going to have a way for people to have their individual branding, which I think is a very big part of, again, how to set yourself up in the industry. But from a buyer's point of view, being able to purchase on a platform is the best thing, you know, because you don't have to worry about it anymore. And if you put it in more markets, hand with their rules and whatever, you're even protected for it. You're a little safer. Yeah. So now we're going to talk about enhanced profiles. We understand how important it is for you to be informed about the other party that you're communicating with. We are committed to enhancing the information available to both parties in order to save your time and keep you safe. That is the part where I'm like, where I have my most interest in, because that's where I'm like, oh, are we going to be able to customize the branding? Something that I have here, which we're about to talk about. Actually, I'm just going to open that shit up. Let's do that. So something that Darian posted was a post your more market feature and change request here. That I wrote was customizable front end for sellers page so we can edit and set up our stores with our proper branding. Again, and again, and again, you need to be able to set yourself aside from other breeders. I personally maintain my own website, right? And what does that offer me? That offers me personally as a breeder, not as a store, as a breeder, a place to not only sell my animals, but to really talk about the projects that I'm working with. Those are features that you can do on more market. But you know what I can't do? I can't post about this podcast. Correct. You can't post links. I can. Yeah, I could post the shows that I'm going to be at, but I can't. Let's say, for example, the podcast merch, which you can buy right now. It's on my website, you know, and as a matter of fact, I pay the same amount yearly for my more market membership. Then I do my Shopify membership. Now, I guess you could say, oh, just cancel the Shopify. Yeah, but what about all the other shit that I'm trying to do? Now, as a store, we literally have here, from imperialreptos.com, we have the whole thing is you have the, a reptile store and the palm of your hands. Correct. It's a full functioning store right then and there. How do you feel about the process of putting all these animals for sale on this platform? I don't think we would. Yeah. I think if more market, you know, definitely changes that. I think we have to change the way that we operate on more market. And that's just, and that's just the reality of it. Yeah. I think that that is a big thing because at the end of the day, like, I mean, I busted my ass trying to get us fucking ranked on Google and believe it or not. I mean, I'm not worried about more of marketing, more of market ranking higher because I already know they will. Yeah. It's happening. You know, so now the question is, is other reptile stores online, right? You know, I'm going to name a couple of things. Like, I'm going to say, I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. 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I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. I'm going to name a couple of things. The owner writes added premium membership for buyers to get special offers and have verified accounts. Allow stores to make coupons specific to their store, to their store, to offer customers, to help increase sales. Thank you to customers. Almost like running your own website. Almost like running your own website. Mind you, if Morph Market becomes the Shopify for the Reptalk community, fire. It allows us to be independent through a bigger platform. Correct. That I think would be the most ideal situation. Then they had their general marketplace that like, damn, this is where everybody should is. But when you click on Imperial Reptiles, you go to the Imperial Reptiles side of Morph Market. It might be like morphmarket.imperialreptiles.com. Whatever. Let it be there. Yeah. I think Etsy has something similar like that. It's like store name at Etsy.com. That allows people to stick out in their own right. Next one we have here. I hope I'm pronouncing this right because I don't know how to read. Cheyenne. Cheyenne. Bower. A Caging or Suppliers category would be cool. Now, this is interesting because the person who bought Morph Market has their own Caging. So, something that I think might be happening through Morph Market is you might see an area where you can buy feeders, where you can buy dry goods. Okay. Where is all of that going to come from? It's not come from the general marketplace. It's coming from doobia.com, where you can buy your feeders, you can buy enclosures, all of that jazz. All right. Hi, Dan. Dan just walked in. Yeah. Because Delta's Exotics, the most talented reptile artist in the world. Sorry about that. All right. And then now I have here some comments from Darien. He writes, I would like to discuss your concerns regarding the future of Morph Market as a passionate reptile enthusiast. Reptile enthusiast. Enthusiasts. Enthusiasts, dude. This platform gives me the unique opportunity to advocate for the ethical treatment, acquisition, and sale of reptiles and other animals while growing the reptile. I do understand that people have concerns about sellers and species on the platform. However, I believe that removing or banning them will not allow the problem to be solved. I'm paraphrasing there. In addition to this, as we all know, reptile keeping is under constant threat of bans and legislation or legislative limitations rather. Instead of removal, I propose that we implement standards that ensure responsible practices across the entire industry. This approach will set a unique standard for the site and promote ethical practices. I value your opinions. I would love to hear from your thoughts on this approach. Which like what we were saying before is kind of sketch because it's like... I mean, it sounds beautiful. It sounds beautiful. But when you're talking about, oh, you're giving all your power to this one thing, isn't like this whole thing about being in the United States. It is like not giving all your power to the government. People listening to this are going to be like, wait a minute. I was going to say something political, but I'm not going to do it. First, he writes, here are a few ideas I have. First, I suggest making it easier for users to report animals that appear to be unhealthy or mislabeled. And that could be subjective. Yeah, because you have somebody like... That doesn't know about ants. It sees a green tree python. It's like, well, that looks thin. Let's get it to my millions of people and let's report this thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. If we receive multiple reports about a specific seller, we will take action and notify them that their account is at risk. Second, I suggest implementing a system that can handle extreme cases when a buyer or seller has a high ratio of negative feedback. We will review the cases individually and take appropriate action. And aside, I know to that another comment that I read, I don't know if you have that on your notes, they were going to do something like that similar to buyers. So they're going to track buyers, purchases to inquiries and actually have it listed. So if you're somebody who buys one animal and inquires 5,000 times, the person that you're inquiring with is going to see that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that is cool because I would say nine emails out of ten are... Hey, what is this? But that's what we got to do. Yeah. Do your research people. Third, I propose using an algorithm that gives... This is important. I propose that using an algorithm that gives sellers with the most positive feedback, a slightly higher chance of being displayed to potential buyers. This will encourage sellers to maintain a higher level of customer satisfaction and promote a positive selling experience. I'm going to say these things real quick because he did clarify in the comments what he was trying to say. He said, I'd like to clarify that one of my priorities right now is to get smaller sellers, more views and sales. The less animal sales you have available, the lower your chance of being seen. I will be working hard to improve the visibility of all more market sellers, not just the ones that have the most animals available. I should have explained my third point a bit better. It will only affect stores with much higher or lower feedback than others and will be percent based. However, if a new store only has a couple of reviews, it won't affect them at all because a single review could make a huge impact and will make it fair. Do we think that that's possible? Yeah. No, we'll have to see. Just listening to it just doesn't make... If somebody's at the top, somebody's got to be at the bottom. To me, that's just a part where it's like, all right, again, it sounds nice. We'll just have to wait and see. All in all, I am excited. I think that something that I've been saying a lot these days is new rules, same game. It's like, we're all playing this game. We fucking figure the shit out when we get new rules thrown at us. It's not really about complaining. It's about having open conversation and then just figuring it out. I think that that's what we're going to do. We're just going to figure out the next step. Of course, I have my concerns and not that I am the most knowledgeable with coding or algorithms or any of that shit, but if this does make it to the Morph market team, if I can offer you any kind of value, hit me up. I'd love to help out with whatever I can. I do have a lot of fucking opinions. Clearly, I have a podcast, apparently. And then I wrote here some pros and cons that we can discuss. 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 imperialreptiles.com and use the code REPTALSWITH to get a specific discount special to us and our listeners for your reptile supplies today. One more time, that's imperialreptiles.com. Use the code REPTALSWITH. Actually, before we get into the pros and cons, I do want to play the rest of this video because I do want to give my respects to John. I don't know him personally, but he's in a lot for the community with Morph Market. You know, even though, like I said, I've been critical, I think that he did something great. I respect the fucking hustle for both of them. Like, all props to them, all the money to them. Like, keep that shit up. You know, I think that that is fucking dope that they're doing these things. So I'm going to hit his conclusion. But this is not a good buy message. Well, my role is changing. I am excited to help Darien and the Morph Rucker team continue crushing it. Under Darien's leadership, we're going to be able to do greater things than ever before. Something that he mentions in the video is that, or in like one of the posts, is that he had trouble with his work-life balance. Oh, yeah. Something that I think that we can both resonate with. Something about them trying to adopt another child, him and his partner. His wife. His wife. And then because of the pandemic and so what that, it caused a lot of issues. And it's good that he was able to, you know, sell his platform, make his money, and is continuing to work on this. Yeah. So all props to the Morph Rucker team. And I hope that this is a positive experience for the reptile community. All right. Pros and cons. Do you want to mention any before I start throwing mine out there? Yeah, I guess I'll throw mine out there. I guess with the pros that we have, I think the payment processing is going to be good for the buyers. Yep. So I think the fact that we have somebody who's a little bit more SEO, like knowledgeable, and like has done the thing of like growing these companies and like really growing online. I think that we have that person leading and leading, you know, leading the front there, I think is going to be great. And it's going to be great for the reptile industry. At the end of the day, when we have a store, when you're a breeder, you want newer people to come in, right? It's not just how do we reach out to the people that are already in this. How can we continue to pull people out and bring them in? So I think that's going to be one of the greatest things that that Morfark is going to be able to do. Do you want me to jump into the cons? Yeah, I think that giving one platform all the power where everybody's selling, I think, is very dangerous. But I think that's something that the consumers decide, right? I think all the power to Morf market, congratulations, Morf market literally got 99%, you know, I'm going to say it, 99% of everybody to post on there, that's fantastic. But when you look at it, it can be a slippery slope. Yeah, yeah. And I think that there's a very open conversation about how valuable our data is these days. And we're just giving it to all these kinds of platforms, you know, giving them our information, everything. And we just got to be smart about how we are operating online period and in general. So here, I'm going to read my cons before I read my pros. Okay. Cons, like I said, on and on and on and on again throughout this episode, is business branding. That's been from the beginning though. Yeah, you know, you're posting with everybody. Yeah, I think that if they figure out how the sellers can brand their page and still be on the general marketplace, it's a big deal. Yeah, it is a big deal. And I don't think breeders at that point need a website unless they need it for something else. Okay. You know, and now the stores, the shops, they should have their website. I think that it's a different experience. It's a different thing that they offer. But like, I guess maybe not for me specifically because I mean, we had the podcast, I have to throw stuff up on my website for the podcast, but like David's balls, Billy's balls, Billy's balls, Bob's morphs or whatever the fuck, they probably wouldn't need a website at that point. You know, they could just operate completely on more market and stick out. And I think that that was very important. Inventory issues of website versus morph market. This store has, we literally have a grip on our fronts on the storefront and on the back. And that had to be developed. That had to be something that we've developed the past three fucking years, the system that works. And we're getting there. You know, now we have to figure out how to have a separate morph market inventory, or can they develop a way for us to have for our website inventory to match the store inventory or something like that? Like, what can we do to keep our inventory and check, because specifically the inventory issue is a store issue with, you know, store with thousands of animals. Correct. You know, we would quite literally have to have a separate morph market inventory. And it might be beneficial because we could do exact photos. But let's say quote, unquote, let's say if 80% of our sales came to the morph market. Now that 80% is gone. You know, because how the fuck are we going to keep track of the inventory? If something sells in morph market, doesn't come out of our store inventory, and then it sells at the same time, which happens, which happens for sure. So there's got to be a way to minimize that friction. I have here again, the control of our control inventory. Payment processing is a potential con. This one should have been 5050, but it's a potential con for sellers. But it's a pro for buyers. Yeah. The social platforms, it just means you're just not a fan for it. But at the end of the day, if I got to do it, I got to do it because I'm a business owner, and we got to be on all the platforms that benefit us so that way we can grow our businesses. The last con I have here is the algorithm. I'm not sure how that's going to work. If it works exactly the way that they say they wanted to work, that's fine. But I don't think everything is always going to be sunshine and rain. But yeah, it's going it's going to benefit some people and then shit on everybody else. If it think about it like this, if it's percent based, it's going to it's going to kind of be like the economy. We're like the lower people, the higher people are going to stick out. And then everybody in the middle is just in the middle. So that percent base is difficult. You know, because I mean, I guess technically I have a smaller store. So it might benefit me. But what happens when I'm trying to break through to the higher end, to the top, I have to really cut through that middle. Will that be beneficial for me? Or let's play devil's advocate. Let's say you just get a let's say you didn't have a bad sale. You just had a difficult customer. And now that guy leaves you a negative review. And you got three good reviews, one bad review. Now you got 25% bad review. What's going to happen when you didn't necessarily do anything wrong? Yeah. So I'll do do you want even better is that a customer is much quicker to leave a bad review than a good review. Oh, well, that's just what they have a good time. They just disappear. When they have a bad time, they're like, I need to write about this on Facebook. You know, so that's fucking sketch. Yeah. And now we have to be like probing these customers be like, yo, fucking, write a good review, write a good review, write a good review. I'll give you 10% off. I swear to God, they still don't do it. Yeah, I know. Now we're going to talk about pros. We're going to have this on a good note before we give our final thoughts. Pro number one, clean and safe selling environment. I do think that again, more market has offered a pretty solid product. Even though I have my gripes, but it is a good platform. Nothing's perfect. Yeah, people are thriving on it. It's going to be a one stop shop. And it is a user friendly platform. It's not fucking not to shit on them. It's not fucking Kingsnake or Fauna or Fauna or Fauna classifies. It's like, I've been on Fauna for years now, and I still have issues maneuvering around that shit. Yeah, my pictures still come out upside down sometimes. What did I do? Let's be honest, who the fuck is getting sale for Fauna classifieds and Kingsnake? Oh, people. Fact. Oh, potential pro, but con for a lot. This was also the 50s. Yeah, yeah, we've been talking. They haven't talked about this. So this has just been internal talk. This has just been us talking. This is internal talk. And this is a conspiracy theory. So this note that I have here is a shipping center. Now, if more market is smart, which I think we know they are they're smart. And we know that red line shipping just came out. We know that they are in cahoots or we are conspiring that there are cahoots. They're doing a payment processing. Yep. Right. So all your payments are going to go through them. Why not the shipping label? Yep. So this is going to mind you, this might be a great opportunity to get better shipping rates because of the amount of people on the platform. That means there's going to be a lot more shipments going through red line, which means that they're going to get a better rate through FedEx. Yep. That is another thing that I was going to have on the website that we were developing was that we were going to be able to ship directly through all that stuff and process your labels through there. So if more market, which they are smart, and if they can figure out how to develop this on their platform, they can have it so that way you can purchase your labels directly through more market and all of that ships through red line shipping, which means it's giving red line shipping more business, which again, if for example, if you use a shipping competitor or rather, let's say you're using FedEx, I'm using UPS. We get our own independent rates from FedEx and UPS. We both ship 50 packages. But now if I say, hey, let me go on your account and we'll just ship the 100 packages to FedEx. And then we're like, hey, FedEx, we're going to do 100 packages now. I want a better shipping rate. They're going to be like, yeah, that's fine. You're doubling your business with us. We'll put you a discount, which means at the end of the day, we're going to be getting better rates for shipping. Correct. But now you're putting all your power on this in this platform. You're giving all your power to one shipping company and you are running over the other shipping companies. That is pro and con. It is. That is scary stuff and also good stuff because at the end of the day, as a business, you need good shipping rates. Yeah. You know, but remember, there's lots of options out there. That's not just one. Check your shipping rates to all the all the rep all shipping people. Now closing statements, bro. Yeah. What do you think of you first? Well, first of all, congratulations to John, you know, for building an amazing platform and an amazing company. And you know, he's had an amazing staff and to be able to finish it off by selling this, which I'm sure was a nice sale, you know, to do via dot com. I mean, he's got to be on cloud nine. He has to be feeling excellent. He's going to be able to go and like, you know, enjoy his family and enjoy that time. That's got to be, that's got to be fantastic. So great to him, you know, fantastic job to also daring and congrats to him to picking up more market. That's got to be an amazing venture as somebody who seems to love business with the two stores and do via dot com. This is the stuff that gets them going. So I'm pretty sure, you know, he's gonna, he's all, he's on more market right now. And I'm very excited to see the future of more market. Like I said, I know we've been, you know, we talk about certain things, but we have to. That's how you grow. That's how you build stuff that you got to communicate. You got to talk the good, the bad, you know, you got to talk about everything. I'm super excited about more market. I'm excited to see where it's going to go, whether we have to change the way we post some more market or not. I don't think it matters. I think you said it best. It's just new rules. You know, I'm a competitive person. To me, this is kind of just, you know, another game to play. And, you know, here we go. It just keeps things exciting, keeps things going. The payment processing makes me a little nervous, but not a big deal. The whole thing just is really not a big deal. You know, we're going to talk about it. And you know, there are some big changes coming. We don't know how it's going to be. It's exciting. It's exciting. I will say that these dudes are, they're not older older dudes. These are not old heads. No, they're not. They're not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're all trying to do between conservation and figuring out these legislation. So they're definitely for the industry, which is very important. If this makes it to John's ears to Darien's ears, if you want to come on the show, if you want to link up with me so we can talk about this and maybe talk about some of the shit that we spoke about, maybe dispel some of our concerns, I would fucking love that. That'd be fucking dope. But all in all men, I mean, again, I have my concerns, but I think that there is a very good opportunity for sellers and buyers, but more than anything for the buyers. I think that the changes that are being made is great for buyers, great for breeders, and it's just okay for stores, which is a concern. Also, really quick, if you liked this podcast and you want to hear more business podcasts, I mean, if we could sit down like once a month and maybe do this as an additional podcast, if you have time. I love business. So if any time I get a chance to talk about business and reptiles, it's just it's my cup of tea. Hell yeah. And we could probably even do it like us too. And then like we'll set up like a stream yard or something and do it with other people and stuff like that. So if that's something you're interested, please leave a comment below or send a DM to any one of us. And maybe we could start doing that at least once a month and it'll be an additional podcast. Let's do it. Cool beans.