Say goodbye to Twinkies

Obama's admin has have a lot of effects on importation of marine animals as well as the burden Obama care is putting on pet stores. Margins are not allowing them to keep employees with the fines. I know few places that offer health care and you cant really raise prices with internet competition having the upper hand already. Stores here are dropping staff or using 1099 for labor. In this climate I doubt I would have been able to sell the store at all. I saw this coming though, but again I sold to spend more time with kids and less with fish not that my business model was failing.

How many pet stores in your area have 50 or more full time employees? I've never seen a LFS that did enough volume to justify that many employees.

The websites I speak of do not always handle the live stock, they push paper from the customer to a wholesaler. I was selling quality not unknown quality for cheap. Impossible to undercut them with the overhead and what happens to the local store when customers find said web site with cheaper prices since its a drop ship price? This has been tried and not well received....

Most states require people to pay tax on internet sales, its a voluntary field on the income tax forms. Impossible to enforce. We need a fed sales tax on the internet since state to state gets confusing then you will have states trying to double tax.

In Louisiana my aquarium related purchases were almost exclusively online since the late 90s. Sales tax wouldn't have changed that since I saved 50-75% off local retail and could choose from a much larger selection online. Mail order livestock and plants were usually much higher quality as well. Luckily we have a better LFS here that I'd be inclined to support, but mail order and local clubs would still be my preference for most purchases.