Friday, April 29, 2011

Lessons Learned

We found out why so many people are wanting the little Serama mini chicks we sell, we are to cheap. I know I mentioned this a couple of posts back but today it is even more evident.

I make it a habit to scroll Craig's list every few hours just to see whats on the market and how much people are selling things for. Every now and then you can come across some very good deals. Most of the time from just the price you can tell if the person is trying to make a little money or is completely fed up with it all and are selling everything.
I have been noticing more and more Serama chicks being listed in other cities close by and the prices are way more than what we are asking. One guy in OK is selling 4 week old chicks at $25.00 a piece. That is $18 dollars more per chick than we sell them. Another is selling week olds for $12.00 a piece and that is $5 more than us.
Ok here is the funny part. They are our chicks. We went back and looked at the phone numbers and sure as the world, they are the same people. By no means am I against any person making a buck or two, but 18 wow. Congrats on them for getting it but I can tell you this, all they are doing is driving the market up making it harder to sell them.
I do plan to raise the prices on the Serama chicks a little more, but I do not plan to gouge the market on them. We already went from 5 to 7 for a week old chick so now we are going from 7 to 10 and see how that goes but also honoring the 7 for ones that are already on the waiting list.

I also wanted to mention that for the past few days we have had a steady flow of people coming and going buying this or that. From a box full of chicks or rabbits to just one or two at a time. More people are scheduled to stop by this weekend for whatever is left.
Doing all this the wife and I have met some really nice people and more than that, might have made some new friends. We have been invited to visit one couples church a couple of towns over and another couple even invited us to a crawl fish boil next month. We plan to attend both.
All and all just some good down to earth people and good to talk to.
Here's my conclusion, if more people bought chickens, then the world could be a better place to live. Now that is Redneck wisdom at it's finest right there.          

1 comment:

  1. I think your increase is fair. We sold our 9 month old layers for $12 each, but as you said I've seen 1 yr old layers listed for as high as $25 each. At our price we had a lady drive( with gas prices being what they are) over 300 miles round trip to by 10.

    Glad you are meeting some really nice people, we too have met some very nice people in our selling indevours(sp?)

    Blessings for your weekend.

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