bodhidharma wrote:Bretts wrote:Sorry but I have said this before. I find the argument of paying more for items by buying local is a little silly. It's really no different than the shop always asking for a donation to stay afloat. "Here Sir here is your tree now we are having trouble keeping the doors open could you put that $20 change in our donation tin please"
I have used Kaizenbonsai before and they are a great reputable dealer. He also seems like a great bloke.
Recently I came across
http://www.californiabonsai.com/
I have ordered a couple of Masukini tools of them at the best price I have seen with a total of $10 postage. These guys are just over a year old but seem great and use Paypal so should be pretty safe. Items should be here within days.
Holding the tools in your hand is a great point but when you know what you want why not I say.
Sory Bretts, cant agree with you on this one. A little operator like myself, by the time the tools get to my hands, and everybody else has taken their little bit out, i would be selling at a loss if i was to compete. The same applies to the people producing goods overseas pots trees etc. Their lifestyle is so much cheaper than ours and their money, though not much, goes further than ours. They do without and would work for very little to change their situation. This is not our lifestyle so we must pay more. Unfortunately our attitude of, i want it cheap and i want it now, has made us so reliant on O.S production that if they pulled the rug we would be in deep doodoo. We are selling our country at such a rate we will not have anything to give our children except wasteland. We have to stop and change our attitude. Support Aussies and pay a little extra, i say
Phew..
glad i got that off my chest.
Hey Bodi,
I think the small nurseries including Bonsai are very valuable and if they start to fail because we can now source tools from around the world that would be a bugger, but I just don't see asking people to buy tools/wire at a higher price from Bonsai nurseries as being the answer. Most people will take the cheaper option and if the Nursery needs those sales to survive it will fail.
I am no expert business person but this is how I see it.
If you have a fish shop you need to keep the window full of great fish otherwise people will not bother coming into the store.
Some items for sale may be very low profit but they are there to get people to come to your shop. The more traffic you have through the shop the better the sales will be.
At the same time you have to work out what you can make the most profit from and capitalize from it. If you can't find anything that makes a profit then you will have to call it a hobby not a way to feed the family.
I have seen at least one Bonsai Nursery go through some changes over the last few years and now has a plan for a very profitable business. I have seen some very insightful thinking along with some risk taking that brought this about. Some may wonder if this is best for the bonsai community but I think a happy, financially stable nurseryman is the best for the bonsai community even if the services are less than we are used to. Compared to a nurseryman that is always grumpy because they can't feed the family.
I think it is obvious there is a difference between a punter of the street and an accomplished bonsai practitioner and what they want from a bonsai nursery. The punter is going to be happy to pay the higher price for the convenience of buying their tree, wire, tools, soil and pots all from the one place. Getting advice and maybe lessons.
But what does the accomplished bonsai practitioner want from their local nursery. They have many trees so start to buy stock less often but appreciate that good stock is worth more. They may go through several kilo of wire a year, are looking for more expensive better quality tools, heaps of soil and start to find price more important than convenience.
They have learnt the basics of Bonsai and want to push their abilities by learning from the best.
My guess is that some nurseries will stick to the Punter of the street. Some will make their money from selling exceptional stock better than we have today. The best nursery will be the one that finds a way to cater to them all.
I think this will lead to better Nurseries in the end.
I remember one nursery suggested that if it charged $1 each time some one used the tiolet they would be rich
I think being creative is a much better business plan than playing to the customers conscience.
I do agree we are selling our country off and am not happy. We have major resource deposits in Australia and very little water. Yet we send this raw material offshore and try to make money from farming
Then we ask people to pay more for Aussie grown produce
I think we should be smarter and increase industrial production that uses much less water and is much more profitable.
I am no economist so I guess there must be a reason we do it arse about as it sounds dam silly to me?
It's too bad your in such a hurry cause the stories I could tell you, Bushels and baskets of stories, hole crates full of stories. But if you can spare a moment I will tell you one story.
