Lack of Good Pet shops in the are

Richmond used to have plenty of small pet stores that dealt with exotics. Now they are closing, one by one. To my knowledge only two more exist (one in Lakeside and one off Ironbridge) The rest of the petstores around Richmond are all either aquatics stores or Petsmart/Petco stores. Now, don't get me wrong, I like Petsmart and Petco well enough. I used to work in a Petsmart. I just prefer small business to big business.

Are there any stores I'm missing? I've considered starting my own pet shop in the future. Does anyone have experience in this area (owning a pet store, working in a pet store?)

not from the area but only one I know of is Off The Ark which is who I assume you are talking about on Iron Bridge

Yes, I was speaking of Off the Ark. The store is okay. I have issues with his husbandry and he has no QT procedure at all. I really want to start a reptile store that is clean, knowledgable, and provides excellent animals and customer service. These types of stores are seriously lacking in this area. I've never been to a pet store in VA Beach though so I'm not sure what they are like there.

we have Animal Jungle (which a few of the memers on this site work at) and we have Pet Paradise.... those are our main 2 in the area that I know of..

Then there is a smaller store that is in Chesapeake but it's not as exotic... Simply Pets....

that's about it...

Animal Jungle and Pet Paradise are the best ones around here... as for purchasing reptiles, we purchase from breeders we know because the pet stores are a little over priced naturally.

Yea, the problem with the exotic stores here are their quality, customer service, and husbandry. Off the ark is closest to me and I have to use him because I need live feeders, but his husbandry could use a bit of an upgrade.

I'll have to check out those two next time I'm heading towards VA Beach this summer.

you absolutely should.

There used to be a really good shop in Richmond called Noah's Ark (there is a trend here I think, lol)

They had great customer service. Their animals were well taken care of and that is where I bought my first snake, my snow corn. He had to close down due to so many Petsmarts and Petcos popping up. I want to have a store like his, only bigger.

I've owned and worked at pet stores.

The problem is that care and quarantine cost money. Add commercial rents, labor, benefits and the cost of caging, lighting, animals, etc. and it gets very hard to make a profit. Now, add big retailers coming into the market that skimp and cut corners to increase profit and the smaller shops struggle to compete.

Some of you may be old enough to remember local hardware stores. It used to be the local hardware store was the only place to get lots of service and hardware. They are just about all gone now, thanks to Lowes and Home Depot. The same thing is happening to local pet shops. The small shops have to be creative to make a profit, which is the reason they exist.

Well I think Off the Ark stays open because he sells species Petco/Petsmarts refuse to sell and he also sells live feeders. QT doesn't have to be long. Anything is better than nothing. When I worked at Petsmart our small animals got a QT period of 1 week. Reptiles on the other hand went directly in the cages from their boxes. The week long QT usually proved useful because we could tell who had a respiratory infection or some other illness/parasite infestation usually within that time period. The only problem is the QT was pretty much useless since Petsmart would hardly do anything about the illness.

If I were to run a pet store I'd choose to do a 1-2 week QT for anything I didn't produce myself. Its not really the animals you make money on, but the supplies. If someone buys a ball python that's sick, they might bring it back along with its supplies because they get discouraged. Then you lose out on even more money because now you have to treat the animal AND your reputation suffers because you are selling sick animals which could cause you some business. (especially with that person) If you waste money on QT but end up selling a healthy animal, that person will be more likely to recommend your store to others, as well as continue to use you for supplies and services.


Take Off the Ark for instance. He does pet sitting. But he keeps the animals he's pet sitting in the same room as all of his animals for sale. I have seen some of these animals for sale that have obvious health problems. Would you trust him to take care of your reptile? I wouldn't. One time he boxed up my rodents and only had 2 inches of tape to tape up the box. Instead of going and getting another roll of tape or finding something else for me to take these rats and mice home in he just handed me the box as if it didn't matter. I had to drive down the road with one hand on the steering wheel and one hand on the top of the box to make sure I didn't end up with rodents running loose in my car.

Vinny is very knowledgable, I'll give him that, but unfortunately he is lacking in customer service and husbandry.

I'd love to have a pet store like Prehistoric Pets. They have a youtube channel, but I can't for the life of me remember where they are located. Its a huge store and looks very clean. I don't agree with some of the owners practices but I want something similar to his store.

I've been talking to my brother about going in and opening a pet supply store with me down here. It wouldn't be for a few years but planning is where it all begins I want a big storage room and a small showroom for obvious reasons, but no aquatics just feed, feeders, bedding, other supplies and reptiles and such.

Nick, you are only allowed to do so if you hire me.

I've known from the age of six I wanted to work with animals. A desk job is not for me. One of the first things I'm going to do when I get a house with some land is build a reptile facility with several rooms.

Here is an article that describes what is happening to independent pet shops. I think it tells the story very well. The Internet and big box pet shops are killing the local guys:

http://concord-ca.patch.com/articles/how-s-biz-hoffman-s-reptiles-owner-shares-story-of-survival#photo-9869326

That's an interesting article. It's a real shame. I don't even like going into big box pet stores because I can't stand looking at the condition the animals are kept in. Same with puppies and mall pet stores (when I have no other choice but to go to one).

ClarkeReptiles wrote:

I'd love to have a pet store like Prehistoric Pets. They have a youtube channel, but I can't for the life of me remember where they are located. Its a huge store and looks very clean. I don't agree with some of the owners practices but I want something similar to his store.

IMO and my personal opinion for the two cents it's worth prehistoric pets isn't and I repeat isn't that good of a pet shop... customer service their is for the birds, if you think Vinny's customer service isn't that great ( I CAN'T COMPLAIN BECAUSE VINNY'S ALWAYS AND I REPEAT ALWAYS TREATED ME WELL... AND DONE WHAT HE COULD FOR ME!!! ) you'd hate theirs... I've gotten a few animals from there and well they where a little under fed IMO at the age they where when I got some of the things I got they should have had more weight to them... stunning morphs and animals none the less don't get me wrong personally I just don't think there being fed the way I think they should be...

I can't comment on their customer service. I was more talking about how their store is set up.

The shop on lakeside is fin and feather... they use to have two buildings.. one on broad and the original on lakeside.. the broad st trore went under but the original is still functioning.. i bought my maormal ball from the one on broad before they closed at a wonderful price.. it did have mites when i got him but that was an easy fix.. other than that he was fine.. thier prices are high and there service matches that.. but there options and variety for snakes kinda sucks.. but the supplies is where they make the big bucks.. i get all my live feeders from there... but i also treat my ball to baby bunnies avery couple months..lol

When I lived in Richmond, I used to go to Fin and Feathers. Not sure if that closed down...It's been about 4 years. I think that's the one in Lakeside. Then, many many many years ago, there used to be Noah's Pets all the way out in the boondocks.

lakeside (Fin and Feather) is still up and running. Unfortunately when I worked there 6+ years ago, we had an amazing reptile section and a saltwater section. Now the saltwater is gone and the reptile section is gone to crap. There is new management there and I don't like nor do some of the people working there like how it is being run. If they were able to keep care of their reptiles, there would be a lot more business as far as live sales go as well as they would be able to keep an awesome variety in there. When I was there myself and one other guy ran the reptile dept. it was great. I have proposed and complained several times about it and nothing has changed. Granted I still support them and get all my feeders from them, I wish they would change it around.

I don't like Off the Arc because of the exact reasons explained above and it is just plain dirty and has no neatness to it at all.

We lost the only small pet store last week. it was pretty sad, I have been going to that store since I knew what an animal was. He couldn't compete with the Petco, Pet Supplies Plus and PetSmart, but now there isn't anywhere to buy live feeders (or frozen to my knowledge). I always wanted to open a pet store, but there is so much involved with the business aspect and money aspect it won't be on my agenda for a long time!

Docwade87 wrote:

lakeside (Fin and Feather) is still up and running. Unfortunately when I worked there 6+ years ago, we had an amazing reptile section and a saltwater section.

I have probably met you then. I used to go there all the time....

leftoflarry wrote:

Docwade87 wrote:

lakeside (Fin and Feather) is still up and running. Unfortunately when I worked there 6+ years ago, we had an amazing reptile section and a saltwater section.

That is very unfortunate!! I hate the chain "pet stores" like you have mentioned and make a note to never shop at any one unless it is an emergency which there really isn't ever one to dictate as to why I should go and support one of these bogus stores.

I have probably met you then. I used to go there all the time....

I used to work their with Daniel....he was the other reptile keeper. Not sure if you remember names or not.

I think I remember Daniel...was he the one who had lots of venomous snakes? Younger guy?

I miss Noah's Pets. That is where I bought my first snake. I still have her. I loved that store. The guy that ran the place was always very knowledgeable and they had great customer service.

leftoflarry wrote:

I think I remember Daniel...was he the one who had lots of venomous snakes? Younger guy?

Yes he had venomous as well as shane who owned the green anaconda which we housed in the reptile room. Daniel also owned every type of tarantula and spider he could get his hands on. I also had a pretty big hand in hots, I kept a big variety of scorpions including the black thick tail, yellow thick tail, mozambique red thick tail, death stalker, tri-color, and several other more venomous types (sorry I can't remember the scientific names of them right now)

Shane still has several venomous snakes, last time I hung out with him, he had a rhino, a couple eyelash vipers, timber rattler, and a southern copperhead.

I remember Shane. I bought my death adder that recently died from Daniel.

Oh sweet but sorry for your loss as well.

Shane is still up there. You should go see him, he runs the pond center!

Docwade87 wrote:

leftoflarry wrote:

I think I remember Daniel...was he the one who had lots of venomous snakes? Younger guy?

Yes he had venomous as well as shane who owned the green anaconda which we housed in the reptile room. Daniel also owned every type of tarantula and spider he could get his hands on. I also had a pretty big hand in hots, I kept a big variety of scorpions including the black thick tail, yellow thick tail, mozambique red thick tail, death stalker, tri-color, and several other more venomous types (sorry I can't remember the scientific names of them right now)

Shane still has several venomous snakes, last time I hung out with him, he had a rhino, a couple eyelash vipers, timber rattler, and a southern copperhead.

Daniel works at Locke A Taylor DVM on Woodman road right off of Parham now. He is a vet tech and the reason I take all my herps there. ^.^

There is another Fin and Feather in Ashland. It is much much smaller then the one in Lakeside but it is better kept. I use to love going to the one in Lakeside when everything was still cared about. Now it seems everytime I go in there there is a problem and everyone just makes up an excuse at points fingers at one of the other employees. Plus I am never to thrilled with finding either dead adult leopard geckos or bearded dragons still in the tanks. I do truly miss when there were smaller pet shops everywhere. Noah's Ark was my favorite. They had the nicest cleanest reptile room and worked closely with the Bearded Dragon Rescues.

yea I don't even walk in the reptile room out of disgust and because I don't want to see something dead for no reason. Its a pitiful site and I am embarrassed it has become that way. New management is all I am going to say...

I thought I heard that Daniel works there now. Maybe I will take my herps there if I ever need to.

Ashland Fin and Feather is owned by a guy named Mark. He was a manager at lakeside when I first started working there in the early 2000s and then he branched off from Melvin who is the founder.

My family has a pet shop in King George, east of Fredericksburg and we are breaking into reptiles at this current point and time. Our specialty is Saltwater fish. There was a place in short pump by babies R us and all in that area that closed down last year and we bought some of their commercial tank systems.

The problem with reptiles is the special stuff, ( higher end morphs of anything like pythons, bearded dragons, or the such ), go over looked by most customers. The average pet store customer doesnt go for high end stuff. Hence why we are getting on the forums.

Running a pet store is a chore/challenge. If you want to be strictly reptiles your first order of business is to find a building with the cheapest possible rent you can find, because it is a specialized market and it will be hard to keep it open long term. We started out thinking we would just do foods and saltwater fish but we started getting into more and more customers asking for feeder mice and random crap and then we got into the reptile stuff. You cant have a centralized market unless your overhead is very very cheap.

Have you tried stocking any of the higher end reptile morphs? There is an initial break in period but then they can really take off. When people are able to view the different morphs and normals side by side, they often choose to spend a little more on the morph. You may be surprised what you'll be able to sell once your customer population becomes familiar with new morphs at your shop.

Jabberwocky Dragons wrote:

Have you tried stocking any of the higher end reptile morphs? There is an initial break in period but then they can really take off. When people are able to view the different morphs and normals side by side, they often choose to spend a little more on the morph. You may be surprised what you'll be able to sell once your customer population becomes familiar with new morphs at your shop.

We are going to be carrying some of the Bearded dragons. I will have my higher end ball python morphs for sale through the store but i dont expect to sell any of them through the store.

Noah's Ark was run by a great guy named Lang. I did computer work for him and his store. I miss the place a bunch, he had a great guy (whose name I forget) that ran the reptile room and always had interesting stuff for sale.

I will check out the new King George store hopefully this weekend.

Beasts and Bugs opened in Lakeside. VERY small, but good stuff. It's owned by Arachnids RVA, the tarantula breeders. They mostly seem to do shows and online stuff, but work out of the store like an office. It's small but they have some nice animals, and they save a lot of poorly kept animals and nurse them back to health -- over the past few months I have seen some poorly animals come in and become fat and healthy.

Jabberwocky Dragons wrote:

Have you tried stocking any of the higher end reptile morphs? There is an initial break in period but then they can really take off. When people are able to view the different morphs and normals side by side, they often choose to spend a little more on the morph. You may be surprised what you'll be able to sell once your customer population becomes familiar with new morphs at your shop.

I've had this discussion with a friend of mine that owns a pet supply and feeder wholesale business. The problem with higher end reptiles is that there is no retail market. We basically have a wholesale market, which is what we all pay when we shop for a reptile online, and a jobber marker. The jobber market is the people you see buying up whole clutches and collection to turn around and flip. In a retail setting you need to markup your products 50+ percent in order to cover the cost of running the business. The people that are willing to spend 1000+ dollars on a reptile are not going to pay 1500 to a local shop for a little customer service. This industry is strange in the fact that buyers have more access to the producer of the product they are looking to acquire than a retail setting that sells it.

I respectfully disagree on this. Retail is the price paid by the average person buying a single animal at a time whether in store or online. The prices online are the retail prices. Most breeders do not want to sell to pet stores at true wholesale prices which limits the pricing power of the pet store owner.

Larger breeders or breeders who do this for a living have no problem stocking willing pet stores with high end morphs at true wholesale prices to turn around and sell at the online retail price. The guy with one or two clutches sees what is online and doesn't want to sell his limited animals for half of that.

I have seen many high end morphs, including 4 figure morphs, fly off retail pet stores shelves when priced at the online retail price. There is just an initial break in period for this.

*edit* Let me just also clarify by high end morphs, I mean a morph that a person who is only looking for a single pet animal might want to purchase... not a super high end morph that would really only bought by a breeder for a project.

If the prices online are the real retail prices how will and legitamate business ever be able to compete? The online price is a guy breeding in his basement with no overhead and paying no taxes. In a retail setting you have tons of overhead even if your rent is dirt cheap. I don't really consider a 1000 dollar morph high end but even so how many people can you honestly say are buying 1000+ dollar animals just as pets with no intention of breeding? I been around ball pythons for a long time and I can count the # that I know on one hand without using any fingers.

I can honestly say I've heard of no one who's buying of $1k+ morphs as pets only (except for 1 guy) but there's tons of people buying $50-500 morphs of every herp species as pets. I do also know that breeders happily buy $500-1.5k bp morphs from pet stores when they are the same price as online. There are also many, many other animal species sold than ball pythons.

Regardless though, there are many pet stores out there that work with breeders to sell morphs at or even below online retail prices and it seems to work out well for customers, owners, and breeders. You can find many of these with a Google search (LLL Reptile for one, another in FL whose name I can't remember that I ordered a high end pacman morph for much cheaper than posted online by independent breeders) and there are local ones here in Hampton Roads too. I noticed high white pied bps as low as $550 at Pet Paradise last year (cheaper than most online prices from 'independent breeders') and I know the outstanding A+ breeder they came from.


Also, I'm not sure what the overhead or taxes have to do with it as a pet store profits much more by selling a morph than a normal. The morph takes up the same amount of space and eats the same amount of food . It's the breeder that sells for less than the online prices... the store doesn't take a hit unless they are paying more than they should. There's also time involved in selling online that's overlooked for a breeder.

I absolutely agree that this may not work for all pet stores and all breeders but I think it does work for some and benefits everyone, including customers, when it does.

I agree it works for people like LLL reptiles but let's be honest if not for online sales they wouldn't be where they are. I thought this thread was talking about the small local pet shops.

Talk to any small business owner and they will tell you overhead and taxes have a huge impact on their business. You are right that the profit is higher on a 500-1000 dollar animal but how long do they have to hold it before it sells. What if it dies? How many 25-50 dollar animals will they sell in the time it takes to sell one 500-1000 animal. How many hours have you paid an employee to clean and care for it? When you look at it the profit is not that much greater on the higher dollar animal.

Think about it in a different industry. If you could go straight to a Ford factory and buy a new car for less than you could at a dealership there would not be much use for local dealerships. Would a few figure out a way to be successful? Sure but they would be few and far between.

I would love to see more exotic stores open. I loved the Pro Exotics retail store when I lived in Denver. I've been in Ben Siegel's place in Florida. These stores along with LLL all do great but a lot of their success in online sales. Also a lot of these guys are doing most of their own breeding also so they are not buying their animals.

I know this topics a bit old but I'd like to bring it up again, there certainly is a very bad lack of places here to do business with.


Off The Ark, as mentioned is the one I am familiar with when I first moved back to VA in 2009. I went here to check it out and talk with him, now I know it's retail but I was disgusted I could smell the shop from the parking lot, everything was dirty several snakes in the same cage (way to many per)

I made a trip their and offered him a very nice Visions CB-70 rack Heated and Tubs for $450 (11 41qt tubs) I figured he could use it and he low balled me to death really I was trying to help him out, I posted an add on craigslist and sold the rack within hours for more than that.

A few friends have purchased things from this place also, and were often given bad information in general.


Don't get me started on LLL reptile, they'll do anything to make a buck.

Pro Exotics is great, I've done business with them before in the past they will bend over backwards to provide customer support.

As far as small pet shops go, in Chesapeake, let's not forget Animal Adventure. Moderate selection but their animals are exceptionally well taken care of, and the shop is super clean and odor free. Other local shops should take a lesson in cleanliness from this one!

Sorry everyone, but I am going to lock this thread since it violates the "no reviews" rule.

http://www.vaherps.com/t225-rules-for-vaherps