Myths, koi ponds, and making more profit while helping customers
This was an article I wrote to persuade hardware retailers to help customers make good buying decisions in terms of ponds and pumps.
We all need more sales and more profit. I was prompted to write this article by the fact that 27% of European water gardening hard goods turnover is completed through the hardware trade only 9% through garden centres. I hazard a guess that the market share situation is totally reversed in South Africa. So heres a great opportunity for go-ahead hardware retailers.
Biofilter myth and an immediate profit opportunity
A number of weeks ago I was doing a talk about fish keeping and garden ponds in general at an important and large hardware outlet in East London there was a koi auction on that morning so a good crowd was in the store.
Before the talk even started the oldest koi pond myth of them all was presented to me as a kind of gospel belief. This myth which I have heard so many times has an impact upon pond affordability, growth of the water gardening market and thus retail sales. It is a myth that co-incidentally favours larger specialist koi outlets and garden centres and not hardware stores.
Myth:- When you build a koi pond the size (water volume) of the biofilter must be equal to 1/3rd the size (water volume) of the pond holding the koi.
In other words if your customer wants to build a koi pond of 6,000 litres there are many potential pond keepers and consumers being told they have to buy a biofilter which has volume of up to 2,000 litres. Apart from being total nonsense such misinformation makes the biofilter and thus the pond too expensive to contemplate for the vast majority of consumers.
Now consider the facts and relate this to a new product sales opportunity for even the small hardware store
Fact:- It is not the size of the biofilter that matters at all. It is the biomedium or bacteria substrate inside the biofilter container that determines the size of the biofilter. For example the traditional plastic tubes are inefficient making it necessary to have large containers to hold enough of the tubes to allow effective biofiltration. Modern low cost biomedia reduce the biofilter box size by a factor of 40 quite simply because the new biomedia is 40 times more efficient than plastic tubes.
Once this fact is understood then the potential market for biofilters increases enormously. In addition any hardware store can now make truly incremental sales to add to their pump sales, pump tubing and so on. Another advantage is that building a biofilter now becomes a real DIY job using normal stock items held at a hardware store .
A box with lid (even a plastic dustbin can be used for larger filters). This box can be as small as 5 litres for a pond of 1,000 litres (see picture)
An inlet water fitting for the box
An outlet water fitting for the box
Low cost biomedium retailing at about R40 for a pond of 1,000 litres
Tubing from pump to biofilter and back to the pond
Give the consumer what she wants . an affordable working system that makes pond keeping a low cost enjoyable family asset and you will profit.