<Puts on his hip waders>
What is being seen is natural. How you adapt is the choice all of you have.
There was a time when baby Bearded Dragons sold retail for $400 (Gasp) and they sold damn well. Multiple reptile keepers got on board, now they sell for around $30-50 bucks for the common ones and the colored ones still can fetch $100-300.
Look at the different types of geckos. There was a time when leopard geckos were selling $100-300 for normals. Now my 11 yr old breeds them for pocket change. Better than selling lemonade out front when you think on it.
On to chameleons..............
Panther's are simply THAT well established. The average customer does NOT know the differences in colors, morphs, locales, or even us as breeders. They just look at a picture, look at the price, and take the plunge.
So how do you adapt?
When working in the retail pet stores, I was around when the times changed. By that I mean Petco decided that being a little supply store was not enough and they had to adapt to compete against Petsmart. The Titans came and the mom and pop stores tried to hide in their huts as the gods warred above them. Not everyone survived.
We adapted by doing what neither of those business models would do, we specialized. We hired staff and trained them in both how to teach customers the care of the animals AND how to make sure a customer bought stuff they needed instead of just walking out with that knowledge and going to cheap *** Petsmart. It was an uphill fight.
Look at Ed Krammer over at Krammerflage Creations. Single best example of adapting and thriving with Panthers out there. His animals are top notch, most here know that, but he has a business model at the reptile shows and on line that helps him get that point across. At the last show I saw dozens of vendors selling Panthers for cheap, like $75-200 cheap.
Despite that saturated market, Ed still sold a bunch of his high end Panthers for top dollar. How? Hard work and adapting is how.
The days of just listing a Panther online and it selling for top dollar are over for now. That was the easy way to sell anything.
In a saturated market you have to stand out, Ed does that with superb customer service, a willingness to help, and having some smart people around him whom he trained or taught.
Anybody can breed Panthers with some effort and sell them on the internet. Not everybody can TALK to a customer and teach them the value of the animal being purchased and communicate how to keep the animals alive. Ed adapted.
There are some people selling very expensive Leopard geckos online. Talking $100-300 bucks. They just list them online, no real effort. Imagine how ticked they are when an 11 year old posts pictures of an animal that looks the same for the low price of $45. They get pissed because now it is not as easy to sell the animal for that amount, they need to work at it now to explain why theirs is worth more. Some will adapt and others won't.
Panthers are still a money maker, it's just not as easy as it used to be. Adapt.
There was a thread here a while back where a panther was turned into an animal shelter. One mass breeder was releasing them into the wild in FL so it's going to be very sad for the panthers soon just like the poor veileds.
