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re:Size of Market
On Thu, 21 Sep 2000 10:30:49 -0600 gomckenz at geosql_com in APD#558 wrote:
>>First, I live in Calgary where the trading population of the area for LFS
>>might be 1 million people.
>I could have been more specific here. That is total possible consumers.
Gotcha. That seems about right. You should take into consideration that this
is already a far greater number than in some "major" US cities. The US does
have a lot of people, but they are spread over a wider area, for the most part,
when compared to Canada. Certainly when comparing to any European country. Ok,
before I get flamed, I'm not making this statement in relation to the over-all
landmass of each country. Just to help differentiate where the larger markets
are and why it may very well be futile to have some type of national
distribution, but might make perfect sense to cater to a few regions. This can
easily apply to certain parts of the US as well. Both countries have a lot of
uninhabited land, so we're obviously not talking about any LFS operating in the
middle of the Grand Canyon or in Northern Ontario.
I (Bruno) wrote: "There are still a lot of potential gold-fish bowl buyers, but
I'd say Toronto itself has a disproportionate number of serious aquarists."
>I cannot disagree with your conclusions above but would be interested to
>know if this is just what you feel is the case or do you know this for a
>fact about the Canadian and/or Toronto market.
I don't have solid numbers (as I told someone else, I don't work for Statistics
Canada or anything :) But it is more than just a feeling. If you are at all
interested in this hobby or other similar pursuits, you will notice very easily
the abundance of other aquarists and the retail establishments catering to the
market.
I can't tell you "why" we have the number of aquaria-related consumers we do
however. Within driving distance, the number of retail locations catering to
aquaria is phenomenal. This ranges from small stores to larger specialty chains
like Big Al's. A lot of the "small" stores are small in size only. Many move a
lot of product on a very regular basis. Many specialize (SW, etc..) as well and
cater to certain communities.
Big Al's would have some good information to share on this subject. They have a
membership program and it would be interesting to find out their membership
count for each location. There will be overlap of course (for instance I've got
membership at two locations). This would just be a small piece of sample data,
but interesting nonetheless.
Bruno