[Henle15]

How can someone support a petstore by buying directly from the supplier? That makes no sense, you have to buy from the specific place in order to support them and help them. If I buy oxbow directly, Petsmart sees none of that money...only oxbow gets it. I understand what you are trying to say, but there is no correlation between someone buying directly and someone buying from the actual petstore.

You cannot support a petstore by buying from the supplier. How exactly do you think that petsmart gets the money that I spend to buy the food? Does oxbow give petsmart money to sell their product? NO, oxbow is the one who makes money from selling the product to them and then petsmart makes money by marking it up.

If your reasoning is correct, then doesn't that mean whoever buys oxbow food directly also supports all stores that sell the product? not just petsmart.

I think it will be interesting to see if oxbow will see any significant increases in sales over the next year now that they do sell in petstores and are more accessible. Why is being more accessible a bad thing? Isn't that what we as guinea pig enthusiasts want for people that don't know about this food?

Like I said in my other post, they still won't get the business from my adopters because I sell the oxbow at such a low price and make very little money off it because I am a non-profit and want all GP supplies to be affordable for my adopters and people that don't want to support stores. Plus most people would rather give my rescue the money to help support it, rather than give a petstore money and help them keep abusing GP's.

Buying supplies from the store has little affect on weather they will continue to sell animals anyway...its all about the actual buying of the animal. If people only bought supplies at the store and never bought the animals...they wouldn't sell them. Petstores only sell animals based on impulse, very few purchased pigs are a well thought out purchase. They make people feel bad about leaving them in the aquariums and they will buy them and then they just restock and keep doing the same thing over and over.