Today we’d like to introduce you to Darron Allred.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
In the late 70s, an older cousin invited me to come up to his house in Provo, Utah to visit for the weekend. I was 13. He was 23, married, and going to college. As part of my visit, he showed me a room in his home that was wall-to-wall aquariums stacked on top of each other. I was immediately drawn to what was happening in that room.
Little did I know that he was paying his way through college by importing, breeding, and selling tropical fish from that room. He was surprised by how fascinated I was with the activities of that room. To cement my interest in doing what he was doing, he sent me home with a 10-gallon tank set up and two fish he knew would spawn for me and I was hooked. Ever since that time, I have had one or more fish tanks breeding fishes from the family Cichlidae. I’ve branched into breeding and selling other types of fish since that time, but cichlids are still my main focus.
A few years ago, I built a fish hatchery into the basement of my home and now have 104 tanks contributing to my sales. I have customers who come from Idaho, Wyoming, and all over Utah. I also ship to four distributors with all the species that are hard for me to sell all of them locally. 2021 was a record year and I have people come to my home regularly to buy fish and supplies.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Building a clientele has been hard. The retail aquarium fish market for cichlids is not strong in Utah. But when I began to breed rare and exotic species, I started to get noticed over the years.
Then I learned the difficult process of shipping live fish to other parts of the country and the business took off since my excess stock could easily be shipped out for a good price. Consistent advertising, word-of-mouth, healthy fish, and superb service have taken my clientele to numbers I hadn’t expected.
I still work a full-time administrative job at a university, but both are going strong at this point.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Sole proprietor running my tropical fish business from the 3,000-gallon fish hatchery in my home. I focus on breeding, selling, and shipping fishes from the family Cichlidae and Loricariidae.
Only one other person in the state has a similar setup to mine, but he ships almost all his fish out of state. I have strong relationships with many of the aquarium pet stores in the state and sell them as well.
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
COVID has actually increased sales for me during the last two years. I theorize that this is because people were much more often at home, looking at their walls and wanting a new fish tank or to add to the fish and tanks they already had.
In addition, when I started taking Venmo, PayPal, and cards in addition to cash, my sales almost doubled in two years.
Contact Info:
- Email: allredcichlids@gmail.com
- Facebook: facebook.com/allredaquatics
