Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Your prices are pretty low for what I am seeing over here Rupe. Im pulling $25,000/yr out of a 96' x 4' dwc. I also have a customer selling closer to 2,000 heads a week at $3/head...(no I won't say to whom)

Maybe if you market straight to Sisco or another mega distributer you would get $1/head but that's with zero marketing effort to get a premium price. I market a premium product, competition is limited.

Smaller family farms are definitely a possibility over here, success however will be dependent on the skills of the farmer.

I will say, I plan on making a good living out of my first GH, and should be able to operate 2-3 without any additional help (I've designed it around the premis of a one man operation) and without jumping into a wholesale model. 25 pages and 5 yrs of buisness planning say its going to work .

I didn't say selling @$1 a head Ryan... I said "a 1000 lettuce a week... is only going to return $1000 a week"

i.e that's what you might make... profit/head...


Is that turnover Ryan... direct marketing....before tax & interest... or paying yourself...

Ryan... you're also doing specialty greens, aren't you? I'd use the term Mesclune; I don't know how it is labeled in the other hemisphere...

What of 'GH' off season specialties? Or... are you going there, yet?

Then... how much acreage are you on? The capacity, really, is the amount of GB one can put out safely, and monitor. But with your keeping it one man... How do you manage? Especially when you travel so much... or, has that slowed?

$1 / head profit is better so sorry if i mis read but even at that...you don't think thats profitable? $52,000/yr for a 4k-5k site system?

I don't like talking numbers with people because everyone's situation and skill set is different (and i just dont care to debate)but thats with me accounting for running costs/materials, marketing, and tax. Not labor which is minimal for that area and from a single operator viewpoint the 25k would be your take home/labor.

DLady-I grow a variety of things and definately will take advantage of off season growing. How will I run it? Automation, remote monitoring hard work and proper design. I have helpers for when I travel

Focusing on the OPs Q: why is there such a little number of people looking to be system designers/consultants/makers?

For me, it gets down to what i enjoy. I once owned a landscaping business and while it did not happen often (maybe 3x in 5 years?) where it was way too stressful to deal with clients. Once i got stiffed for payments, once a customer didn't know what he was doing and refused to follow directions then got pissed when everything died, and once I learned a valuable lesson about not trying to win a contract at all costs: the customer kept wrangling for discounts and better pricing that i started dropping the quality of componants and ended up installing a borderline system, then he hounded me for two years whenever things exceeded the design parameters and would quit working.

I simply never want to be involved with consulting or installations again. It's not what i love to do.

To be honest though... i'm not sure i really believe in the viability of aquaponics systems to be true "commercial" enterprises. I think i'd feel a bit like a snake oil salesman. It might be fine to sell a system to a family, but they should understand they will likely have bought more fresh produce with the funds than they will ever produce. (my opinion). I have seen too many aqaculture companies go under and most of the ones that are surviving are the mom and pop enterprises who di it because they love it, not because they expect huge income.

There is one local company who is still successful, but they have ended up moving the majority of their production to vietnam with low labor costs. They maintain one local production facility that caters to the local market, but it's a specialty niche.

The other local business i know of that went commercial can be seen here: http://goo.gl/maps/DsJezThat's the result of about 8 million dollars in investments....

No thanks.

Poppa

PS... I just found this link to what the facility looked like in it's heyday: http://amherstfishfarm.com/General_Information.html

Getting back on topic..

The commercial viability of aquaponics in almost any sense boils down to the people doing it. People and the decisions they make will either make it or break it. Somehow we're in our 6th year of being open here at the shop. That's quite a long time to be operating in a fledgling industry, especially when you consider that to my knowledge there's still no other retail aquaponics shop/display centre anywhere else..

Many people have tried to start them and failed, usually due to the business decisions they make along the way. We aren't in any special location, we don't have any special skill set, I've never run a business before. It's about being smart, growing slowly within your means, working hard, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, doing the right thing by customers and suppliers and others within the industry, and once again, working hard.. There's no magic and really anyone could do it....

Ahhh hang on.. Wrong direction Joel..

I have the secret, I know the key to owning and running your own successful aquaponics business. You too can be your own boss, playing all day with aquaponics, helping people grow their own fish and vegetables, then spending all night counting your money. If you want to know the secret, it's available for a limited time, only to the first 50 callers, for 10 easy monthly payments.

Oh and so far as aquaponics paying for itself?.......... I got sidetracked on a rant so turned it into a new thread rather than have this go way off topic... viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15403

When I told a mate I was building a greenhouse and AP setup, his first comment was, "to grow dope". Now, nobody has mentioned this as a replacement for lettuces. This could really make an operation profitable!

Not that I would suggest or recommend this course of action.....


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I myself aspire for a commercial aquaponics system. I got sold on the 4-week lettuce growth angle. Well i don't have unlimited funds therefore i built my own small test raft system. I wanted to learn from it before spending major $ on this venture. I've learned through experience(mostly mistakes) that systems that are said to have worked well for others doesn't necessarily mean will work for you. Hawaii grown lettuce compared to California... compared to Alaska will obviously produce different results under the same system... I haven't really talked to a consultant and i hope they do educate their clients that growing vegetables for a living isn't a walk in the park.

During my previous venture on producing soil grown lettuce, i've learned that big customers want consistency in your produce. I thought well that's easy, plant x amount of lettuce every week will give me (80% of x) during harvest. It looked reasonable at first but what i've overlooked was the weather. To make it more specific sunlight issues. A week of cloudy days delayed and stunted growth that resulted to just 50% of the desired harvest weight... No matter how much nutrients your soil has it didn't do jack. This is reality for most farmers and it's usually a hit or miss unless you insert technology/control into your production. Or another solution is to just over produce for quota's sake..
So yes commercial production is not easy. It's not even profitable sometimes but looking at the bright side, you are doing what you want right?

I understand where the system sellers and the consultants are coming from... We all have responsibilities in our lives and if growing veggies isn't enough to get us by then do the legal thing and offer your knowledge and/or services for a price. It's not like a ponzi scheme man.
Although there are the salesmen... and boy do they know how to sell. Reminds me of how deliciously looking the burger is in the advertisement but it's just not the same in actuality. Take it to life experience i guess

Joel, you have what's known in biz as first mover advantage. That and you haven't stuffed up in 6 years. This is very rare in Australia as 75% of all start-ups fail in their first year and a further 75% fail in the next 5 years.

So well done! You are officially a success and a statistical anomaly

somehow that makes him seem abnormal??

First mover advantage? Maybe to an extent, but I reckon there's a massive amount of space for others in the market in different locations, it's just not working for most, I guess they are the 75% and then the 75%.. Most of our sales are to local people and not people from the forum, so any other person in any other state or country has similar opportunities.

I'm not surprised that most small businesses go down, people keep trying the same things over and over.. At the moment around here it's gyms. In my suburb there are about 6 or 7 gyms that I know off, many of them 24hour ones, new ones just keep popping up all the time in little industrial units, or old shops. I imagine that within the next 12 months or so most of them will be gone. People throw large buckets of money at these things, copying everyone else, then fall in a heap because the market is saturated.

There's one just over the road from the BYAP shop here, I figure they are on their way down. Lately they've done a massive marketing push, big flashing street sign out the front, new banners, signs plastered all over the neighbourhood, multiple leaflet drops, even a person standing out the front in a clown suit waving a sign. And all for a tiny little gym... I see that as a sign of death throws, they have looked quiet for a long time, now they are throwing everything at the marketing, it's make or break time..

Or you start a franchise. Most of them don't go out of business, they just sell out or hand back their franchise to the distributor at a much cheaper value, and then the next sucker comes along, paying full price for the franchise.

Now, how to develop that into a AP business model.....


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Sometimes it is better to stay small

BYAP is also cool

Backyard Aquaponics in its acronym form BYAP also sounds Aboriginal which adds an extra dimension of cool.

Does it?

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