You’ve probably noticed a few things have changed…
And you’d be right!
For a while now the HS Crested Gecko name has been pretty out-dated.
Soon, most of the verbiage will be changed over to HS Exotics and Supply (or HSE&S for short) and HSCG will be phased out of most things. HSCG will still remain on most of the product photos (who wants to go edit all of those, I certainly don’t). The original stickers with the HSCG name will stay as they are, they will not be going anywhere. Labels placed on products themselves will also stay the same, but the website is still on the labels so it should hopefully help alleviate any future confusion until I run out of old labels!
So what brought about this change?
Not only have I been breeding more than just Crested Geckos for a while now, I also have this entire website with more product than I have animals available for sale. So many of you will probably agree with me that this was a long overdue change!
In the middle of COVID I knew that sales would drop right afterward due to the major influx of people getting into breeding crested geckos, so I made a decision that I needed to start to pivot. I needed to be different from most of the other breeders out there. This brought me to the realization that what never seems to go away is the need to care for those animals that already have homes. From food, to plants, to substrate; they all have to be replaced at some point or another. That is where the slow build of products for the website begun.
There are many places to shop to purchase these types of supplies from big box stores to mom and pop shops; but I saw a missed opportunity for variety and quality within the “affordable” space. I spent hours researching vendors and spending my own money investing in product to finally launch the website! Everything you see except for my two most recent logos is all drawn/designed/assembled by me. Instead of paying someone else to build my labels, assemble product packaging, and pack/ship orders, I do it all. This helps cut down on costs and allows me to pass those savings along to you all. Because I’m not paying anyone to do any of this (and at this point I’m not really paying myself to be honest), you get product for a fair price that is sometimes even cheaper than the big box stores like Petsmart, Petco, Amazon, Walmart, etc.
The one downside is though, that because I make so little on these items I still can’t offer free shipping on them (except for stickers, those get sent via snail mail with a stamp). That’s why the minimum for free shipping is $75, because I’ve then made enough profit that it will cover the cost of shipping. But even so, I try to keep shipping costs affordable for anyone who doesn’t meet that threshold which is why shipping only starts at $4.50 and goes up (by not much) depending on how far away you are from NY. Sometimes I end up eating some extra cost on the shipping if it doesn’t land within the window of what you spend, but I’m ok with absorbing that cost since it’s normally no more than $1.
So yeah, that’s where I’m at right now and so far I’m happy with the way things are going!
The big dream is to one day have my own physical store for people to shop, but that’s a long way down the line.
Did you like this blog post? Do you wanna see more of things this or has the short attention span made you bored by reading a wall of text? Let me know your thoughts and what topics you’d like to see me ramble on about!
Thanks for reading <3
-Holly S