As one of the organizers of this event, I have started this thread to give people a ‘post expo’ update.
Firstly to all the breeders, exhibitors and fellow herpers who attended the expo, we’d like to say a big thank you !
Secondly, the door prize of a pair of het albino childrens pythons was won by a 10 year old boy from the central coast. They will be claimed by his father. We are pleased that a young enthusiast won the prize as they are the future of our hobby.
To the person who started a thread describing the event as ‘slight let down’, all I can say is that we must be living on different planets. The expo was a smashing success with a great turn out of experienced herpers and LOTS of newbies. I believe that very few people who attended would disagree (except maybe the two boys who stole snakes and then got caught) To all the other people who made positive comments, we appreciate your support.
I don’t want to get too long winded but more generally, I would like to address a few of the comments that were made.
1. As far as ‘making a killing’ is concerned, I can tell you that if I wanted to get rich, I would not be organising a reptile expo. After all the expenses including venue hire, insurance, advertising, table and partition hire, signage and a dozen other things that need to be purchased or hired, there is precious little left to call ‘profit’. I am not even mentioning the huge amount of time and organization required to tie everything together.
We kept breeder booth prices to an absolute minimum. In fact, of the $150 we charged each breeder for a table, we had to pay $74 for public liability insurance – and that was the smallest part of the total insurance cost. You do the math and you can clearly see that we are not in it for the money. We are doing it for the hobby in Australia which in my opinion desperately needs a boost and a bit of new direction. If someone thinks they can do it better, please get out of your computer chair and show me some results.
2. Someone commented that it would be nice to ‘mix things up’. I totally agree but the reality is that reptile expos in NSW are controlled by National Parks and approvals require that breeders selling animals and retailers must be separated. This is to avoid the ‘commercialisation of reptiles by association’ because as we all know, it is not legal to commercially deal in reptiles in NSW. Hopefully that is a temporary situation, soon to change.
3. Someone commented that there wasn’t enough space around the breeder’s tables. Yes, that is a fair comment
but we were not expecting (hoping but not expecting) such huge numbers of people. We left a metre between each table but that was not enough. We will address that for next time. YES… there will be another Castle Hill Reptile Expo next year so please spread the word.
4. A few people commented that the expo was ‘too early’
as many hatchies were not yet established or had not even hatched yet. I do agree with you to an extent but we didn’t have a lot of options to play with. The venue is very difficult to get and we also didn’t want to clash with any other expos. We will look at making it a little later in the season next year. We can never make everyone happy but we’ll try our best
If you have read this far, then I would like to thank you for your time.……. Adrian Hemens 14/02/2011
Firstly to all the breeders, exhibitors and fellow herpers who attended the expo, we’d like to say a big thank you !
Secondly, the door prize of a pair of het albino childrens pythons was won by a 10 year old boy from the central coast. They will be claimed by his father. We are pleased that a young enthusiast won the prize as they are the future of our hobby.
To the person who started a thread describing the event as ‘slight let down’, all I can say is that we must be living on different planets. The expo was a smashing success with a great turn out of experienced herpers and LOTS of newbies. I believe that very few people who attended would disagree (except maybe the two boys who stole snakes and then got caught) To all the other people who made positive comments, we appreciate your support.
I don’t want to get too long winded but more generally, I would like to address a few of the comments that were made.
1. As far as ‘making a killing’ is concerned, I can tell you that if I wanted to get rich, I would not be organising a reptile expo. After all the expenses including venue hire, insurance, advertising, table and partition hire, signage and a dozen other things that need to be purchased or hired, there is precious little left to call ‘profit’. I am not even mentioning the huge amount of time and organization required to tie everything together.
We kept breeder booth prices to an absolute minimum. In fact, of the $150 we charged each breeder for a table, we had to pay $74 for public liability insurance – and that was the smallest part of the total insurance cost. You do the math and you can clearly see that we are not in it for the money. We are doing it for the hobby in Australia which in my opinion desperately needs a boost and a bit of new direction. If someone thinks they can do it better, please get out of your computer chair and show me some results.
2. Someone commented that it would be nice to ‘mix things up’. I totally agree but the reality is that reptile expos in NSW are controlled by National Parks and approvals require that breeders selling animals and retailers must be separated. This is to avoid the ‘commercialisation of reptiles by association’ because as we all know, it is not legal to commercially deal in reptiles in NSW. Hopefully that is a temporary situation, soon to change.
3. Someone commented that there wasn’t enough space around the breeder’s tables. Yes, that is a fair comment
but we were not expecting (hoping but not expecting) such huge numbers of people. We left a metre between each table but that was not enough. We will address that for next time. YES… there will be another Castle Hill Reptile Expo next year so please spread the word.
4. A few people commented that the expo was ‘too early’
as many hatchies were not yet established or had not even hatched yet. I do agree with you to an extent but we didn’t have a lot of options to play with. The venue is very difficult to get and we also didn’t want to clash with any other expos. We will look at making it a little later in the season next year. We can never make everyone happy but we’ll try our best
If you have read this far, then I would like to thank you for your time.……. Adrian Hemens 14/02/2011
