Hamsters and small business
Well, the hamster saga has turned out well, I think. The pet store was willing to take the two hamsters back, and gave us a half-hamster worth of store credit (about $7 total) for each. We went to Petsmart to purchase a second habitat so the two kept hamsters would have their own spaces. It seems to be working out. Both built nests from shredded bedding after they realized they were alone.
Also found … ack! … that Petsmart sells the habitat purchased on Thursday for $15 less than For Pets’ Sake. For Pets’ Sake is a small local store, and generally I like to support stores like this, even if it means spending a little bit more. However:
- $15 is not “a little bit more”
- For Pets’ Sake has a worse return policy
- For Pets’ Sake stocks probably two orders of magnitude fewer items
- For Pets’ Sake does not necessarily have better service.
My effort should probably be to support small business owners whom I admire, who work against odds, paying higher wholesale prices than the big chain stores, with no choice but to charge a bit more. I don’t think my effort should be to support the theory of small business ownership. If you want me to pay more for a worse selection, you’ve got to make it up somewhere.
There are other small businesses in the Thousand Oaks area that have a smaller selection and higher prices than larger stores, but don’t do anything to make up for this lack. Conejo Valley Wine & Provision Co. is one, where the business model seems to be to make every buyer feel stupid (”I’ve got it! If they feel offended and embarrassed, they will give me more money!”) Paper Depot in Thousand Oaks (right next door to the previous store) is perhaps worse: they assume your question is stupid without even listening to it. I was looking for #6-3/4 envelopes. I was walked through the conversational steps of being told that such envelopes don’t exist (which they do), then that their width wasn’t 6 1/2 inches (which it is), then that that size wasn’t listed on their wall chart (which it was). At the end of this she finally looked in her catalog and found some examples, but was unable to get me a sample envelope: I would have to pay for them in full and if I didn’t like them when they arrived, too bad. Sorry folks … I can order out of a catalog (and for lower prices) without your help. [— Text removed 27 March 2001 —]
To offset the negativity of this list, I should provide a list of small stores that do go above and beyond the call in order to provide a great shopping experience:
- Wine & Liquor Depot in Van Nuys has the largest selection of single malt scotch in the U.S.
- Video 4 You stocks a large number of DVDs and foreign films and employs very knowledgeable people.
- Malibu Fish’n Tackle gave exemplary service the one time I shopped there, even though patronizing them violates my “terminal g rule.”
- Words on Wine has beautiful items and great salespeople, although I can’t attest to anything else as I have never purchased anything from them.
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June 18th, 2003 at 6:10 pm
[…] Note added 18 Jun 2003: OK, I heard back from the author of the hamster post. Apparently she was saying the hamsters are ‘zielig’ — ‘miserable’ or ‘pitiful’. I think it is because there are several in the same cage. And she is right! But in my defense, shortly after the picture was taken I moved the hamsters to individual, much larger habitats. Chronologically, here are the posts about hamsters: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], and [7]. The last link is about the hamsters’ deaths. Note also that “eulogies for hamsters” was one of the searches in my Two Years of Google Searches. […]
July 4th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
I’d like to respond to the slam on Conejo Wine & Provision Co.
I was an occasional customer of this store (I live 65 miles away)
I say was because the store is now out of business (too bad).
Despite what Mcgees says, the store had a very nice selection. A store like this is not ment to compete with Vons. The store carried wines that most other stores probably have never heard of. Like German Rieslings, Wines from Alsace and Loire valley France. Wines that most wine shops never carry and if they do maybe have only one or two examples of.
I know because I have been to virtually every wine shop from San Diego to San Luis Obispo. I go to all at least once a year. I have been a student of wine for 26 years now.
Yes, this wine shop wasn’t for everyone. If your taste is limited to Kendal Jackson Chardonnay, I suggest you don’t shop there.
The owner of the shop: Tim Coles was very personable and helpful. He would take time with a customer which most wine shops do not.
There are two kinds of business models for wine shops: 1. is to have a very limited selection (no German wines or Alsace wines etc.) only sell very mainstream commercial wines and sell hundrends if not thousands of cases a wine a month. or 2. be like Conejo Wine and Provision and sell off the beaten track wines and only sell only maybe dozens of cases a month and have to charge more. I personally prefer the latter because these are the wine I like. I don’t care for most California wines. So people like me patronise shops like Conejo Wine to get wines that most consumers are too afraid to try.
July 5th, 2006 at 12:01 am
Hi Lyndon,
Thanks for commenting.
My tastes don’t run to California wines either. I rather favor Rhones, Ports, and Sauternes, mostly. And their selection of Ports was quite good. I purchased several from them. When I wrote this post, five and a half years ago, I had only dealt with a woman who worked there (I don’t know her relation to the owner) who was a royal witch every time I was in the store. She was condescending, abrasive, and rude, a wine know-it-all (or thought-she-knew-it-all) comfortable putting down anyone in the shop. Maybe I was just going on the wrong days, when the owner wasn’t working.
In any case, after the post was written I did return to the shop and get to know the owner in passing. One illustration of his gentleness and gentlemanliness: in 2001, some customers and he were looking at the port selection, and I was eavesdropping. Their conversation became inaudible for a little while, and then the owner mentioned opening a ‘94 recently. I spoke up. “You’re drinking your ’94s already?” I asked. He gently explained to me that he was not a believer in aging wines for a very long time. Turns out he was talking about a commercial Bordeaux, not the Port I thought he was discussing (my ’94s of Port are still aging, but I have drunk all my ‘94 Bordeaux by now [having not bought serious aging examples.]) Teach me to eavesdrop. In any case, light years from the woman who had inspired the first post.
I moved away shortly after that, and as you can see have not attended to this post in a very long time, so I welcome your attempt to redeem the memory of the store (I hadn’t realized it had closed.)
So, to set the record straight, the owner was a knowledgeable and helpful guy, the woman was terrible, and their hand-picked selection (frequently very off-the-map and otherwise unobtainable) was quite appreciated.
In the meantime, I continue to recommend Wine and Liquor Depot in Van Nuys, and also Chronicle Wine Cellar in Pasadena (the former has a larger selection, the latter is a more boutique, hand-picked affair in the tradition of CW&PC.)