REPTILE INDUSTRIES STREAMLINES SHIPPING WITH FISHBOWL’S BARCODING AND OTHER FEATURES
Mark and Kim Bell, owners of Reptile Industries in Naples, Florida, have been breeding and selling reptiles and other animals for years, and their company has a huge variety to offer.“We sell reptiles,” Kim Bell says. “Here on our farm, we breed a lot of snakes. We breed a lot of tortoises – redfoot, Greek, Hermann’s, marginated – veiled chameleons, and crested geckos. There are a lot of different frogs that we carry. We’re really diversified in the type of animals that we breed.” Mark and Kim’s hard work over the past 25 years has helped Reptile Industries become the largest reptile breeder in the country. In addition to the animals themselves, the company also sells ancillary products, such as glass containers to house the reptiles, as well as food and lights.
Business Challenges & Needs
Inventory management used to be quite a challenge for the company. They didn’t have an automated system to help them keep everything labeled and organized.
“How we used to do it is when we would get 200 orders we would import them into QuickBooks,” Kim explains. “I don’t even know how we got to where we were. We would print them out, and we hand-wrote from each invoice on the cup ‘1 bearded dragon,’ ‘1 green anole.’”
The Solution
They knew something needed to change, but it wasn’t until a friend made a helpful suggestion that things began to improve. “Dick Stanfield is a QuickBooks expert,” Kim notes. “While we were getting him out, we said, ‘What can we do? We’re getting way too many orders. We’re sick of hand-writing, and we want stickers or some kind of labels or something that we thought QuickBooks could do for us.’ We wanted the barcode on the top of the thing so we could scan it or do something to make our shipping life easier. And he said, ‘You need to talk to this company Fishbowl.’ And that’s what got the whole thing started with us, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is exactly what we need.’”
The Results
Fishbowl turned out to be a great fit for Reptile Industries, utilizing barcode printing and scanning to better organize their animals and keep order flowing smoothly to their customers. “Fishbowl, for us, was streamlining our shipping. That’s what it really helped us with. You need Fishbowl. It will definitely help you streamline your shipping and your inventory.”
Mark and Kim plan to continue doing what they love for many years, and Fishbowl will be right there to back them up and make their job easier. “I love this job. I love animals. I like breeding animals. It’s almost a thrill to see what you can get because of all the color differences that you can hatch out. I like the customers. We love our employees; they’re like family to us. My family’s here, so I get to see them every day. The day that I don’t want to come to work anymore it’s time to retire, but I think I’m here for a long time.”
Wholesale customers wanting to place large orders and retail customers seeking a pet can visit http://reptind.com to find what they are looking for. In addition, you can watch a video case study of Reptile Industries.
About Fishbowl
Fishbowl’s business automation platform is the No. 1 requested manufacturing and warehouse management solution for QuickBooks users, and it is also a popular standalone solution for organizations or enterprises looking to track assets. For QuickBooks and Xero users, it provides the same advanced features and flexibility larger organizations enjoy, but at a fraction of the cost.
