Once again as small business proprietors, my business partner and I are trying to formulate contingency plans of attack against ever increasing prices in freight charges, cost of goods, packaging price increases , etal.

The weak dollar and high freight prices could keep we small business
proprietors depressed in 2008. How much the system is being bled to feed the "big businesses" and "big" pharmas greed will be the ultimate deciding factor. If they go too far the rest of the system will be thrown out of
balance and it won't matter if petroleum goes up or down, unless it is a significant downward spiral in petroleum prices.

This coupled with the volatility of the world fish market, makes our job even more challenging. The most recent series of curve balls that we have incurred at Ocean Omega include, the price increase of the fish oil itself, but also the delivering freight company trying to charge us a 400% increase in its delivery charges. This freight charge scenario is totally reflective of a more prevalent instance of incompetence on the part of the internal employees of the said freight company.

Incompetence in almost EVERY customer service related position in this country is also rearing its ugly head daily. You know the drill, call up on the phone, get put on hold, get transferred to somebody that can't speak the language, listen to 1970's elevator music, get cut off- sound familiar?

In any event, after a series of tenuous attempts to resolve the overcharge on the freight charges, I think? we are now ok there? We continue to attack the price increase on the fish oil by establishing creative pricing alternatives, and looking at different packaging alternatives, which I have alluded to in several previous posts in this blog.

All the checks and balances are almost gone. Once they are the system will
self correct and those that think they are fooling folks will be in the same
boat as everyone else.

I guess we need the lesson of 1929 to be repeated, but it will make 1929
look like a small time piker in comparison when it happens.

Hang on folks this is going to be one hellava ride and it isn't going to be
fun. More taxes is just a way of saying "We can't manage our budget."
As business owners, we have to operate on a budget if we want to stay in
business. There is so much waste in state governments, not to mention the
federal folks.

One refreshing thing recently happened, a sales person from a competing fish oil supplier recently visited one of our key accounts and did nothing but trash us and bad mouth us. They stated that they just couldn't understand how we could offer our product at such competitive pricing. I perceive this as the highest form of flattery, and just in case Mr. or Mrs. Sales person, if you are reading this blog here's a couple of ways that we can offer competitive pricing.

Because we care, because we try, because our product doesn't have botlles that have pretty pictures of serene lakes with fish jumping out of them, and the bottle itself doesn't cost a fortune just to put the fish oil into it, our product has a high efficacy rate IT GIVES PROVEN RESULTS.

Oh and by the way, we are also in this business utmost and foremost to help promote good health in ALL Pets! Our driving force is not to bilk people out of their hard earned money to attain 400% profit margins!