Hey, thanks for the inquiry and comments. I can assure you quality is top on our list, and there are no gimmicks. Come visit our facility. We can give you a private tour. On the issues you raise, we did a pre-market study on dart frogs and why they are not perceived as a retail pet assuming supply issues could be overcome. In fact, last Tuesday we met with the owner of a five store chain ($5M annually) to carry our frogs. They saw this as the ink jet printer and ink model. Frogs and flies are profitable. This was our second meeting with a third scheduled for this coming Tuesday. Our marketing study and theirs gave the same result. The overwhelming number one response as to why people who knew what a dart frog is, and a surprising many do not, was they are "poisonous". On this basis, from a marketing standpoint, is "poison" only part of the name for them or a description of them? Sure, we in the hobby know the answer, but most others do not. In the wild, poison is probably merely a description, but even the hobby sells wild caught frogs. The retail customer, who is not a frogger, as our marketing people tell us, will not buy dart frogs unless they are harmless, and we as a hobby have not done a great job getting the message out there making the distinction (wild caught versus captive bred). SAFE, for us means ONLY captive bred. For the sake of completeness, we are told trademarks designate the source of the goods and by definition CANNOT be descriptive. Of course, ANYONE could use the word safe in a descriptive sense at any time, for example, safe dart frogs, dart frogs are safe....and we wish the hobby would champion this message better for all of us. OUR TRADEMARK WILL NEVER EXCLUDE ANYBODY FROM USING THE WORD SAFE DESCRIPTIVELY. Our trademark is powerful for retail consumer confidence for captive breeding as PETS. We hope everyone looks at these as the terrific pets they are. BTW, the SAFE trademark is very much favored by retailers who sell dart frogs so we like it. We are thrilled you brought this issue up, many thanks and good eye!!! Further, for the fellow breeder, we are planning to offer free licenses to USE the SAFE trademark if they themselves ever retail only captive bred dart frogs, but since it (the trademark SAFE) is a designation of source and we own the mark, the lawyers tell us, it is us who need to make sure the other user's quality is up to snuff. If not, we could be injured by their poor products, while ours are top notch. Most all of us here on the boards are quality breeders, but some are not. This is an unfortunate fact. Have a great day and if you need some excellent quality safe dart frogs we sell under the SAFE brand to mean captive bred and nothing wild caught, let us know. For you, we will even hand pick them by the traits you specify! Have a great day!
