Tarantula Importing and Arachnid Commerce

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Editor's Note: This article was first published in early 2005 in ARACHNOCULTURE 1(2) and all information may not be up-to-date.

Port of Entry

Live animal imports must enter the US at a designated port of entry where they require clearance by U.S. Customs and USFW. These limited cities include Miami, Atlanta, New York, New Orleans and Los Angeles. If you are not close to a designated entry port city and wish the shipment to travel on to another airport, a customs broker will be required regardless of the value of the order. This person will handle the clearance at the port of entry airport and then ensure that the package is routed to its final destination airport.

Considerable Expense

As you have no doubt realized by now, importing is very expensive and involves a considerable amount of "red tape". Let's assume you are well-funded and use an example to further illustrate the point. Let's say that you have become friendly with a European dealer who has just successfully hatched an egg sac from Species X. This spider is blue with neon green stripes, huge and docile and will be a sure hit in North America. The dealer will sell the entire sac of 100 to you as long as you take them all at $90 US each. That's $9000 just for the one species. However, he isn't going to let you buy just his most desirable offspring. You will also have to take 300 Psalmopoeus irminia, 200 Ornithoctonus andersoni, 100 Lasiodora striatipes, 100 Poecilotheria pederseni and a number of other spiders. Before you know it the total price of your spiders is over $20,000. Add the Form 3177 fee ($55), shipping ($300), broker fee ($500) and the other costs and you could buy a new SUV (sports utility vehicle)!

Arachnid Commerce

So is it worth it? Will you be able to recover your investment and hopefully make a profit? Maybe, maybe not. The markup at the wholesale level is the lowest percentage. Retailers who have greater overhead and will have to house and care for the spiderlings for some time, experience some losses, advertise, and ship them individually have a understandably higher markup. Let's throw some imaginary numbers around. We'll pretend that with the other costs split among the total live spiders received the cost of one specimen of Species X is $100. Let's say you have decided you need to make $30 profit on each spider. So you offer them to the retailers such as Internet arachnid dealers for $130 as long as they take at least ten Species X and twenty each of the other species you were forced to buy. After the retailer adds his or her shipping costs the cost per Species X will be slightly more than $130, but here we will overlook that. So now the retail dealer has $1300 invested in ten tiny spiderlings. Let's say that the professional retailer who pays rent for a facility, utilities, website hosting and design, taxes, attorney and accountant fees, etc. has to double the cost and the retail price becomes $260. Is that fair? Well, let's look at the reality. One of the spiderlings may die before it is sold and one may die en route to the customer and have to be replaced. That leaves 8 spiders that actually cost about $165 sold for a gross profit of $760—and that's with good luck and doesn't include the aforementioned costs of doing business. Plus, the retailer also has to keep alive and sell the other species that aren't in such great demand. But the previous scenario isn't exactly realistic in yet another way. Not all retailers are "legitimate". Those who have "day jobs", perhaps don't claim their income and certainly don't have the overhead of the professional dealer may place a forum ad selling Species X to the hobbyist for $200 or less. Now the "legitimate dealer" will have to lower the price or hold on to the spiders longer, which further increase the risks of losses and the costs of care.

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