We aren't a big company with a larger reseller support organization. We do however, offer the best darn marine life support equipment out there and if you care about offering the highest quality products to your customers then we should be able to work together great. Our products compete very favorably against the best German imports like Deltec, H&S, and BubbleKing but if you are comparing us to a vendor that produces his product in China it may not be a good match. Not that there aren't some decent products made in China but most Chinese producers are very focused on low price regardless of performance or quality and we are very focused on high performance and top quantity. We have the benefit of superior product engineering and a dedication to quality that we don't think you'll find anywhere else. This may make us a little bit more difficult to deal with at times (I said a little bit) but we would rather get it right that get it right now and maybe fix it later. We are just starting out on the reseller side of things so if you see us doing things that you think are not best feel free to make suggestions. We'll listen to all of them and incorporate whatever ideas make sense and work for the company.
A few rules we are going to try to live by. We hope you will understand.
- We aren't in a position to offer credit or determine your ability to pay. We need you to pay for your order before we ship it. For paypal that means when you place the order we get paid. For credit cards we just authorize your card and we charge it when we start work on your order (if we have all the parts that's likely 7-10 days, if we have to order CNC parts or other parts the lead time is longer).
- We like long lead times when you order. All the other customers we have want it tomorrow. The longer you place your order before you need it the happier we will be. However, there's no need to place it more than a month ahead of time. Two weeks is good but if you need it in a week let us know and we'll try and make it happen. Sometimes we have finished products in inventory. If you need it quickly and are open to similar products send us an email - maybe we don't have a MoCalc 200 but we do have a MoCalc 300 already done.
- We don't make any money on freight. If we skimp on packaging then the chance of breakage goes up. All products ship Exworks our shop in Milpitas, California (zip is 95035) although some drop ship from other places. This means you own it when it leaves our dock and you pay all shipping costs. If it breaks you will need to handle the claim although we will work with you and the carrier to help get it done. We prefer to ship UPS but we'll do FedEx as well. We don't recommend USPS but we'll do it if you insist. For larger orders, you can specify the motor freight carrier or if not we will probably use FedEx Freight. We will ship on your UPS account number if you prefer. We also charge a $15 box charge per box. We lose money on the large boxes and make a little on the small ones.
- Our online shopping cart software is not as great as we'd like so sometimes things don't work as well as we like. If you see something that doesn't look right email us. One area we are still working on is UPS shipping. We are having problems getting the software to charge the correct shipping amout. We try to catch this ourselves but if it seems like the shipping charge is high send us email and we'll verify it - and refund any overcharges when we get the actual shipping costs.
- We can handle shipments to Canada ourselves and we are willing to learn how to do Mexico. Any other international destination you need a shipper that handles all paperwork and customs. We can provide the commercial invoice to your shipper and help with the customs declaration.
To Get in our Reseller Program
We need a copy of your business license and reseller permit number (sales tax permit). We actually have a form for you to fill out. Email us and we'll send you the form.
Pricing and Discounts
We are continually refining our reseller program and are happy to hear your suggestions. Here's our current program for resellers.
This discount is per rolling 12 months. Everytime you order we'll look at the proceeding 12 months of shipments and use that total to calculate your discount. We have to calculate the discounts by hand and refund the discount amount to your credit card or paypal account. The discounts are for products manufactured by Austin Oceans. In general, we don't expect to supply you with products manufactured by others since we assume that you have access to reseller pricing through your other suppliers. The exception to this may be Sequence and Reeflo water pumps. If you want us to supply these to you we are happy to do it. We can also drop ship to your customer.
We really hope and want you to stock product and not just order when you have a customer. Our products are very impressive to look at and we believe you will have many more orders when your customers can see our skimmers, calcium reactors, and other products in advance. To help make this easier, we'll give you the next higher level of discount on your first order.
In addition, we will credit you with half of your advertising or marketing costs if the marketing program mostly focuses on Austin Oceans products. If you are promoting 2 brands then we'll run the numbers at 50%. This credit will be capped at 3% of your paid order for any quarter. For example, if you ordered $10,000 in product in Q1 then we will give you a credit against future orders of up to 3% of $10,000 or in this case $300. You will need to email us a copy of the marketing program invoice showing the expense to get this credit and we have to approve the advertising or marketing (don't worry, we are easy to work with on this).
How to Order
You can order from the website. You need to register as a customer (yes, we know how restrictive the password requirement is - we can't do anything about that). When you checkout select print and call. Send us an email or give us a call and we will calculate your discounted price and manually run your credit card for that amount. If you prefer to use paypal make that note in special instructions and we will calculate your price after your discount and email you the total.
We reserve the right to change discounts or terminate the discount program at any time.
