Zoophilia 2000
Zoophilia 2000
Written by Thursday, 18 January 2001 01:00
"ZOOPHILIA 2000" was held in the Swimming Center of the Olympic camp in Athens (October 20-23, 2000). This was a commercial exhibition and the entrance was allowed to retailers only. The subject was "pets". Thanks to Aquatica, MCH got an invitation and was able to be there. Loaded with cameras, notepads and ready for deadly comments - as usually.
Zoophilia means "love for the animals". MCH visited the exhibition to accomplish three tasks. 1. To verify what is the current status of fish keeping as a fraction of the overall "pet" industry in Greece, 2. See what advances have been made in fish keeping in terms of equipment and wholesalers and 3. Take some pictures of fish, equipment and other pets for the visual pleasure of our visitors.
Well, I must confess that I was quite disappointed. The exhibition was not really a large one, less than 100 booths in total, but the aquarium hobby was limited to 14 booths. Furthermore, the majority of these booths were "all around" players with canine food next to "special" fish flakes. A combination which means that the guy who talks to you doesn't know much about either food. There were five booths which were presenting products for the fish keeper exclusively. On the other hand, many big names, like the Danish firm "Tropica"; for instance, didn't participate (or were not represented).
Being an advanced fish keeper, you could possibly spend some hours there, talking to the very few who were knowledgeable but still the point is that in the previous exhibition, there were more aquariums, more fishes, more color, many more discussions. It seems that the hobbyists in Greece increase in numbers but the companies decrease. This was also evident during the last years (many small lfs closed), mainly due to the internet trade which "steals" sales from the retailers - indirectly affecting the wholesalers, too. It is obvious that there is a lesson to be learned. The "golden age" for the retailer belongs to the past. The old days, when a filter was sold in Germany for x DM and the retail price in Greece was more than double have expired. Everybody can find an online company and order that filter paying (at most) those x DM !!
You could see many hobbyists looking around, asking for retail prices and then searching the brochure for the URL. Needless to say, I do the same all the time. I have found that usually I pay a 40% lower price when ordering online for the very same item. Due to EU regulations the Greek Distributor is obliged to give me all technical support I am entitled to, so what's the reason to pay for three water pumps when I need one?
New items? Yes, it is evident that the wholesalers import whatever new comes available. I could see the newest fish remedies, water chemistry add ins, equipment and paraphernalia. What I didn't see is swimming fish. There were very few tanks in there and I only stopped to see two of them, both exhibited in the very first booth of the exhibition (Aqualand by P. Saritzoglou). Following that, there were tanks in some of the "fishy" booths, since most of them didn't even care to set up a tank for this exhibition. As far as advanced "fishy" equipment is concerned, there were three which stand out, Aquatica (I. Paraschos), Aquarius (M.Demetropoulos) and Pacific Aquarium (M.Lazarides). These were the booths that had some people you could talk to and seemed to know a bit more about tropical fish (especially Aquatica and Pacific Aquarium since Aquarius focuses mainly in cold water fish). It seemed to me that Aqualand, Aquatica and Pacific Aquarium participated only because they couldn't avoit it - they simply had to. If one takes into account the overall level of this exhibition, then those three exhibitors (possibly accompanied by Aquarius and a couple of tank constructors) could actually hold their own exhibition - something like "Fish-Philia 2000".
As said, Greece is not an isolated country anymore. The amount of information an advanced aquarist can have today is enormous. What I see in the magazines, read in the E-mails and learn in the websites I surf daily is centuries ahead. When you compare this exhibition to the average exhibition of the cichlid club of an average / small city in the USA the latter is far more interesting. Which shows that there is really too much to be done on this field, otherwise there is simply no future.
All comments on this page are the personal opinion of the author.
All photos by the Author