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Technology Innovator of the Year: Fluker Farms

Fluker Farms takes a Web site gamble with "Reptile Republic"

Randy McClain, BusinessReport.com, 9/10/2002

David Fluker and his brother, Howard, have lost their minds.

Or have they?

The Port Allen duo who brought you chocolate-covered crickets and the "I Ate a Bug Club," are taking another gamble that is either foolhardy or pure marketing genius.

Their goal is to be the first breeders of exotic pets,snakes, iguanas and Bearded Dragons,to turn the odd (and sometimes very expensive) pets into a brand-name product.

"We just want to push the envelope," says Fluker Farms President David Fluker from his cramped Port Allen compound. If the brothers' idea works, the words and the Web site, reptilerepublic.com, might be a household name by next summer,at least around households where green, creepy creatures from Central and South America are favored over dogs, cats and parakeets.

Here's the plan in a nutshell:

Fluker Farms may have started 50 years ago as a small cricket farm selling bait to fishermen and bait shops in South Louisiana. But today it's a company with an estimated $5 million-plus in annual sales of everything from novelty items such as chocolate-covered crickets (annual sales about $36,000) to exotic pets, food pellets, cleaning gels and heat lamps for the care and feeding of unusual pets.

The Flukers are now an international operation. They breed iguanas on a company-owned farm in El Salvador and ship lizards, snakes and other exotic pets through the port of Miami to pet shops nationwide.

Trouble is, there's really no visible difference between the iguanas or snakes raised by the Flukers and similar animals shipped by far-flung competitors.

"A python is a python," says Matt Parsons, general manager of Noah's Quality Pets, a three-store chain in Baton Rouge that buys novel pets from the Flukers as well as other distributors.

David and Howard Fluker, though, intend to turn their exotic pets (some of which sell for $300 or more) into animals with a brand identity,think the Coca-Cola of lizards.

The key is Reptile Republic, a membership-only Web site and a marketing plan rolled into one.

The novelty of the site, as well as the Flukers' long history of selling pet products via the Internet, are two key reasons why Business Report and the Baton Rouge Technology Council have given Port Allen-based Fluker Farms the 2002 Technology Innovator of the Year Award.

When the Flukers' new Web site, still under construction, is finally finished, it will be a place for pet owners and pet shop operators,at least those who buy from the Flukers,to talk online about how to care for exotic pets.

Features under construction include Reptile University, a virtual classroom that offers information on the care and feeding of Komodo Dragons, iguanas and other lizards. A veterinarian, dubbed "Dr. J," is already available if you call the Flukers' El Salvador office most evenings. You can call and chat live via a Web cam or put your trickiest lizard questions up on his message board. No kidding.

"We hired two programmers in El Salvador to develop the site," David Fluker says. "There'll be chat rooms. You can go online and register your pet as a citizen of the Reptile Republic, give him a name."

The idea is to give people who buy exotic pets value after the sale.

The Flukers have developed Reptile Republic passports that look like something Indiana Jones might carry. The heavy paper passports come with care and feeding info inserted. They're to be handed out by pet shops every time a customer buys a Fluker-bred animal.

Inside is a thin plastic card about the size of a Visa or MasterCard that includes a special ID number. That code will be the pet owner's ticket to visit Reptile Republic as a value-added benefit once they get their Gila Monster home.

"We'll have this in the hands of pet store owners by mid 2003, for sure," David Fluker says. The Flukers don't sell lizards and things directly to the public. Instead, they sell in bulk to pet store chains because it's easier to ship exotic animals air-freight that way. The Flukers have upward of 300,000 iguanas at their El Salvadoran breeding outpost.

Parsons of Noah's Pets thinks the Reptile Republic brand name could catch on.

"I have every intention of handing out those passports when I sell the (Flukers) iguanas and dragons and what have you."

Pet stores might also be able to use the Reptile Republic site as a sales tool. One idea calls for the Flukers to use video cameras or "still photography" to let shoppers preview individual lizards and snakes via the Internet.

"Dealers would have the benefit of knowing they're selling quality reptiles," says Parsons, who buys as many as 15 lizards and 10 snakes a month from the Flukers already. "I hope it catches on."

Fluker, who has already printed 200,000 plastic Reptile Republic identification cards, hopes so, too. "We hope to be able to differentiate our animals from all the rest," he says.