Setting Up An Aquarium Store

The man behind the fish

David Atkins didn’t know quite what he was getting into when he called Scheels a few months ago and said he had heard that the store then under construction was looking for a fish keeper.

“I misunderstood him on the phone,” Atkins recalled. “I thought he said 1,600 gallons.”

The aquarium, in fact, holds 16,000 gallons of saltwater and will be home to more than 500 damsels, clowns, angels and assorted other species when the store opens Saturday. More than half the fish were in the tank last week and doing, well, swimmingly.

It is, by far, the largest aquarium Atkins has tended, more than twice the size of the 7,000-gallon tank he takes care of at a Bass Pro Shop near St. Louis, large enough that he plans to move to Springfield from his home in Hannibal, Mo.

You’re not alone if you’re wondering what fish like these are doing in a place like this.

“I was like, ‘In a sporting goods store?’” Atkins recalls thinking when he first saw the tank.

The fish alone cost more than $12,000, Atkins said. So far as Scheels is concerned, it’s money well spent.

“The reason is simple,” said Rob Yule, assistant store leader. “It’s the same reason we have a Ferris wheel and a NASCAR simulator and a golf simulator and a walk of presidents. We want Scheels to be more than a shopping trip for people. We want families to come and make an event of it.”

With customers not yet in the building, employees and contractors have the tank to themselves, and virtually everyone who walks past while putting finishing touches on displays or otherwise getting ready for opening day turns their head to look at the fish.

“If they walk by it every day and still stop by and look, think of what the customer in the store will do,” Yule said.

There is a bench set up next to the tank, and Atkins is well aware of an aquarium’s addictive powers.

“That’s why the guys who work for me are on salary,” Atkins said.

Attorney Salary: So Called Business Partner Locked Me Out? by ...

Trying to keep this as short as possible. I had my own aquarium shop for years. Then I had to close that business for financial reasons in 2007. Just as I was preparing to move closer to my family in 2008, one of my former clients approached me and offered to start another aquarium shop with me and he had another business. I had $ 50,000 worth of inventory that I still had and he agreed to be the financier. We found a location, and signed a lease. I had pushed to get an attorney to write up a contract, he felt that was not necessary and we wrote up a hand written contract agreeing to the terms of our partnership, detailing our roles and the monthly salary I would require until the business could sustain itself and we both signed it in his office. After we signed this contract, I asked for a copy of that contract, he said he didnt have a copier and never gave me a copy of our contract. We partially opened the shop early in 2009 with only minimal sales due to the lack of new product and no presence of aquarium systems for livestock, which took 3 months for him to agree to purchase and another month or so to set up.

So, from the store opening to now, he didnt pay the salary we agreed upon to work at the store to build a customer base, and my savings were depleted long ago. I felt like i had no choice but to take the cash sales since he was not adhering to his end of contract. A month ago, he mailed me a 1099 from the cash sales, then stated that he could not do this business anymore. Then, that weekend we sold a little over 3k and then ended up with our best month and then commented that we may be able to could go on with our venture. Well, the beginning of this week he changed the alarm code and locked me out. Our blowout occured on Thursday morning, which I have a recording and a witness to, denying we were in a partnership and claimed that I was less than an employee, and claimed the payments he made to me early in 2008 were for inventory.

Now, in 2008, he had me working for him and he wrote “inventory” on the checks he provided to me for working for him, stating it was for tax purposes. So, the way I am thinking about this: if the 2008 money was for “inventory” purchase, there is a balance due to me for the difference from what he paid. Further, if he claims that I am not a business partner, which there IS a signed contract in his posession at least, but if I am just an employee, then I am owed the difference of what I worked and what I had to take out of the cash sales. And, another way of thinking about this is if he felt that he was paying me forward in 2008 towards our agreement, he only paid 4.8 months forward and owes the difference from the agreement.

The Everything Tropical Fish Book

Freshwater and marine aquarium

Aquarium Secrets Revealed

The Merck/Merial Manual of Pet Health

Freshwater Aquariums for Dummies