Hello! We were busy last week as we made a visit to Thailand to learn and exchange information about shrimp keeping with fellow hobbyist.
It was really an honor to have Shrimp Store Thailand to have us at their shop and also to do this interview with us. All the pictures that you see below are taken in their store and they are all up for sale. Singaporean hobbyist can visit them and bring back shrimps within the laws of NParks.
Shrimp Store is located at the new area of Chatuchak market. It is easy to get to their shop as it is located right beside MIXT Chatuchak. If you are taking a taxi, just alight at MIXT Chatuchak mall and take exit two into Chatuchak market, the shop is just at the left of the entrance of the market. This is a new area in the Chatuchak area, the mall is pretty dull but a great place to hide from the hot weather and also for taxi drivers to navigate.
Shrimp Store is a newly found business by a group of shrimp hobbyist. The store consist of five friendly bosses that are ready to answer your questions anytime and also share with you tips on shrimp keeping the Thai way. They started as hobbyist from as long as ten years ago, and have met each other through social media platform. We did a short interview with them and here it goes!
MADSHRIMP: How did the business started and what made you guys venture into this?
SST: We are a group of hobbyist who have know each other through shrimp keeping. Through our facebook group, we often have shrimp hobbyist get together and one day during one of the meetings, we just casually decided to open up a store to promote shrimp keeping and the next thing that happen was a real physical store today.
MADSHRIMP: What shrimps do the Thai hobbyist like?
SST: In Thailand, Pure Red Line (PRL) is the most popular here. The cheaper PRL are for new hobbyist and some veterans are willing to spend good money one some solid PRLs. As you can see in our shop, we have a wide range of PRLs that caters to different hobbyist. Our PRLs comes from different lineage all over the world, mainly Taiwan, Japan and Thailand. Shrimps with red are usually more popular here in Thailand as well. For new hobbyist, they will always start out with fire red neocaridinas.
MADSHRIMP: What are you customer base like? As these shrimps are pretty costly, are your customers only the working adults?
SST: We have a big customer base ranging from students to working adults. There was once, a young student came to purchase shrimps from us and he bought a couple of shrimps that is worth about 20,000 baht each. The shocking part is that it was actually his first time keeping these shrimps. We do not have any specific pool of customer, as long as your love shrimp, we will try our best to provide you with what you need. We also have many foreign customers coming in from Myanmar, Vietnam and Singapore.
MADSHRIMP: Wow 20,000 baht a piece, that is really steep for a student. Which shrimp did he purchase at that time?
SST: It was a PRL Fancy Tiger. In Thailand, as long as the fancy tiger have no hybrid crosses with Taiwanbees, it would be term as PRL Fancy Tiger. These shrimps are starting to get popular here in Thailand and hobbyist are coming in pretty often to get these shrimps. These shrimps comes in different grades, so we have them priced from 750 baht all the way up to 20,000 baht.
MADSHRIMP: What products and shrimps do you carry in your store now?
SST: We mainly have a few lineage of PRLs, PRL Fancy Tiger, Taiwanbees and also Yellow King Kong. Our Neocaridinas are Thai lineage, they come from Thailand farms. Thailand is popular for Fire Red and also our Orange gold Neocaridina.
Product wise we do carry Benibachi line of products like soil and some additives. We have created a range of shrimp food that caters to different needs of shrimp. These food are carefully crafted by us and our customers really like them.
MADSHRIMP: Lastly, we really thank you for having us, but one last question before we go. What are your vision in this hobby and business that you have now?
SST: We definitely would look to bring in products and shrimps that are hardly seen in the Thai market. As we have many customers from overseas, we would like to offer products and shrimps that you can’t find elsewhere. We hope to grow our business in a couple of years time and promote this hobby to more hobbyist locally and worldwide. Shrimp keeping can be a difficult hobby if not handled right, we would like to spread knowledge about this hobby and also help hobbyist with difficulties.
That is the end of our interview with Shrimp Store. If you ever head down to Chatuchak, don’t miss out this store. They are open everyday except Monday. Aside from that, you can check all the cool animals in Chatuchak market. You definitely would love all the Bearded Dragons and also blue Iguanas.
If you like to find out more about Shrimp Store Thailand, you can check them out at their facebook page here.