Congratulations on starting a business! More companies making quality ant keeping products is always a welcome sight and I wish you guys the best.
However, you may want to do some more refinement of your designs for your first product. I see several major flaws with your formicarium design that I believe would discourage most or all potential buyers from purchasing it.
http://friendlyantho...ce-f3aa0272ea4b
1) It's already clearly cracking apart, and it sort of looks like you tried to glue it back together without much success. If I were willing to overlook any of the other flaws that I'm about to discuss, I still would be very hesitant about buying because it's not at all clear to me that the nest would show up in one piece.
2) The finish is extremely rough. It looks like ants wouldn't have trouble escaping out from under the glass in literally every direction. There doesn't seem to be anything holding the glass down either.
3) There's no way to water it in a way that won't make a giant mess.
4) The ants also look they can escape where the tubing meets the plaster.
5) It just doesn't look very good. Certainly no where close to $25+Shipping good.
6) You're not price competitive with other retailers. In your price range there are dramatically better options that are clearly better thought out with more refinement an consideration for the practicalities of ant keeping. See The following 3 nests from TarHeel and Antscanada ranging from $18-$50 (your price range of $25). Ask yourself, why would someone purchase your formicarium over the 3 below? Can you personally justify to yourself buying your nest instead of the atom or inception nests?
https://tarheelants....cts/atom-nest-b
https://tarheelants....-chamber-3-inch
http://www.antscanad...rid-nest-small/
My overall assessment is that your product looks like not just the first version of your design, but literally the very first formicarium that you've ever made. While I definitely think that it's possible for a new ant store to be successful, I believe that you may have to rethink think your level of commitment to Research and Development before you can begin to have competitive offerings.
Good luck!
Points 5 and 6 still apply even at your current lower price of $16. You need to do more work on prototyping, this grout nest is simply not good enough to sell. It is my understanding that you are kids with limited access to funds and materials. I suggest that you work on getting more money so that you can afford to iterate over several prototypes until you are able to meet minimal standards of quality.
Starting a business is expensive in both time and money, particularly when you are selling a physical product. You need to be able to make iteration after iteration of your product until you find one that works. Even if you're efficient about this it can still be costly. You'll also need to thoroughly test anything that you come up with by keeping actual ant colonies in them for many months to make sure that they'll hold up over the long term. After all of that you then somehow have to price your formicarium at such a point that you think it was worthwhile to have spent that money making prototypes, and expending the many, many hours that you spent creating and testing, and have that price be at a point that people think it's worth paying for what you're offering.
I think you kids can go through that process and come up with something good enough to sell at a reasonable price, and I think that you can do it at a lower cost than the adults you're competing with because they have adult living expenses and you have none. You're not anywhere close to that point though, and it will take a lot of work to get there. Trying to sell what you have at the point you're at now will earn you nothing but derision from the formicarium makers that actually do go through all of the effort I listed above, even if they won't say so by making such an upfront post in public as I am. You also don't earn any good will from the community when you have Alabama Anter, your cofounder, speaking derisively about other ants stores and their prices (which to adults with an actual income, who are doing nearly all of the buying of these things regardless of the age of the intended recipient, is not that much money) and being generally unpleasant while you guys are light years behind the offerings of the other ants stores.
