Crabby Land and the Crystalbelle Crabs

Once upon a time, a group of fishermen started to sell "Crystalbelle Crabs" in Crabby Land. These Crystalbelle Crabs are able to bring happiness and health to the people of Crabby Land. These crabs sold are based on weight and the acceptable price is $30/kg. The Crabs are sold via distribution agents and a agreed commission is paid for each crab sold.

Over time, this crab business became competitive and the fishermen decided to differentiate their crabs. They decorated the shell and increased the price to $40/kg. The distributing agents were good and were able to convince people that crabs with decorated shells should cost $10 more than the one without decorations.

Over time again, every fishermen started to decorate the crabs shell and they see a need to differentiate themselves again. They decided to "Re-brand" and called themselves "The Hip Generation" crabs producers. They spent millions to advertise and promote their crabs and raise the price of the crabs to $50/kg. The fishermen also started to pay a higher rate of commission to the distributing agents because it is harder to sell a $50/kg crab than the $30/kg crab.

The distributing agents were good and still able to sell the crabs at $50/kg by telling their customers that the decorated crabs with rebranding gives more benefits. Some were even awarded with Million Crabs Rattan Table (MCRT) for every $100,000 worth of crabs they sold in a year. The fisherman's affliated Associations then brand MCRT as if they were more professional just because they are able to sell more $50/kg crabs.

Some of these distributing agents are very well trained and started to earn a lot of money compared to the fish sellers. Some of them do not care whether the Crabbylanders need a $30/kg crab or the $50/kg crab. Younger agents are then roped in to sell more $50/kg crabs.

Some people started to realise that by buying the $50/kg crabs, they are able to eat lesser of the Crystalbelle crabs and hence resulted being less happy and healthy. These people started to query the National Crabs Association if they should stop the sales of the $50 crabs. Instead the National Crabs Association now requires the distributing agents to file a 20 pages reports as of why the consumers need to buy the $50/kg crabs and not that $30/kg crabs. However this move is not successful because the agents are trained by the fisherman to justify that the $50 crabs are better. Therefore the sales of the $50 crabs continue to soar and people pay that extra $20 for less happiness and health.

Today, there are 3 groups of people who feel that the practice need to change.

1) The first group feel that the fisherman should stop selling the $50/kg crabs and start to re-focus on the $30/kg crabs which the people needed, just how things are when the trade started. They believe that decorated crabs or non-decorated crabs brings the same health and happiness to the crabbylanders.

2) The second group feel that they should be paid a $100/hr to advice crabbylanders on how to source for the $30/kg crabs or even a $25/kg crab as they can save $5 on the distributing agents commissions. They feel that the agents will always sell the more expensive crabs because they want to earn more money. They may not need to bother if the person buy crab eventually.

3) The 3rd group feel that the shells should be removed before they are being weighed. They feel that it is not fair that people pay for the shell that they don't eat. They feel that the fisherman and agents are not ethical by selling the crabs with shell.

The 3 groups of believers faced a lot of challenges.
1) No fisherman dare to sell only the $30/kg crabs again because the sales of the $50/kg crabs are still going well. If they start selling the cheaper crab again, no distributing agents will want to work for them and their bottom line will be affected.

2) There are not many people willing to pay for crab consultancy. There was no guideline as of how much crab consultants should be paid. Crabbylanders are known to demand for a $100 job for each $10 paid.
If the National Crab Assocation is to ban commission, many crabs distributors will go out of job because they cannot be paid $10 for a $100 job. When there are less crab distributors, less people will be told the good benefits of Cystalbelles Crabs.

3) The fisherman cannot just sell the meat without the shell as their profit margin will be greatly reduced. Over long term, these fisherman will find that the business is not viable and get out of Crabbyland. When this happens, Crabbylanders may not be able to enjoy the benefits of Crystalbelle Crabs anymore.

Many supporters of the above 3 groups started to put the blame on the distributing agents without realising that it started from the fisherman. There are good and bad distributing agents but they are often grouped together to be called unethical. They did not realise that the distributing agents had played an important role in convincing crabbylanders to eat Crystalbelle crabs and are needed serve their long term interest of health and happiness into the future.

The National Crab Association don't seems to do much except designing more directives for the distributing agents and spending more money to audits them. They probably need to put more pressure on the fisherman instead on why the $50/kg crabs are there in the first place. The fisherman should design a more innovative payout schemes for their distributing agents and yet able to serve Crabbylanders' interest over the long term.

Its perfectly fine if you don't know what crab I'm talking about. Crititize me as crap if you like it because what I wrote is indeed crap. I got the idea after eating Yummy Crab along Changi Road last Sunday.