Latest news with #BrianButler
Straits Times
25-05-2025
- Business
- Straits Times
How the ‘Lizard King' built a reptile empire selling $64,000 geckos
Mr Brian Butler's "designer" geckos have sold for more than US$50,000 a piece. This 23cm male crested gecko is selling for US$1,549 on his website Altitude Geckos. PHOTO: ALTITUDE GECKOS NEW YORK – Shortly after graduating from high school, Mr Brian Butler started loading trucks at a UPS freight facility in Denver. Working nights for the next 16 years, he sometimes found himself so strapped for cash that he had to choose between buying groceries and paying his mortgage. Today, he has got a US$350,000 (S$450,000) pad overlooking the Caribbean, two homes in Denver and a six-figure stock portfolio. The source of his wealth? Crested geckos, docile creatures that resemble diminutive cartoon dragons. 'I bought a condo in Belize,' the 37-year-old says. 'Every time I visit, I think to myself, 'I sell lizards on the internet. How the hell did I end up here?'' He ended up there by selling a lot of lizards, for a lot of money. Five of his 'designer' geckos, with unusual black-and-white markings, have sold for more than US$50,000 apiece, and even those with less striking patterns typically fetch US$300. Mr Butler, who left his job at the American multinational shipping and logistics company in 2022 to focus full time on geckos, says his business pulls in US$600,000 a year with just three part-time workers. His prosperity has been helped by soaring interest in cold-blooded pets. Some four million US households own reptiles and amphibians, and the market for the pets' food and supplies hit about US$800 million in 2024, up 60 per cent from 2019, American researcher Freedonia Group says. Although the boom has prompted concerns from animal rights groups about the ethics of reptile e-commerce and captive breeding, they have not impeded growth. Globally, sales of enclosures alone are increasing at almost 8 per cent annually, and they are projected to hit nearly US$2.2 billion by 2030, according to global consulting company Coherent Market Insights. Hundreds of species, from bearded dragons to red-eared slider turtles to boa constrictors, can be found in local pet shops, at the 500 or so US trade fairs a year focused on the animals, and at online stores such as – the of cold-blooded companions. Kinova Reptiles, a Georgia breeder of ball pythons – a relatively small snake with a calm disposition and striking skin patterns – says it has racked up sales topping US$5 million a year. Of particular interest: snakes that feature a smiley-face emoji pattern on their back, via breeding that expresses recessive genes. 'It's not hard to make new combinations because there are so many possibilities,' says Kinova Reptiles owner Justin Kobylka. Mr Brian Butler attributes much of his success to a surge of interest in geckos in South Korea during the Covid-19 pandemic. PHOTO: AEGECKOS/INSTAGRAM Social media has turbocharged interest, with owners and retailers posting photos and videos of people snuggling with their snakes and lizards. The Crested Geckos Facebook group has more than 37,000 members; Bearded Dragons Lovers has 137,000; and the Snakes With Hats Community has almost 150,000. Mr Butler attributes much of his success to a surge of interest in geckos in South Korea during the Covid-19 pandemic. He says buyers stuck in lockdown became obsessed with the creatures, which at the time were widely available in the US but not in that country. Buyers who saw Mr Butler's Instagram account and website spread the word to friends, and he soon found brokers who dealt with customers abroad and took care of shipping the animals in ventilated containers. His passion for geckos dates to 2007, when he saw one at a Denver pet shop and asked to hold it. 'They almost feel like suede,' he says. 'They're kind of goofy looking – they're cute.' He spent hours on internet forums and chatting with breeders to understand the trade. At one point, scrolling through a seller's profile on social networking service MySpace, he 'realised this is just a dude like me', he says. Fascinated with the idea of creating distinctive colour combinations, called morphs, he started raising the lizards on his own. 'Breeding and collecting geckos is like Pokemon for adults,' Mr Butler says. 'It's the excitement of the challenge to collect each different morph.' Soon, Mr Butler had 400 geckos crammed into his apartment – and US$15,000 in credit card debt from buying them. Included in that amount was the US$1,200 he had paid for a pinstriped, white-spotted red gecko he named Ghost. That sum was believed, at the time, to be the most anyone had paid for a crested gecko, which helped him gain the attention of the lizard-breeding community. In 2011, he founded Altitude Exotics. In 2012, he and his brother bought a 2,600-sq-ft house in Denver, and he filled the entire first floor with gecko enclosures. That year, he did about US$20,000 in sales. Mr Butler continued to fuel gecko prices. In 2013, he paid a London breeder about US$35,000 for 23 geckos with a rare black-and-white morph – the only ones with that pattern at the time, giving him a monopoly on their genes. He spent five years breeding them, aiming to diversify their gene pool for hardiness while fuelling anticipation on social media – and sparking interest in South Korea. He currently has about 3,500 geckos and sells about 2,000 a year. 'It gets better every day,' Mr Butler says. 'I am the luckiest guy in the world that this is what I get to do for a living.' 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Bloomberg
09-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
How the Lizard King Built a Reptile Empire Selling $50,000 Geckos
Shortly after graduating from high school, Brian Butler started loading trucks at a UPS freight facility in Denver. Working nights for the next 16 years, he sometimes found himself so strapped for cash he had to choose between buying groceries and paying his mortgage. Today he's got a $350,000 pad overlooking the Caribbean, two homes in Denver and a six-figure stock portfolio. The source of his wealth? Crested geckos, docile creatures that resemble diminutive cartoon dragons. 'I bought a condo in Belize,' the 37-year-old says. 'Every time I visit, I think to myself, 'I sell lizards on the internet. How the hell did I end up here?''
