Sea change: Man escapes corporate ladder to run thriving coral farm in Copley - Akron Beacon Journal

Posted: 06 Jan 2021 12:00 AM PST

Sean McDonnell | Akron Beacon Journal

It was a classic case of "I don't know what I want to do when I grow up."

Than Thein had a decade-long college career where he hopped from major to major. He realized he wouldn't be a doctor and that he didn't like computer programming before he settled into a career in business law.

He didn't know what job he wanted, but Thein knew what he liked since daycare — aquariums.

"They had this little aquarium, and it had like a tadpole or something like that in it, and I was just like, transfixed," Thein said. "Like the entire world just vanished. And I don't think that that feeling has ever really left."

Years later, he was in an "impressive-sounding white collar environment" that wasn't for him. After Thein climbed the corporate ladder, he needed a way to side step it.

The plan? Turn a hobby into a business, and grow coral reefs in tropical Copley, Ohio.

"One day, the side hustle got enough momentum to be the main hustle, and that changes everything," Thein said.

That side-hustle became Tidal Gardens, a coral farm selling to hobbyists both locally and internationally. It expanded from a 125-gallon tank in Thein's home to a two-building enterprise in Copley that houses thousands of gallons of salt-water, multiple employees and a YouTube channel dedicated to aquaculture and coral reef aquariums.

'The niche-est of niche things'

Selling coral is the definition of a niche market. Aquariums are already a small slice of the pet market. Thein said only 10% of those aquariums are salt-water, and only a fraction of salt-water acquarium owners grow coral.

Thein said you're taught to believe your first few business ideas will fail. But, somehow, Thein knew a coral farm would make it.

"In the back of my head, there was no reality I could envision where it would fail," Thein said. "And it's ridiculous. You're selling like the niche-est of niche things. You'll never get an investor excited about doing something like this. But it's like, I just didn't care. It's just something I wanted to do."

Despite obvious challenges, Thein's idea did get praise. In 2004, he entered his business plan into a contest and won money, but he said the real thing he won was support.

"Really, it wasn't the money that helped launch it," Thein said. "It was just the buy-in of everybody around me, because it goes from, 'that's a dumb idea' to everybody then will support it."

Thein said Tidal Gardens was the "sidest of side hustles" for years. In the early 2000s, he bought land and built the greenhouse he still uses today. He brought on a single employee, and the company treaded water as he continued working in the business field.

It wasn't until about 2009 that he'd leave his corner-office to work full-time at the farm.

Coral raising is a world of its own, with its own culture, debates and misconceptions.

For starters, coral reefs aren't colorful underwater plants — they're living animals, thousands of them, to be exact.

The tiny polyps attach to form colonies, using tentacle-like arms to capture food, and bacteria living inside of them to help keep them alive.

They're also aggressive. Raising corals together means stopping them from killing each other.

"A coral reef is like a huge battleground," Thein said. "Everything is trying to get more real estate for itself."

Some coral sting; others release compounds to block out sunlight from competitors. Several coral species even release a kind of stomach acid to digest their neighbors.

Coral reefs also aren't as serene as they look. As Thein explains in a video on "coral aggression," corals and fish around them make for a loud place.

"It is loud," Thein said in the video. "It basically sounds like a bowl of rice krispies in your skull."

Growing coral as a hobby means controlling a lot of variables, which are heavily debated by enthusiasts.

It's also expensive. Thein said you could get started for about $1,000 if you know where to cut corners.

Coral costs an average $30 to $100 each.

A curious thing about coral culture is how different kinds are named, especially online.

A list of what Tidal Gardens grows includes things like "electric limeade," "raspberry shortcakes" and "midnight princess."

Thein said many corals have "weed names."

Burning Banana, Flicka Flame, The Grinch, Beach Bum, Sour Skittles, Raja Rampage and Aussie Splatter Hammer all sound like names straight out of a dispensary, but each describe a kind of coral ready for sale.

An Untraditional Business

Tidal Garden's new building collects rainwater to be purified and used for its tanks. Pretty soon, it will be run on solar.

How long will that take to pay for itself?

"Who cares," Thein said. The real goal is to pursue ambitious projects.

"It's kind of like being willing to do stuff that no other business would," Thein said. "And eventually, in whatever weird math the universe uses, it translates to success."

One ambitious project was starting a YouTube channel in 2008, back when Thein was one of maybe three people talking about aquariums on the site.

Today he calls it a catalyst for Tidal Garden's success.

"The YouTube channel is the reason why people know us, period, end of story," Thein said. "There's plenty of coral farms all over the world. There's nothing like that YouTube exposure."

Tidal Gardens' channel has 84,000 subscribers and has amassed 15.6 million views. Small in comparison to the behemoths on the site, but large enough that Thein can afford someone full-time to work on that side of the business.

It's also a big enough audience to make Thein a coral celebrity. If he tells his audience he's traveling to another country, he said he'll get at least five people inviting him over for dinner.

At trade shows, he said he can't go 10 feet without being asked for a photo.

A growing part of the company is focused on YouTube revenue, as well as Amazon-affiliate links, merchandise sales and Patreon, a subscriber platform that lets fans support creators with donations.

The internet always shaped Tidal Garden's strategy and changed the coral hobby as a whole.

Before hobbyists could talk online, the most knowledgeable person they knew sold coral at the local pet store.

Now coral growers and aquariums buffs can seek advice from all across the world.

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COVID, CORAL and the future of business

Like all business owners, Thein worried COVID-19 would hurt. As a seller of niche and expensive products, he expected customers to forego coral purchases.

"My first fear when COVID hit was that people would stop buying anything discretionary," Thein said. "It would be, 'We are going to buy food, we're going to buy toilet paper, end of story.' "

Instead, demand spiked. It turns people were stuck at home, looking for things to do and eyeing new items for their tanks.

As online shopping platforms like Etsy and Shopify grow, and people shop online more and more, Thein said he's optimistic that niche businesses can flourish.

Someone selling wooden signs, or homemade crafts, or even coral doesn't need to open a brick-and-mortar store, or convince a wholesaler to buy from them. Thein said he's optimistic that more access to eyeballs will let more niche businesses thrive.

Thein said things like ideal retail location, or looking for foot-traffic, aren't as important.

"That's not in the calculus anymore," he said.

Leaving corporate behind for coral

In the indie-game Stardew Valley, players leave their cubicles behind to live a simpler life running a farm.

Thein said he's literally living out the game in real life, but underwater.

What always bugged Thein about the professional world is how people go after corporate positions. The jobs often come with a big paycheck, and some status, but they're not all they're cracked to be.

"When you actually get that, when you're actually working in some impressive sounding white-collar environment, it's not for everybody, at all," Thein said.

The higher up the ladder, the more positions become about political gaming, Thein said.

He said he now lives a much simpler life without worrying about validation from other places.

"The success validates itself," he said. "Anything before that, you'll never be able to convince anybody that your idea is going to be successful. But once it is successful, it changes everything."

Reach Reporter Sean McDonnell at 330-996-3186 or smcdonnell@thebeaconjournal.com.

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