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Alligator Heads For Smiles & Profi ts
YOU NEVER know where a hobby like fossil collecting might lead you. Just ask Robert McDade, CEO and founder of Natural Selections Inc., who started collecting fossils and minerals as a hobby. He followed that path into petroleum engi- neering, and began buying and selling geology specimens at fl ea markets. T en he met a fellow seller who was marketing preserved alligator heads. Now McDade sells not only alligator heads himself, but a complete alligator meat product line as well. “It started as a hobby,”
McDade says. “I was a min- eral collector, collecting fos- sils and meteorites. I’d been interested in the oil industry for ten years, met some profes- sional engineers, and eventually went for a degree in Petroleum Engineering,” he explains. “My wife is a geologist, and we took some trips to Mexico, visited some mines, and bought some specimens there. We kept what we wanted and sold the rest at a fl ea market in New Orleans.” And then fate stepped in, he says. “At the fl ea market, we met a gentlemen who sold alligator heads.” At the time, the preserved and fi nished heads were a
new product, and even now are considered a hot novelty item. But there’s no shortage of supply, McDade notes. “Some 95 percent of the fi nished heads we sell come from alligator farms,” he says. “T e gators are farm raised, grown for both their hide and their meat. We buy the meat, the feet and head.” However, it is not a business for the faint
of heart, he notes. “It’s a long and messy process, but worth it,” McDade says, “as preserved alligator heads are a curiosity item.” Wholesale prices can be as inexpensive
as $4.95 for the smaller heads, but retail prices can vary. “T e farther you go from Bourbon Street in New Orleans, the more the price can increase,” McDade says. Head sizes start at about fi ve inches and can go up to 21 inches in length. “But those are usually the wild alligator heads,” he notes. T e smaller heads can retail in New York City for $15 and up,” he says. “Our retailers usually enjoy a 200 to 300 per- cent markup.” McDade and his associ-
ates have their eff orts down to a science. “We do the work ourselves outside the city of New Orleans. T e time frame for ending up with preserved heads from start to fi nish is about a month,” he says. “We go to the alligator farms, pick up the frozen raw heads, and put
them in ‘the juice’, a barrel full of a formaldehyde solu- tion.” Workers can fi t a couple of hundred heads in a barrel. T e curing process takes a couple of weeks, and staff ers keep checking on the progress. “T e complete processing method is a trade secret,” McDade says. Once completed, they then trim the heads, cut the back, paint it black, prop the heads open and let them dry in the sun. “T at takes another week or two,” he says. “T en we sort them by size and ship them out.”
Continued On 42 40 November 2010
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