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Morning Bird, Inc.'s Response to Malcolm Green (BCC)

Posted by William Niven on

 

October 31, 2005

Mr. Malcolm Green
The Bird Care Company
21-22 Spring Mill Industrial Estate,
Avening Road, Nailsworth,
Gloucestershire. GL6 0BS.
United Kingdom

My Dear Malcolm,

My name is William Niven and I own Morning Bird.

I have thought long and hard about the wisdom of writing this letter but have decided to write to you directly and at the same time post this letter on my website. The website posting is a result of your efforts to discredit Morning Bird directly with the public. You can find my website at www.morningbirdproducts.com.



What Is All Of This About?
Morning Bird is a relatively new company who manufactures a line of bird care products. The Bird Care Company is a firm also manufacturing bird care products and is owned by a gentleman named Malcolm Green. Over the past several weeks, Malcolm Green has written several newsletters that have been very critical of Morning Bird and its products. Up until this point I have chosen to be silent about the criticism preferring not to engage in the drama. I am a person who does not typically seek out confrontation but rather look for consensus and cooperation. However, Malcolm's newsletters have become increasingly critical, vindictive, vengeful, perhaps even libelous at times, and his personal attacks on me and my family have crossed too many lines. He has clearly embarked upon a smear campaign of Morning Bird and its products and my silence has no doubt emboldened him to the point where he thinks he can say just about anything even if his remarks are inaccurate, distortions, manufactured or outright untruths. It is for these reasons that I now feel this letter is appropriate.

Why Is Malcolm So Critical?
In the past, Malcolm's newsletters have been filled with many interesting articles about bird care and bird keeping. Since the introduction of Morning Bird products last May, every newsletter he has written has been 100% directed at blistering attacks of Morning Bird and the products we make. Malcolm has written page after page containing literally dozens and dozens of criticisms, condemnations, indictments and dire predictions. His criticisms of Morning Bird are meant to be cruel, vindictive and hurtful. He has told you of the great perils you will endure if you choose to purchase or sell Morning Bird products. He knows that if you do such a thing you will put your birds and your company at great risk, loose customers in droves, and destroy you reputation. These are his statements. In Malcolm's opinion, Morning Bird manufactures vastly inferior products, has little knowledge of how to manufacture them, and possesses no business or marketing skills. This is what he tells you. In his latest newsletter he now clearly tells you if you give our vitamin product to a bird, you are likely to kill it and he can "prove" that. These are his words. To respond to all of Malcolm's criticism would require hundreds of pages of text. I have chosen then, to respond to his more outrageous accusations.

I ask you – why does he do all of this? Is there an altruistic reasoning to his attacks? Is he trying to save your bird's life? Is he trying to protect his retailers from making a very serious mistake? Does he feel the need to warn the world about the evils of Morning Bird? Malcolm heavily criticizes our marketing plan, our advertising, our support services, our production, our products formulations and many, many other aspects of Morning Bird. He doesn't criticize any other companies or their products. Why would he care about these things and care about them in such a negative way. He doesn't write about any other company – just Morning Bird. Why? Why only Morning Bird? I have no doubt that Malcolm has a true love for birds. We all do – all of us. If we didn't we probably wouldn't be in the bird business. Malcolm's concern for the welfare of birds is NOT the issue. At the same time his concern for you and your business are also clearly NOT behind his criticism and negativity. Well then, what else could it be about? All of his distributors, both "loyal and disloyal" sell a variety of bird care products. Even Malcolm's chosen "loyal' distributors sell products, vitamin products in particular, that directly compete with his own products. He doesn't criticize the many other manufactures that his distributors represent. There must be several dozen or so, maybe more, manufactures making vitamin supplements for birds in the western world today. Why doesn't he pick a fight with them? Why pick on just Morning Bird? Lets find out why. Morning Bird manufactures eighteen different products offering a complete line of bird care products. In Malcolm's opinion, of our eighteen products only six of them overlap with his products in what they are intended to be used for. The remaining twelve products we manufacture Malcolm has no competing product. Similarly, Malcolm manufactures dozens of products addressing many different markets that we do not compete with.
Of the six similar products, only two of them have been the objects of Malcolm's negativity. That leaves our Hearty Bird vitamin supplement to compete with Malcolm's Daily Essentials vitamin supplement and our Feather Fast moulting product to compete with Malcolm's Feather-Up moulting product. Two products. All of this drama is over only two products and Malcolm doesn't even mention Feather Fast much in his newsletters. He vehemently attacks and discredits Hearty Bird and by reference discredits our other products. But I ask again – why? Many companies manufacture vitamin and moulting supplement products and his distributors even sell them but yet Malcolm's anger is focused only on Hearty Bird. He spends 100% of his marketing energy these days attacking and discrediting Hearty Bird. Its like he's obsessed with Hearty Bird, consumed by it, but why? Why does he do this? In his latest newsletter she states" In late August they (Morning Bird) asked at least one of our retailers for ingredients advise for their forthcoming soft food. Clearly this product, which we believe is due sometime in the next few weeks, will have had only limited evaluation before its commercial launch". Now I ask you – I honestly ask all of you – why would Malcolm Green have even the slightest interest who I talk with and about what? Malcolm is obsessed with Morning Bird. He lives and breathes Morning Bird. He is consumed with Morning Bird. But why – why?

What Is It About Hearty Bird That Makes Malcolm Feel So Threatened?
The truth is – the absolute truth is – it's not about Hearty Bird at all. It's about MONEY, pure and simple, money. Let me explain. Malcolm is a smart guy. He has a calculator and a pencil and it hasn't taken him long to figure out how dangerous Morning Bird is to his business. He understands the potential that Morning Bird has to make deep inroads into his North American distributor business and he is scared – very, very scared. Lets look at the numbers – the money. Both Morning Bird and The Bird Care Company offer "competing" products at relatively the same suggested retail price. The big difference is in the distribution system that each of has chosen to embrace. Here is how it works. Lets say that Morning Bird make a product that costs $2.00 to manufacture. We try to realize a 100% yield on our products – that means we try to get a 100% mark-up when we sell that product. That 100% yield goes to pay for the rent, labor, the electric bill, etc. and if there is any left over, then we have made a profit. We would then sell that $2.00 product to one of our distributors for $4.00. That distributor in turn would stock the product and market the product to people who would sell that product at the suggested retail price. The distributor typically marks-up the product an additional 60%. That 60% goes to pay for his overhead and efforts and so the distributor sells our same four dollar product to his resellers for $6.40. Most American retailers demand a 100% mark-up in order to stay in business. So the retailer buys the product from his distributor for $6.40 and retails it for $12.80. These numbers are very representative of how business in conducted in America through a normal distribution chain. OK then – Let's see how it turned out. On that one product, Morning Bird saw a $2.00 yield, the distributor saw a $2.40 yield, and the retailer saw a $6.40 yield. When you purchase just about any product in America the finances of distribution would be very similar to what you have just read. Now -Lets see how Malcolm does it. He manufactures the same product for $2.00. But Malcolm has no distributors. He sells his products directly to retailers or retails his own products to the public. Given that the suggested retail price of his product is the same as Morning Bird, and that Malcolm only allows a 50% mark-up to his resellers, that means he would sell his product to a retailer for $8.53. His retailer then turns around and sells Malcolm's product for the same suggested retail price as Morning Bird for $12.80. OK then - Lets see how this one turned out for Malcolm. Malcolm saw a $6.53 yield and his retailer saw a $4.27 yield. If Malcolm sells his product directly to the public he sees a $10.80 yield.

Now - Lets Compare The Finances Of Both Distribution Systems.

The consumer pays $12.80 for the product whether he buys the product from Morning Bird or The Bird Care Company.

Morning Bird and The Bird Care Company both pay $2.00 to manufacture the product.

>Morning Bird yields $2.00
The Bird Care Company yields $6.53 to $12.80.

The Morning Bird retailer yields $6.40, or $8.80 if it happens to be one of our distributors who also sells our products retail.
The Bird Care Company retailer yields $4.27.

All of these numbers would be for the same product.

This is not rocket science. These numbers are very representative of how Malcolm and I choose to sell our products. Obviously Morning Bird chooses to take a lesser yield than Malcolm does. We could sell our products just as Malcolm does but our marketing strategy suggests to us that the long-term profitability of Morning Bird rests in volume sales from our retailers and, accordingly, we give our retailers a much greater incentive to sell our products than Malcolm gives his retailers. THIS IS THE SOURCE OF ALL THE ANGER, NEGATIVITY, CRITICISM, INDICTMENTS AND UGLYNESS COMING FROM MALCOLM GREEN DIRECTED TOWARDS MORNING BIRD. The issue is not about vitamins, the issue is not about the price of mite and lice spray, and the issue is not about what Morning Bird might or might not know about bird nutrition. THE ISSUE IS ABOUT MONEY. Its not about customers not wanting to purchase Malcolm's products, its about fewer people wanting to sell them It does not take a genius to figure out that if you were holding a jar of a Morning Bird product in one hand and a jar of the same product from The Bird Care Company in your other hand, and both products were comparable in all respects except that you made two or three times the profit selling the Morning Bird product, WHICH ONE WOULD YOU BE MOST LIKELY TO SELL TO YOUR CUSTOMER? This is why he must make Hearty Bird an inferior product to Daily Essentials. This is why he tries so hard to discredit Hearty Bird and Morning Bird. If Hearty Bird and Daily Essentials are essentially the same thing but retailers can make much more profit selling Hearty Bird, Malcolm won't be able to sell Daily Essentials against Hearty Bird. Malcolm has done the math. This scenario is true for all "competing" products from both companies. Morning Bird is a very, very serious threat to Malcolm and he clearly knows that. He tries very hard to make you believe that the issue is about vitamins but it is not. The truth is, given the structures of our distributions systems, Malcolm has no way to sell his products against Morning Bird other than to convince you that Hearty Bird is dangerous and that you should not purchase any Morning Bird products. Malcolm unquestionably understands this. This is why he is so obsessed with Morning Bird.

Lets add more truth to the story. The Bird Care Company is located in England. Morning Bird is located in California and we are talking about the bird care market in The United States. Malcolm often experiences serious difficulties with the U.S. Customs Service. His shipments are often delayed for long periods of time at their points of entry into the United States. They often sit in the hot warehouses, sometimes for weeks at a time, waiting for the U.S. Customs, the FDA and the EPA to clear them. Much of these delays are due to the 911 events. Morning Bird is manufactured in America and as such we will NEVER have these importation problems. Malcolm has to transport his products sometimes half way around the world to get them to his retailers. Morning Bird retailers are no more than hundreds of miles away. Morning Bird will NEVER experience the transportation costs or the lengthy transit times that Malcolm must endure. Malcolm cannot compete with Morning Bird on these issues.

How Does Malcolm Choose To Compete With Morning Bird?
Malcolm is in a bind. Morning Bird has his back up against a wall. He sees his largest distributors now selling Morning Bird products. He goes to the shows and sees Morning Birds products sitting right next to his own and he understands the yields available to those selling both products. He repeatedly talks in his newsletters about distributors "switching" customers to higher profit items from Morning Bird and you being "lured" by "huge profits" and how proud he is that most of his distributors have "resisted". If you read his newsletters carefully, throughout all of the negativity about Morning Bird he always talks about money. Woven into most all of his criticisms is his fear of "huge profits". When he talks about high profits, he is talking about the REAL issue. He must at all cost find ways to make you "resist". He knows the potential threat Morning Bird poses to him and his company. Malcolm understands that Morning Bird has the potential to possibly dominate the North American market and he must try to stop that. He knows this and he fears this. This is why he attacks Morning Bird so violently and in such a cruel, vindictive, and hurtful way.. If you think his attacks are designed too "warn" people of the evils of Morning Bird – you are wrong. He attacks Morning Bird because he desperately needs you to believe that you will be harmed in some manner if you purchase Morning Bird products. In his latest newsletter he states " Morning Bird's incentive to their distributors is huge. They are giving the retailer more than double the usual pet trade margins as an incentive to the retailer to switch you to their product". Malcolm wrote those words and it is this exact statement that the whole issue is about. He would only be "concerned" about how much profit somebody is making only if he fears how much profit somebody is making. What are Malcolm's options? He could lower his prices to match those of Morning Bird. Many companies do this when faced with new competition. But lets look at that option. To effectively compete economically with Morning Bird he would have to lower his prices to meet those of our distributors. This would not be good for him. His European retailers would have every incentive to buy their same B.C.C. products from one of his American distributors if he did match our distributor pricing to his American retailers. It would be cheaper for them to do that. That would be disastrous for Malcolm and I am not sure he could survive such a huge loss of revenue. So what can he do to prevent Morning Bird from eventually eating up his North American business? Malcolm's options are very, very limited and he knows it. THE ONLY REAL OPTION LEFT TO MALCOLM – THE ONLY ONE – IS TO DAMAGE MORNING BIRD AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE AND AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Malcolm competes with Morning Bird by trying to damage Morning Bird. He needs to damage Morning Bird as severely and as soon as he can, and he tries very, very hard to do this.

How Does Malcolm Try To Damage Morning Bird?
Malcolm cannot compete with Morning Bird on many levels. All that is left for him is to try to convince everyone that Morning Bird, or more specifically, Hearty Bird, is a far inferior product when compared to his Daily Essentials. He must convince you that it is not in your interest to purchase or sell Morning Bird products. He can only do this if he makes you believe that Morning Bird products are "rubbish" and dangerous, that Morning Bird does not know what it is doing, and that your affiliation with Morning Bird will put you in some sort of jeopardy. If he is successful in doing this than you will be less likely to look at the margins available to you from Morning Bird. If he is not successful his worst fears are realized. You might want to sell Morning Bird products and his market share, his profit, and his company will begin to disappear. Morning Bird is a very, very serious threat to Malcolm and Malcolm knows that. He won't say that publicly but rather would like to convince you that the REAL issue is about vitamins or whatever else he needs to criticize. To make his case he takes every opportunity he can find every scrap of evidence he can develop, every conversation he hears and twists them into as many negative and critical messages as he can create. Just read his newsletters. They all are a litany of criticisms and negativity of Morning Bird and its products from top to bottom. Occasionally his criticism has merit, but rarely. Think of what is happening in Washington, D.C. right now. As the political scandals emerge, the politicians all "spin" their stories in an effort to make you think what they want you to think. Malcolm Green is a master of spin. Malcolm will continue to find everything he can to criticize Morning Bird with because that is all he can do. He will continue to "spin", trying as hard as he can to make you think that the issue is about vitamins, or whatever else he is willing to criticize. THE REAL ISSUE IS ABOUT MONEY AND MALCOLM KNOWS THAT.

How Does Malcolm Use His Retailers To Get What He Wants?
This is truly the saddest part of this whole sorry mess. Lets trace how Malcolm has escalated his punishment and vengeance against his own retailers. When Morning Bird first made its products public, Malcolm devoted his whole next newsletter to criticizing Morning Bird and ended with the comment that he was "thinking" about how best to deal with this new "threat". Soon afterwards, he developed a "hit list" of Morning Bird products that he ordered his retailers not to sell and if he was informed that they were indeed selling these products, he deleted their names from his list of retailers on his website. He even said in that newsletter "don't let me catch you" selling Morning Bird products. Unfortunately for Malcolm, more and more of his retailers were contacting us wanting to sell Morning Bird products. When this initial strategy did not work for him, he ratcheted up. His next move was to stop selling his products to anyone who sold Morning Bird products. He said in his next newsletter, speaking to his own retailers about Morning Bird and his company, that he had thought it over and he "would not allow you to have both". Malcolm actually said those words. He branded any retailer who purchased any Morning Bird product on his hit list as "disloyal" and promised them financial ruin because they had turned on him and had disobeyed him. He promised his "loyal" retailers that they would soon reap the benefits of their loyalty by having customers come to them in droves as they deserted the "disloyal" retailers. Malcolm knows that he cannot stop Morning Bird from producing its products, but he might be able scare you enough to prevent you from buying them. Lets look at this strategy more closely. MALCOLM MUST MAKE YOU FEARFUL OF HIM. He thinks in order to keep his retailers "loyal" he must fill them with terrible doubts and concerns about the evil enemy Morning Bird, and he must make you fearful that if you disobey what he has told you that you must do, he will hurt you, and hurt you badly. He will hurt you by branding you as being disloyal and not selling you any more of his products. The implied and real threat here is financial disaster for you. The obvious strategy here is that Malcolm needs too control you in order to control Morning Bird. Now I ask you – I honestly ask you – have you at any time in your whole life ever heard of a business arrangement like this one? Have you ever seen or even heard of one company vehemently and violently attacking another company the way Malcolm attacks Morning Bird? Malcolm's behavior is TRULY astounding. Who of you might be responsive to a person who needs to control you? A person whose honesty is secondary to how he twists and spins much of what he says to you. A person who hides his true intent. A person who threatens and intimidates you. A person who is willing to hurt you and hurt you badly. What kind of a business relationship works like that? Malcolm uses his retailers like pawns to get what he wants. He offers his American retailers a 50 or 60% mark-up from his wholesale price to his suggested retail price. For most people, this is a joke. He goes on to tell his American retailers how much money they should make, that 50 or 60% is enough for them, and that giving them more of an incentive to sell his products would only transfer money from him to you. These are his words. He further tells his American retailers, AND TRUTHFULLY IDENTIFIES THE REAL ISSUE, that what is truly important is not how much money they can make selling BCC products but rather the more important issues are his company's profits, his employee's salaries, and INCREDABLY, his retirement fund. Again, these are Malcolm's own words. But what about the birds? What about the retailers? Aren't they important? Malcolm does not even mention them. Please keep in mind – ITS ABOUT THE MONEY. I cannot begin to tell you how many discussions I have been a party to where the other person has brought up how insulted they were by Malcolm's words. I would like to make this next point as clear as I can for Malcolm. American business people, or in fact anyone else I would think, do not do well being told what to think and what to do. Telling your retailers what products they can, or cannot sell is a huge mistake. Your strong-arm strategy of intimidation and threats has won you some points but I think in the long run it will miserably fail. Never in my many years of business associations have I ever heard of such nonsense as a manufacturer telling its retailers what they are allowed to sell. Enough said.

What About Malcolm's European Distributors?
Malcolm has recently ratcheted up again by sending his newsletters discrediting Morning Bird directly to consumers in the United States. He has taken his condemnation of Morning Bird directly to those who use his products in an attempt to enlist them in his struggle to damage Morning Bird. He is now trying to "use" his consumers in the same way he "uses" his retailers to prevent the spread of Morning Birds reach. He directs his anger, his frustration, his negative talk, his indictment and his criticism to anyone who is willing to listen hoping to convince them and enlist them to "spread the word" about the evil Morning Bird. Because Malcolm has taken his condemnation of Morning Bird directly to the public, I have decided to post this letter on my website for the public to read.

Now – about Morning Birds website. Malcolm has ratcheted up here as well. For months, Malcolm has been criticizing Morning Bird with every negative comment he could think up and that included us not having a website. He charged that us not having a website was our attempt to hide from the public and let our distributors pay for all of our advertising. The truth is - our website was under construction before we introduced our products to the public last May. Several days ago our website went public and it was no coincidence that three days after we went on the air Malcolm wrote another blistering attack of Morning Bird via his newsletter to all of his European retailers. It is in this letter that he tells everyone that if they give Hearty Bird to their birds, it will kill them. Please read his latest newsletter once again. He begins by stating that he is sending his letter to all of his European distributors because his computer all of a sudden "cannot differentiate" between his American and European retailers. He tells his European retailers that he is taking this "unprecedented" step of warning them about an American company named Morning Bird that has been trying to copy his products and are selling very dangerous products in the American market. The truth is Morning Bird has never attempted to sell anything to anyone outside the United States, but Malcolm does not know that. Our website displays all of our products and tells those who might be interested how to become a Morning Bird distributor. Malcolm knows that people all over Europe are viewing our website and this must have panicked him. Now he knows that people all over Europe are reading this letter and we will see how he responds to that piece of information. He absolutely cannot allow the Morning Bird infection to spread to Europe so he tried to preempt Morning Bird with his newsletter telling his European retailers that Hearty Bird will kill their birds. He had to make the strongest statement possible to scare as many people as possible to try and shut the door on Morning Bird in Europe and that statement was that our vitamins will kill you bird. Morning Bird being sold in Europe would be the realization of Malcolm's worst nightmare. Under no circumstances can he allow anyone in Europe to understand, or be interested in the fact, that they can make two or three times the profit selling Morning Bird products than they can selling his products. If retailers in Europe begin selling Morning Bird products at a much greater profit over what they can get from selling Malcolm's products, Malcolm will not be able to compete and his European market share will begin to erode. Europe is Malcolm's prime marketing area. It is where the bulk of his revenues come from and he is not going to give any of it up. If Morning Bird begins selling its products in Europe, even perhaps to some of Malcolm's own European distributors, he is in very big trouble. Morning Bird clearly is a very, very serious threat to Malcolm and Malcolm understands this. To keep what he has, he must discredit Morning Bird. Under no circumstances can Malcolm let Morning Bird gain a foothold in Europe so I expect in the near future to see much more critical talk from Malcolm, about Morning Bird, addressed to his European distributors. Please keep this in mind, ITS ABOUT THE MONEY.

Who Should You Believe, Morning Bird Or Malcolm?
No doubt the sheer volume of information coming from Morning Bird and The Bird Care Company is mind-boggling. So many different points of view. Malcolm obviously tries very hard to get you to believe him. He needs you to believe him and for you to do what he tells you to do so that you will not want to purchase any Morning Bird products. This is the only way he can be assured of preserving his market share in North America. This is the only course of action available to him. I am confirmed in my belief that people find great value in self-determination. I am firmly resolved that people do better in life when they develop the skills to empower themselves to make intelligent and healthy decisions. So – whom should you trust and whom should you believe? My advise to you would be between Malcolm and myself – choose neither. If you are troubled and uncertain about what decision to make – go slow. Seek the counsel of people you trust and follow your gut reaction. Trust your intuition, as it usually will serve you well. If all of this leads you to The Bird Care Company, than I will be supportive of that decision. If you find yourself moving towards Morning Bird, I will be supportive that decision as well. You have a life and you are entitled to live it as you see fit.

And Now Malcolm, These Comments Are For You
The last four newsletters you have written to your distributors have all dealt with your impressions of Morning Bird and its products. In your last newsletter you have referred to my father as working for a "prune cooking" business and you could not see the relevance of prune cooking to bird nutrition. Your statement is an obvious response to me mentioning in my website that my father, for many years, had served as Director of Scientific Research for the Del Monte Corporation and it was he who first taught me to mix vitamin powders into different formulations. I take great exception to your personal references to my family. I find your comments to be rude, self absorbed, and very, very inappropriate. If you choose to personally hold me accountable for my character, I'll be willing to step up to that plate. Otherwise I ask you to leave my family out of your negativity and I will do the same for you.

Much of what you write about Morning Bird is prefaced with comments like "it looks like", "they probably", "it seems as though", "it has been reported" and other expressions of conjecture. I thought that I would use these next paragraphs to give you and other readers, correct and truthful information about how Morning Bird and its products were created.

In my many years as a bird breeder I have no doubt used, or at least tried, every vitamin/mineral supplement available to the American public as well as every pharmaceutical product used for bird health I could find, and that includes products from The Bird Care Company. Many years ago I began experimenting with vitamin/mineral supplements for use on my own birds. I used the techniques and protocols my father taught me when I was a teenager. More recently, I have become very serious about supplements and pharmaceuticals for birds and have created Morning Bird. I think you will be interested in how all of this came about.

The concept for Morning bird was developed about two years ago and was born out of my frustration of not being able to find in one place all the products I needed to properly care for, breed, medicate, and raise my own birds. One stop shopping for complete bird care did not exist at that time. I began by interviewing several companies who could assist me in creating the bird care product line I envisioned. I physically visited two food technology companies in Southern California and one in Northern California. The food technology firm I visited in Northern California was named ABCO Laboratories, Inc. I had many meetings with the managing executives at ABCO and it soon became evident to me that having ABCO produce the Morning Bird line was an obvious choice. Soon thereafter, I entered into contractual arrangements with ABCO and the Morning Bird line of products had a beginning. ABCO is unquestionably a leader in the food technology industry. They provide extensive laboratory and testing services and unparalleled manufacturing capabilities utilizing the most up-to-date technologies and equipment available all being performed by a professional staff of microbiologists, food technologists, chemists, chemical engineers and other technical experts under the authority of Stare and Federal FDA, USDA, EPA and Health Department regulators. ABCO has extensive experience formulating and manufacturing vitamin supplements in pill, powder and liquid form for both pets and human beings. Most every grocery store in America sells many nationally advertised products that contain some sort of ABCO nutritional additive. IT IS ABCO LABORITORIES, INC. WHO FORMULATES AND MANUFACTURES MORNING BIRDS NUTRICEUTICAL AND PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTS. I have included for your review a brochure published by ABCO that describes their company and their capabilities. You can find this brochure on page 23 of this letter.

What Ingredients Are In Hearty Bird And How Much Of Them Are Really There?
To begin the project we assembled a research team of five professionals and myself. Two of the members of the team hold PhD's in the food technology sciences while the remaining members are experts in their respective technical fields. We gathered as much information as we could regarding the formulations of many different vitamin supplements from a variety of companies. Many bird supplement companies elect to publish the contents of their product s on their labels and these labels were used for comparison purposes when we considered our formulation. Hearty Bird was the first product we formulated. We prepared a chart demonstrating various concentrations of vitamins and minerals from several bird supplement companies. All of the products we compared blend their supplements using the same vitamins and minerals. Several other supplement blends whose quantities of ingredients are not published were also completely or partially analyzed in ABCO's analytical laboratory for the study. Daily Essential 2 was one of the products we had analyzed. We were trying to create a very concentrated vitamin formula and the final decision was to create a product with a slightly more vitamin content of most ingredients than Avian Plus, Vita Life, Daily Essentials 2, and Aviplus, in that order. I have published for you the chart we used to do this on page 25. I have rearranged the chart so that Daily Essentials 1 and 2 are now positioned next to Morning Bird. I did this hoping that Malcolm would volunteer to fill in the blanks. Morning Bird products that contain amino acids were created from a similar study and the comparative chart we used to make the quantity determinations can be found on page 27 of this letter. The entire study was focused on what we believed were the proper nutritional needs of a bird. We had available to us the published nutritional requirements of a canary and a small parrot. The team tried to tailor our formulation to comply with these requirements. I have also added this chart for your review. It can be found on pager 26 of this letter. The next product formulated was Feather Fast. Feather Fast is simply an extension of Hearty Bird. If you add to Hearty Bird a 20% concentrated protein product plus a full spectrum of amino acids you create a quality moulting product that we named Feather Fast. Similarly, if you dramatically increase the protein content of Feather Fast to an 80% concentrate, you will have a product that will help bring birds into breeding condition and we call that product Breeders Blend. And – If you add an electrolyte formula to Feather Fast you will have a product that provides all the nutritional requirements that a sick or injured bird would need for recovery. We call that product Thrive. Because of the completeness of the ingredients in Thrive, it is also an effective rearing food. This is how Hearty Bird, Feather Fast, Breeders Blend and Thrive were formulated. These four products are simply variations of one another but they are all very effective doing what they were designed to do. Malcolm tries very hard to convince you that we "copied" his products and that is pure nonsense.

Not all companies are willing to publish the quantities that they formulate their supplements with. This is privileged information or in the legal world, intellectual property. As a result of the constant and distorted accusations coming from Malcolm, we have elected to publish our complete ingredient list with an accurate listing of the quantity of each ingredient in Hearty Bird, Feather Fast, Breeders Blend and Thrive. To accomplish this I have enclosed in this letter four Certificates of Analysis generated by ABCO Laboratories, Inc legally attesting to the quantity of each ingredient in all four of these products. The products tested for these reports came from sealed jars directly out of Morning Bird's inventory. A Certificate of Analysis is a legal document that identifies the assay, or molecular composition of a product. It is totally accurate and completely verifiable. Because Malcolm's intellectual property cannot be listed here I have left his categories as question marks. I have had ABCO analyze Daily Essentials 2 and Feather-UP twice now. Once months ago when we were first formulating our products and just recently, as a result of Malcolm's discrediting of Hearty Bird. I clearly know the exact contents of these products and will assure you that Hearty Bird has a slightly greater concentration of vitamins and minerals than Daily Essentials 2 with the exception of a few minerals, where the concentration is slightly less concentrated. The ingredient quantities listed on our website are accurate and if you compare these values to what Malcolm publishes for vitamins A, C, D, and E in Daily Essentials 2, you will find that our concentrations for vitamins A, C, D, and E are greater than Daily Essentials 2. The same is true for our Feather Fast vs. Malcolm's Feather-UP. The Certificates of Analysis from ABCO, guaranteed by their quality control staff, and accurately attesting to the quantity of ingredients in Hearty Bird, Feather Fast, Breeders Blend and Thrive can be found on pages 29, 30, 31 and 32 of this letter. I challenge Malcolm Green to publish the quantity of ingredients in his products along with a verifiable Certificate of Analysis. If he would like me to, I would be willing to publish this information for him. Lets compare, side-by-side, what's in each product. For months, Malcolm has been discrediting Hearth Bird as a grossly inferior product compared to Daily Essentials. This is his opportunity to prove just that.

How Is Hearty Bird Made And What Are The Quality Controls
Malcolm is positive that people who do not know what they are doing, with no quality control, sloppily throw Morning Bird products together. He repeatedly tells you that Morning Bird has no idea what we are doing. Malcolm says that Morning Bird's lack of quality control and manufacturing knowledge will be dangerous to you and your birds and this is reason enough for you to not to purchase or sell Morning Bird products.

Here is how our products are manufactured with the quality assurances that go with them.

Morning Bird and ABCO Laboratories, Inc. share contractual arrangements with one another and our individual responsibilities are well defined. ABCO Laboratories, Inc. is responsible for purchasing all of the raw materials. ABCO has contracts with several supplement manufacturers and has been purchasing products from them for years. Each raw material used in any Morning Bird product must be manufactured by a company who strictly adheres to the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) manufacturing standards. All raw materials must be human grade and pharmaceutical grade. Each shipment of raw materials must be accompanied by a Certificate of Analysis (C of A) and a Manufacturers Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for ABCO to accept delivery. When the raw materials are received by ABCO, they are stored away from the main production area for testing. The C of A and MSDS information are logged into ABCO's computer system. A physical sample of each shipment is then taken to the microbiology laboratory where it is analyzed by a microbiologist for bacterial and other pathogen content. If it is "clean" another physical sample is taken to the analytical laboratory where it undergoes a gas chromatography and mass spectrometry analysis to verify its molecular structure. If the results of these analyses concur with the C of A the raw material is placed in a special container to preserve and protect it and the container is placed into inventory. The inventory area is in the production building. There are at any one time well over 100 personnel working in the laboratories and production areas in this building. The production areas are meticulously clean and nobody is allowed in these areas without white coats and hairnets. When the products are to be made, all of the raw materials are gathered and as they are introduced into the blenders, they are physically weighed to accurately verify quantity. All blending and mixing machinery are constructed of stainless steel. The finished products are stored in bulk containers for Morning Bird to later pick up. After blending a physical sample from the bulk containers is again sent to the microbiology and analytical laboratories for bacterial, pathogen and molecular content analysis. After these final inspections, a sample is taken from each "batch" and is stored in a special room for not less than three years. As Morning Bird's formulator, ABCO is responsible for preserving all coded batch information. If I wanted a physical sample of any product I have ever sold to any customer at any time, I could retrieve that sample from ABCO. ABCO's manufacturing processes and quality controls are monitored by State and Federal FDA, USDA, EPA and other regulatory agencies. Their manufacturing process is second to none in the nutriceutical and pharmaceutical industries. Morning Birds own trucks pick up the bulk containers from ABCO and bring the product to our manufacturing facility. Here they are "logged in" and placed into our inventory. When production begins, if the bulk container contains a complete dry powder, that powder is emptied into Morning Birds filling equipment where it is dispensed into our jars, the desiccant and scoop added to the container, our red closure applied and torqued onto the jar with a pneumatic retorquer. Moving down the line the jars are machine labeled and the shrink sleeve is placed on the jar. The jars then pass through a heat tunnel, which shrinks the sleeve onto the jar, and emerging from the tunnel, the products are date stamped and packaged. If the bulk containers from ABCO contain a dry powdered "preblend" or a mix of the active ingredients in a product, the powder is introduced into our blending equipment prior to being emptied into the filling equipment. If the bulk containers we get from ABCO contain a liquid product, that product is siphoned directly from the bulk container into our liquid filling machinery. These machines fill the bottles to the correct level, then moving down the line the bottles pass through the retorquer, labeler, heat tunnel, are date stamped and then packaged. All of Morning Birds production equipment is made from stainless steel and is thoroughly cleaned twice before being used. Once after the last production run and once again before the new run. All of Morning Bird's powder and liquid filling equipment is brand new, state-of-the-art, automatic equipment. Every container shipped from our facility is recorded in our database as to date, batch number, purchaser, product purchased and relevant shipping information.

Malcolm tries very, very hard to make you believe and convince you that Morning Bird products are produced by people who have no idea what they are doing and as a result the products are not to be trusted and indeed, are dangerous to you and your birds. This is simply not true. Malcolm is not being honest with you and is trying to purposely mislead you.

Morning Bird Claims Label Errors. Is That True?
Malcolm's criticism of Morning Bird is meant to be cruel, vindictive and hurtful. There is though, some merit to his comments about Morning Bird's labels. Most of our labels are correct in all facets. A few are not. Hearty Bird is one label where there are errors. When Morning Bird was in the "idea" stage, I thought that the product formulations were surely going to be the most difficult part of the project to complete. I was very wrong. Unquestionably, we have struggled with, spent more time on, spent more money for, and have been challenged more by the creation of our labels than any other aspect of our business. Here is how we did it. The Superior Court of California holds that a product label is a legal contract between the manufacturer of that product and the consumer. Most companies produce perhaps one or two labels a year. Morning Bird created over 60 different labels all at the same time. This was a mammoth undertaking. We contracted with a label company to do this. At any given time they had three technical writers and two graphic artists working on the project. The bottom line is that during the creation process of our labels, mistakes, omissions, transpositions, grammar and spelling errors were commonplace and I did not catch them all. Since I am the person who signed off on the final artwork, I must be responsible. You can see one of our errors in the chart on page 28. The label claim for Hearty Bird's vitamin A content reads 25,000 IU/1 oz. This correct value should read 255,000 IU/1 oz. Malcolm Green was not the person to point out our label difficulties. We began "fixing" the mistakes soon after the labels were delivered to our facility, long before Malcolm even knew of Morning Bird. Here is what we are now doing to fix our problem. To remedy our situation, we have decided to bring the label production process "in-house". We have recently purchased our own label making equipment and are now producing our own labels. This gives us far greater flexibility over whatever it is we decide to do with our labels. The Pestex label was the first label that was produced solely by Morning Bird employees. We are talking delivery on the "dies" which are used to actually cut the label material and very soon will be producing all of our labels ourselves. Please keep in mind that the great majority of our labels require no changes however errors in a few of them still exist. If anyone is interested in viewing the corrected labels, they all may be found on our website.

Intellectual Property
I know you are aware that a company's "secrets" are seen as intellectual property. Any unauthorized use of intellectual property could be actionable (litigation) by the offended company. In that regard, and with the greatest respect for Malcolm's intellectual property rights, every person receiving a copy of the chart found on page 25 has the columns marked DE1 and DE2 left blank with the exceptions of vitamins A, C, D, and E. The quantities of these four vitamins in DE1 and DE2 are printed on Malcolm's labels and are made public by his company. The other companies on the chart publish the content for each vitamin and mineral contained in their product. Because these companies choose to make their intellectual property public I have included them in the comparison. The charts Malcolm has received (only he has received these charts) have the actual vitamin and mineral content for every ingredient listed on the DE2 label. The DE1 values are 1/10th those of DE2, as he promotes. This analysis was derived using ABCO's state of the art testing equipment and other measurement techniques. One of DE2's mineral content quantities was derived utilizing mathematical extrapolation. The laboratory protocol used in analyzing DE2 was to grind the product into a fine dust, pass it through the gas spectrometer twice, and average the values. The powder was then passed through the mass spectrometer. We have analyzed DE2 twice now, once months ago when we were developing Hearty Bird and once again shortly after Malcolm wrote his first newsletter discrediting Hearty Bird. Utilizing the same protocols I have described we have also twice analyzed Malcolm's product Feather-UP. So it seems now that I know exactly what is in DE2 as well as Hearty Bird, and Malcolm knows that I know this, and Malcolm now knows that I have known this information for over a year.

Has Morning Bird Changed Its Formulas?
The answer to this question is - yes, we have, several times and continue to do so. We have made adjustments to our basic formulas over time to try to improve our products. We spend a considerable amount of time reevaluating our formulas and make changes to them from time to time in an effort to improve their performance. After Malcolm's first newsletter criticizing Hearty Bird we assembled our team once again to evaluate his words. Some adjustments were made then to address our concerns. I must tell you, Malcolm, that even through your negative attacks and perhaps sometimes even liable, you occasionally have a comment which we find merit in. We are a young company, just now emerging in our community. You have been in business for eleven years and when your negativity about us started, we had been in business for eleven weeks. We have made several adjustments to our formulas during our brief time we have made our products public and if we are lucky, there will be more to come.

Did Morning Bird Copy The Bird Care Company's Products?
I hope by now it is evident that an expert food technology team developed Hearty Bird and all of the other products we manufacture, not by copying any one product but rather by developing our formula against what many others had done before us. By the way, this is exactly the method used by The Bird Care Company in developing many of its products when they spun off from Vetafarm, Australia. We consulted with numerous consumers, breeders, and retailers looking to find specific needs. Malcolm is convinced we copied six of your products. Here is the list of products Malcolm publishes and says we have copied. I'll take them one at a time.


Daily Essentials
Calciboost
ProBoost Supermax
Feather-UP
Survive
Saniclens

DAILY ESSENTIALS 1 AND 2 VS HEARTY BIRD. I have written much about the creation of Hearty Bird. Hearty Bird was formulated to compete with several products. Refer to the enclosed charts.

 

PROBOOST SUPERMAX VS. BREEDERS BLEND. Malcolm needs to read both of these labels. These are completely different products. Our Breeders Blend contains a full spectrum of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and protein. He recommends to his consumers that they combine ProBoost SuperMax with Daily Essentials because there are not enough nutrients in ProBoost SuperMax. Breeders Blend is a derivative of Hearty Bird.

FEATHER-UP VS. FEATHER FAST. These products are similar to one another and are also similar to several other moulting products currently on the market. Feather Fast is a derivative of Hearty Bird.

SURVIVE VS. THRIVE. Both of these products are complete food sources except our Thrive contains a full compliment of amino acids and Survive does not. How many vitamin products do you think you could find currently being offered today that have similar formulas to these two products; 5, 10, maybe more. How many rearing foods are available today with a similar formula? Another 10 maybe? Did they all copy Malcolm? Thrive is a derivative of Hearty Bird.

SANICLENS VS. SPARKLE. Malcolm's assertion that we copied this product is almost comical. Chlorhexidine gluconate has been used for decades in the animal care business. Every time your dentist asks you to wash your mouth out, he gives you a chlorhexidine gluconate solution. Chlorhexidine gluconate is used worldwide by thousands of animal keepers, hospitals, doctors, veterinarians and countless other people and businesses every day for hundreds of purposes.

Which Is The Most Potent Product – Hearty Bird Or DE1 Or DE2?
First let me explain to everyone reading this document that Hearty Bird slightly exceeds, or is slightly less than Daily Essentials 2 in every single ingredient. That means there are slightly more or slightly less amounts of every ingredient in Hearty Bird, than in Daily Essentials 2. You can view the ingredients and quantities of these ingredients on the chart on page 25 of this letter. If Malcolm wishes to challenge this statement, then I challenge him to publish the quantities in his formula with a verifiable Certificate of Analysis next to Hearty Bird for all to see, or if he might like, I will publish it for him with a Certificate Of Analysis from the laboratory who performed the work.

NOW, Malcolm - won't all of your distributors, and mine, be terribly disappointed to learn that the answer to the question of which one of us has the most potent vitamin is - neither one. I think in a very cruel, vindictive, hurtful, and self-absorbed way you have been criticizing Hearty Bird comparing it to Daily Essentials 1 and "proving" that Hearty Bird is "rubbish" when all the while there are several products currently being marketed in the United States which have formulas far more potent than Daily Essentials 1. If you wish to challenge this statement simply refer to the chart on page 25 of this letter, or even better, go to the store and purchase your competitors products and read their labels. Hearty Bird was formulated to compete with Avian Plus, Vita Life and Daily Essentials 2, in that order. Hearty Bird and Daily Essentials 2 are both concentrated products. When the consumer follows the proper dosing instructions, both Hearty Bird and Daily Essentials 2 are eclipsed by other supplement products in many categories. Just refer to the charts. Daily Essentials 1 does even worse. So it seems now that the Daily Essential products are really not nearly as "great" as Malcolm has been telling everyone for years. JUST LOOK AT THE CHARTS. Morning Bird has formulated its products with full knowledge of this information. Nobody makes a bird supplement that has the greatest concentration of ingredients in every category. Nobody !!!

Is One Supplement Better Than The Others?
The answer to this question is - maybe. I'm not going to say that Hearty Bird is a better product for your bird than any other product on the market, nor is Daily Essentials, nor are any of the other products offered today. Hearty Bird is different than other products and as such has appeal to different, informed segments of the market. If someone were looking for the most potent supplement, Hearty Bird might be a wise choice and then would be "better" than all the others. The Daily Essentials products are fine products and I would not try to convince any user otherwise. People purchase products for very personal reasons. If someone wants to say that Hearty Bird is a superior product they will find me in agreement but someone else may have a reality that Daily Essentials 2 is a superior product, which in turn would be correct for them. The bottom line is that there is no "one" correct method of blending avian vitamin supplements. I know Malcolm tries very hard to convince people that only he knows how to make a bird vitamin but ask any of the dozens of avian supplement manufacturers who has the best product and none of them will agree with Malcolm.

Does Malcolm Green Have A Unique Understanding Of Bird Supplements?
I think Malcolm Green possess a vast body of knowledge and considerable expertise in the field of bird supplementation. Malcolm Green is also a very good salesman. He tries very hard to make people believe that only he is an expert in this field and that his products are the final word in bird nutrition especially when it comes to discrediting Morning Bird. He openly states this as fact. He vindictively criticizes Morning Bird claiming that I do not state my qualifications as a bird nutritionist. Let me assure you then, Malcolm, that I am a very smart fellow and do what I do very well. Morning Bird vitamin containing supplements and The Bird Care Company vitamin containing supplements have some similarities. I know Malcolm uses "rapidsorb" minerals and magic immune supporting herbs in some of his products but he and I both know the marketing value of these items. Isn't it odd that not one bird supplement company whose product we tested or used for comparison included not one herb in their product, but all of them did manage to use chelated, "rapidsorb" minerals. I'm not trying to be negative about herbal preparations as I take a variety of herbs each morning myself. All I'm trying to say is that each of us as manufacturers needs to find marketing strategies that set our products apart from the rest of the pack in the eyes of the consumers. Malcolm tries very, very hard to do this. The truth is there are many approaches to effective and safe bird supplementation. To prove this point, go into any drug store and see how many multi-vitamins are offered for human consumption. How many would you find – 10, maybe more? And the curious thing is that for human beings the minimum daily requirement for each ingredient in all of them has been scientifically validated years ago. Yet there are many different formulas offered and each one of them professes to "be the best". I do not doubt Malcolm's expertise in this field, but please do not underestimate mine. If Morning Bird vitamin supplements are so evil, and so dangerous, then so go BCC products because Hearty Bird and DE2 are very close in formulation. If Hearty Bird will kill birds, then so will Daily Essentials 2. The charts are there to prove this point and Malcolm knows I am right. There are a wide variety of approaches to bird supplementation as I have demonstrated with the charts I have sent Malcolm. And what of all these other manufacturers, Malcolm? Are they just as dangerous as Morning Bird or are they all just rubbish? Here is some more data for your next newsletter. When we recently reanalyzed Daily Essentials 2 the label claim for vitamin A was 8,000,000 IU/kg yet the testing yielded only 5,513,000 IU/kg. And when we reanalyzed Feather-Up the label claim for Vitamin A was 266,666 IU/kg yet the testing yielded 594,000 IU/kg. The testing is accurate and scientifically verifiable and I have posted the results on page 28. According to Malcolm's own argument if the consumer was using this container of DE2 he would be grossly under dosing his birds by a factor of almost one half. And knowing that Vitamin A is fat-soluble vitamin, according to Malcolm it also would be true that if this same consumer were using this container of Feather-Up he most certainly would be slowing poisoning his birds to death. This is his argument and the numbers do not lie. Malcolm reports similar findings with our products and I will not contest his findings. So how does one go about explaining all of this? Here's how. He and I both understand the technologies used to blend supplements. For other readers, consider the difficulty all supplement blenders face when trying to evenly disperse a very small amount of one ingredient into a very large amount of product. For example, Hearty Bird claims to contain 4.9 mg. of copper gluconate in every pound of product. This is a very tiny amount of copper gluconate that we need to evenly disperse into a very large amount of product. I do not need to go into the technologies of how this is done but I can tell you that it is very difficult to do and often results in disparities that both Malcolm and I report with each other's products. I accept these disparities as typical as EVERY OTHER SUPPLENMENT MANUFACTURER DOES. And what does this analysis suggest to us about Malcolm's quality control procedures. The results are certified and verifiable. I point to this matter only to suggest the absurdity of Malcolm's argument. Truthfully, there are very wide safety margins in regards to vitamin toxicity. Malcolm reports variances in the quantity levels of Morning Birds products and I would not doubt that there are indeed minor variances. But to raise the volume of a fat-soluble vitamin to toxic levels, like Malcolm suggests Morning Bird products will do, would require massive amounts of that vitamin, far in excess of the recommended dosage over a very long period of time to actually cause a decline in the bird. Malcolm knows this, and if he does not – he should.

Why Does Daily Essentials Turn Water Yellow And Morning Bird Does Not?
Malcolm and I both know this is "creative marketing". You can no more tell the concentration of ingredients in a product by what color it displays in water than you can determine what's in a can of paint by looking at its color. What makes Daily Essentials turn water yellow is Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin). He and I both know this. After his first newsletter criticizing Hearty Bird our team elected to increase the levels of B2 in Hearty Bird so it too, would turn water yellow. This decision was not made lightly but so many people asked why Hearty Bird would not make water yellow, as a matter of expediency we thought it best to increase the level of B2 in Hearty Bird so it too, would turn water yellow. At the same time we also increased other vitamins in the Hearty Bird ingredient formula. This was our latest adjustment and was a direct result of Malcolm's newsletter. Thank you, Malcolm. I think Hearty Bird is a better product now because of your "yellow" criticism. But much more importantly, the "yellow water" issue illuminates very important and very different managing styles practiced by William Niven and Malcolm Green.

How Do William Niven And Malcolm Green Differ In Management Styles?
The following paragraph is one of the most important paragraphs in this entire letter. It demonstrates the vast differences you, as a consumer or retailer of these products, will experience in your decision of which company you might want to embrace. I am aware that for years Malcolm's retailers have been asking him to either increase the suggested retail price of his products or lower their cost to them so that they might be able to make a living selling BCC products or even wholesale them to others. Malcolm has repeatedly refused to do so. Malcolm's stated position is that the profits his company and, as incredible as it may sound, his retirement fund are both more important than the needs of his retailers. He openly states this as fact. Malcolm sees his needs as being far more important than those of his retailers. And if you carefully read his newsletters discrediting Morning Bird he always comes back to the central theme – money. He desperately needs you to "resist" the huge profits offered by Morning Bird and stay a "loyal" distributor. What he is telling you is that his need for money and his fear of losing some of it to Morning Bird are what fuels this entire mess. He always comes back to this issue in his negativity of Morning Bird. IT'S ABOUT THE MONEY. Malcolm's "in your face" defiant, manipulating and threatening demeanor are how he defines how he will conduct business with you. He has demonstrated that he will try to punish and hurt you if he thinks it is in his best interest to do so and in recent weeks he has actively tried to punish and damage his "disloyal" retailers because they dared to do something he would not allow them to do. It's going to be about Malcolm and on Malcolm's terms – your needs will be secondary.

On the other hand, I am very sensitive to the interests and needs of our distributors. If our distributors asked me to make Hearty Bird turn water purple, I would consider that. I am resolved that the strength of Morning Bird will be a result of the strengths of its distributors and wholesalers. I truly listen to our distributors when they speak. I am committed to the belief that I get what I need as result of our distributors getting what they need. There can only be a system of reciprocity between myself and those who embrace Morning Bird if we are to build lasting, sustainable, and profitable relationships.

Did Morning Bird Target BCC Resellers And Try To Switch Them With Greater Profits?
This has been Malcolm's greatest criticism of Morning Bird to date. Much of his writings have been directed towards how unfair it is that we market to his resellers and entice them with the promise of greater profits. Malcolm is very, very misinformed as to his understanding of our marketing strategy. Let me attempt to get the facts straight for him. Morning Bird was developed with a marketing strategy of placing our products in retail stores. When we introduced our products to the public last May we had enlisted four distributors to sell our products. One of them was my sister who is a parrot breeder. Another was a distributor who sells only wholesale to pet stores via catalog. The other two were internet sellers, both of which sold BCC products, both of which were interested primarily in the pharmaceutical line of Morning Bird, and both of which I had asked to assist me with labeling and marketing issues. One of these two resellers I had a personal relationship with and it was this person who referred me to your other reseller for me to ask advise about marketing issues. Morning Bird products were designed to be sold in stores, which is why our labels have UPC codes and item numbers on them. Our labels were designed by a graphics art firm to specifically be noticeable to consumers on a shelf in a retail store setting. He has completely misread our strategy. Morning Bird was introduced to 800 retail stores via catalog on day one. We purposely limited our marketing to these four companies as we were not sure we would be able to produce enough product if 800 pet stores all started ordering simultaneously. My sister had access to the products because she is family and his two resellers asked primarily for the pharmaceutical products in our line because of the issues surrounding the importation and legality of Vetafarm products. This is what happened next. As soon as his two resellers began mentioning Morning Bird on their websites, we were besieged with phone calls from his distributors wanting to sell Morning Bird products on their websites. During those first weeks I did not make one sales call to anyone regarding Morning Bird but we continued to receive phone calls from his distributors. In the first six weeks of our existence we sold over 5000 bottles and jars of Morning Bird products primarily to his distributors without us making a single sales call. Landers and I spent our days bottling as fast as we could. So much for me targeting his distributors. You missed this one by a mile, Malcolm and I often smile thinking about what you might say if you knew which of your distributors called wanting to sell Morning Bird products. Since that time I have made contact with many, many potential distributors, some of which sell his products, many of which do not. I think I have talked with perhaps half of his distributors to date. I still remain interested in testing Morning Bird products in retail stores, which is how the program was originally designed to be sold. Many pet stores now carry our products but there is not enough data yet to make an informed decision regarding long term marketing strategy. Landers and I speak of this issue often. We do know this however, Morning Bird sells very, very well at bird shows and for some of our Internet resellers, the products also sell very, very well. As you know we offer a two tier sales program enlisting both distributors and wholesalers. This program has been problematical for some of our representatives because of the two different price lists we maintain but a decision to either enlist more of either cannot be made until we collate more data on our retail store sales program. So it appears that Malcolm is completely misinformed and completely wrong when he talks so negatively about how we market our products and target his resellers.

Pestex Is A Morning Bird Money Grab
Pestex is a good product, our pricing strategy isn't. Pestex was developed to replace Avian Insect Liquidator as that product slowly evaporates from the market. A.I.L. cannot be legally sold in the United States. All pesticides are required to be registered with the United States Environmental Protection Agency and A.I.L. is not a registered product. I know of at least one occasion where a United States Customs Officer knocked on the front door of a retailer of A.I.L. and issued a cease and desist order against A.I.L. Our thoughts were to offer Pestex as a replacement for the illegal A.I.L. and it was priced accordingly. Pestex was never designed to be sold in stores where Scalex and 8 in 1 Lice and Mite strays are sometimes sold. Some of our distributors sell Scalex and 8 in 1 and it would be rather foolish of me to try and sell my own distributors a product that they already sell at a much lesser price than I could offer Pestex for. The public, however, soon began equating the pricing of Pestex, not with A.I.L. but rather with Scalex and 8 in 1. After much discussion, we elected to lower the retail price of Pestex to compete with the retail price of Scalex and 8 in 1. In doing so, my participation with Pestex is perhaps more of a community service, but I feel that the product is necessary and complements the remainder of the Morning Bird line. Don't pat yourself on the back, Malcolm, these changes had nothing to do with you but much more to do with my sensitivity to my distributors and the market.

Pestex is registered with the United States Environmental Agency and Morning Bird is a registered EPA company. We are currently involved with registering Morning Bird with the California State EPA. Our EPA registration numbers are clearly printed on the front panel of the Pestex label. To my knowledge, there are only four, perhaps five, insecticide products that can be applied directly to a bird and they are Pestex, Scales, 8 in 1, and A.I.L. Of all these products, Pestex, Scalex and 8 in 1 are essentially the same formulation while A.I.L. is the only one that is illegal to import or sell within the Unites States.

Malcolm accuses Morning Bird of charging excessive profits. Lets consider the following. Morning Bird and The Bird Care Company are both in the same business and it follows that we both have a fairly good idea what it costs each of us to manufacture our products. Hearty Bird and Daily Essentials 2 are VERY close to one another in formulation yet I suggest a retail price for Hearty Bird of $28.80 per pound. Malcolm sells Daily Essentials 2, virtually the same product as Hearty Bird, for $92.16 per pound. Given that it costs us about the same amount of money to make the products – who's the money grabber here. Malcolm has marked up the cost of DE2 to more than three times what Morning Bird sells it for. Would you like similar examples of other products he sells? The vast amount of money that goes into a suggested retail price for a Morning Bird product goes to the distributors and retailers of that product. The vast amount of money that goes into Malcolm's suggested retail prices goes into HIS pockets. This example is a clear demonstration of where our loyalties lie and also what Malcolm fears the most.

Malcolm Can Continue His War Or He Can Choose Not To
I did not ask for this confrontation. Malcolm Green created it. The decision to continue your struggle with Morning Bird is entirely yours. I for one would opt for peace and cooperation. There are always peaceful solutions to problems. However, if war is what you choose, you will find me a formidable opponent. Perhaps there is another way. Could you and I sit down and have dinner together? We certainly could at least talk to one another. We have a lot in common. Perhaps we might even enjoy one another's company. So Malcolm, I am willing to offer my trust, my friendship and my wisdom to try and find solutions to the issues before us. I am much more willing to talk about the future than the past. I will leave this opportunity to you. It will be your choice. If you would care to speak with me directly you will find my contact information in my website at www.morningbirdproducts.com.

Regards – William Niven


View the ABCO Laboratory Brochure


View the full Product Comparison Chart


View the full Nutritional Requirements Of A Canary And Small Parrot Chart


 

Morning Bird Analysis                             September 22, 2005
Vitamin and Mineral Product
  Hearty Bird Daily Essentials 2
Test Label Claim Analysis Comment Label Claim Analysis Comment
Vitamin C 2,800mg/1 oz
(99mg/g) 		3,062mg/1 oz
(108mg/g) 		Clear liquid 50,000mg/kg
(50mg/g) 		56,320mg/g) Bright yellow liquid
Vitamin A
Acetate 		25,000 IU/1 oz
(882 IU/g) 		235,042 IU/1 oz
(8,291 IU/g) 		  8,000,000 IU/kg
(8000 IU/g) 		5,513,000 IU/kg
(5513 IU/g) 		 
Molting Bird Product
  Feather Fast Feather UP
Test Label Claim Analysis Comment Label Claim Analysis Comment
Vitamin C 2,800mg/1 oz
(99mg/g) 		3,025mg/1 oz
(106mg/g) 		Clear liquid 1,600mg/kg
(1.6mg/g) 		2636mg/kg
(2.6mg/g) 		Yellow liquid with solids
Vitamin A
Acetate 		25,000 IU/1 oz
(882 IU/g) 		67,499 IU/oz
(2,380 IU/g) 		  266,666 IU/kg
(267 IU/g) 		594,000 IU/kg
(594 IU/g) 		 
MJR,MSW

View the Certificate Of Analysis for Hearty Bird


View the Certificate Of Analysis for Feather Fast


View the Certificate Of Analysis for Breeders Blend


View the Certificate Of Analysis for Thrive

Article © Morning Bird 2005

 

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