George asked me to forward this message to the list...here it is-
Manuel never paid me anything because he didn't owe me. We posted bond for his release to the tune of $200,000 but Manuel paid his fine and the courts have dropped it for now. The gov't has a lien filed in the wrong county but they haven't seen fit to do anything.
Very interesting
http://www.heritage.org/Research/LegalIssues/lm0044.cfm
The story quoted is a bit different
Neither Norris nor his wife knows how they will face retirement with all of their savings used to pay legal expenses. Arias's bond hangs over their heads as well, and the government has said that it will seek to enforce it. That threat keeps Kathy up at nights. She doesn't know what else they could give up, other than the house, or how they could possibly come up with the $175,000 still owed.
This is a quote from the Heritage foundation, paper published the 27th of July 2009... So they should not dramatize the things excessively then...
Manuel has not become a millionaire with the Kovachii. Many of his flasks arrived broken in Europe for a show and he hardly made expenses. His sales have slowed and while he lives well, his nursery business is suffering. He is selling more cut flowers in Lima than plants internationall
It is not exactly the correct story. Manuel Arias claimed suddenly that the flasks arrived broken, I will explain why. So far only a few flasks were broken, to save the remaining of the flasks that effectively entered...
When he arrived to the Charles de Gaulle Airport, in France, the flasks were on the way to Dijon exhibition. Once he arrived to the exhibition, he learned that the tax to pay, import tax, was ca 18% of the value, which was enormous. After a first trial to explain that the flasks were 10.40US- and not 1040, rejected by the customs who eventually got before a pricelist, he declared "most" of the flasks as broken. Despite this, he filled up ALL the preorders he had to deliver, and had some extra flasks to sell even. The best proof was his website where all the buyers were listed, including all the EU ones... And at 1040us/flask, he surely made more than the "expenses"
Let's do some maths...
* A TC Lab in Peru would cost, let's say to be generous, 80.000USD to get something state of the art. In Malaysia, there are labs that have been built from scratch, 10 laminar flow hoods, air cond rooms, etc... for 35.000USD. Been there, done that..
* The workers, let's say they are very greedy, and want 10US/flask they replate - most likely 10US/ 2 days of work, which means about 50 flasks if the worker is OK... - but keep the figures high.
* The media, let's say 5 US/flask, which is completely astronomical - I run my lab with the best possible formulations, EU chemicals Rectapur, Normapur... and I am around the 1US/flask...
The kovachii - free as they were collected with the permit
Make the calculations for even 500 commercial flasks- far less than the 1800 kovachii pure commercial flasks produced.
500 x 1000 = 500.000 USD... Income
Let's see the "costs", that would be realistic figures in Japan only, and even so...
Cost of the state of the art lab - sure not like the one in Peru, as I happen to set up labs and know the correct prices with top quality equipments = 80.000 USD
Greedy workers who wants 10 US/flask, the total replate 500 flasks x 10US = 5000 USD
Gold-containing tissue culture media 500 flasks x 5US = 2500USD
Profit = 500.000 USD income - 87500USD all costs including lab building and equipment, add some margins = 400.500 USD
Hardly made expenses ?
Well, give me that 400.000 USD for my expenses, and we'll discuss later. Sometimes people should think with their brain a little bit before telling nonsense. Arias family became millionnaires with that kovachii story, period.
No need to be shy or hide, it was extremely good marketing, with those bullshit stories of "forbidden to resell the seedlings coming from our flasks for 2 years", the CITES, the scares, the seed supplies, the stories of extinction - there are still kovachii in the wild, do not worry, and plenty. Only there is no market amongst professionnal, far too dangerous, and the price is too high...
Latest offer for kovachii came in a few months ago, they tried to contact one nursery in Taiwan again to offer 1000 fresh jungle plants, shipped through a neighbor country, at USD30/plant... So it is not "rare" if they make such an offer. But no one would touch it because the kovachii is the subprime of the orchid world... Put a lot of money on the table, loose everything in a blink.
kovachii has been the most profitable orchid species ever.
That's an estimate only for 500 flasks, far from the 900 flasks from the CITES database, and very far from the 1800 produced flasks... I will get the phyto database, to return the quantities exactly exported and type of flasks.
What I think about that kovachii story ? It is the worst scam ever made in the orchid world, period. From a plant that has very showy flowers, but is not really rare in the wild, a complete scheme has been made, lives ruined...
A false reputation of rarity allowed a few chosen ones to make massive amounts of money, far beyond anything predictible.
The future of kovachii ? Like my Japanese friend who bought the 300+ flasks, most of the buyers of those flasks should hurry up like crazy to sell their plants, because kovachii will be worth nothing very soon, maximum 2 years.
Already in Germany, people start to sell kovachii blooming size for 60-80e, and when the Taiwanese will have to get rid of their thousands of seed-grown plants, there will be no market for kovachii for a while.
