Howard Robinson - An Extraordinary Man & LFS Owner

I posted a list of questions to a man who decided to open a LFS at a time when all others in the area were closing down. Blaming rising energy bills, and a lack of customers in our region of North East England, many questioned why Howard Robinson would take such a risk. On receiving his answers, it’s clear to see that for him, this is nothing short of normal and I’m thrilled to say that the store has most definitely bucked the trend. I hope you enjoy reading just a snippet of what this extraordinary man has managed to achieve in his lifetime, which has made me question my own contributions to the world. 

To answer the question of why I became an LFS store owner, it’s hard to say, it could so easily have been for birds or even dart frogs as my hobbies do often get out of hand so maybe it would be better to give a little background to myself, my way of thinking, and how I almost accidentally ended up at this point.

I have always been driven in everything I do, and if I retired today, there still wouldn’t be enough hours in the day. I have spent my career as a designer/illustrator, mainly with wildlife subjects and designing products, many for the likes of zoos and aquariums. I kept birds from an early age and as I normally do, I take things seriously and I had much success with rare and first breedings that resulted in me publishing a bird magazine for some 15 years. This culminated in several around-the-world trips, and I was twice the keynote speaker at the triennial International Finch Convention in Brisbane, Australia. A hobby, yeah.

As my career quickly grew, I found myself traveling more and more for exhibitions, and with my newfound friends in Australia, we would take month-long safaris, driving around many African countries looking for rare birds. As exciting as all this was, it meant I had to give up my birds at home, as time did not allow. To fill the void, I ended up keeping and breeding many dart frogs as their vivariums could be automated for when I was away. I was single at the time and so, with no one to say “no”, I ended up designing and building my own vivariums, culminating in a 12ft vivarium in my studio and then another 14ft vivarium complete with ponds and waterfalls in which I bred many frog species and dwarf chameleons. I had obviously spent too much time in zoos.

In late 2017 things changed when I discovered I had cancer which had spread everywhere and was told with debilitating treatments, I had 6 months to a year at best. My first reaction was “Where do I have time for this” and I set about finding a solution myself, by finding out what cancer likes and does not like and decided to just tackle the problem myself. As my vivariums had been built into the fabric of the house I could not leave them for someone else to take care of, so they and the frog collection quickly went. As it worked out, my own crazy treatment seems to be working very well and it’s now over 7 years later and so there was really no need to have parted with the frogs.

As my health improved, I figured I would have to make the most of the time I had and things went into overdrive. I was married in a Castle, created the ‘Selfies’ range of designs, the back wall in the store features one design, became the most licensed artist in the world, had exhibitions in New York, Las Vegas, Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, designed and built a hotel and the Selfie beach resort in the Philippines. I formed the Selfies basketball team there and won the championship three times in a row, I spent time with the Zulu’s, walked across the Masai Mara in Kenya with the Masai, climbed the mountains of the Impenetrable Forest in Uganda and sat with the gorillas. I adopted 2 orphan children and got them home and schooling and so many other things it becomes a blur. Do not let a cancer diagnosis be the end of your dreams, just make every moment count.

A serious operation to remove old damaged bone from my spine stopped my traveling and I found myself housebound and on my knees for some time. That got me back into aquariums, firstly with a small shrimp setup which grew to 2, and then into 9 fully aquascaped freshwater tanks and then I could not resist the challenge of breeding some of the rarer tetras, again, no one to stop me. After seeing some Evansi Anthias, I finally took the plunge and got a 2ft marine aquarium. I set that up quickly, similar to how I would set up a freshwater tank where you add as many live plants as you can to take up the nutrients from the fresh soil. I figured if I added many corals from the start as they all have a little live rock attached, it would cycle quickly, it worked so well that I could not believe that marines were less work than my freshwater aquascaped tanks, and so they all went and a new 5ft marine soon appeared.

As you can see, I so easily get bored and I needed a creative outlet for my newfound time. 2022 was a very tough year for the hobby with the economy struggling and utility bills at an all-time high, there was a mass of secondhand aquariums and equipment for sale with people leaving the hobby and it seemed to be a self-serving prophecy with many of the local stores being so pessimistic, complaining about the spiraling costs. All that I could hear was it was the end of the marine hobby in the North East (of England). A total of nine of my local stores have now gone, or at least removed their marine section, and I was finding myself traveling for 2-3 hours to be able to source the things I wanted. 

Now that I was spending more and more time at home, I would have loved to expand my hobby there, but I have a small home and so I had looked into helping out at a local store when I could and designing and taking care of the displays as if they were my own collection, but nothing came of it. If I had been younger I maybe would have looked into setting up something in the Philippines, but as chance would have it in my search for a solution, this building became available and a decision was made the very same day. My initial plan was that I could have a lounge which I could fill with display tanks as my playground to experiment and maybe set up a coral propagation section to help cover some of the running costs.

Within a day it had turned into a store, The Reef Experience and I had drawn the plans for the layout and knew immediately the design and feel I was wanting to achieve, very different to what you would expect in a Marine store. I knew I could not be just be another LFS, but had to make it a destination, so people would travel for something new and exciting. I am no expert on marines, but I could bring something new, some design flair to both the scaping of the tanks and in the presentation. I wanted it to be a place of relaxation and have the feel of a welcome home for the hobby and not just a store. After all the doom and gloom of the past few years, I wanted it to be inspiring, new ideas, new ways of doing things and bringing back the enthusiasm which had been lost, like a water change for the hobby where everything can be clear and exciting again. I built the design around a lounge area with comfy seating and a coffee table where you can sit, have a coffee or a meeting, and enjoy the display tanks. It seems that about 90% of reefers are male but of these, most will need permission from their wives and partners to have such a tank their homes. Hence the aquariums are displayed as if they were in the home environment, with floral wallpapers, and pictures of corals on the walls that look almost like florals, all in black modern frames to match the tank lights commonly used today so that the aquariums fit seamlessly into the scene. Most of the reef aquariums I had come across had been let down by the initial rockwork, basically a pile of rocks, so I have set about creating various styles in the displays to show how the structure of the rockwork can change the entire feel of the aquarium. As it is still really just my hobby I love to research and find new and different species to bring into the store so we have something different every week. My main problem is getting used to parting with things.

It was not the most obvious time to open a store, so I expected the first year to be quite a challenge although in reality, we hit the ground running and had a very good first year. We are now four months into the second year and we are seeing an increase of 142% in turnover and new faces entering the store almost on a daily basis with many traveling for several hours. The best thing is that people come in now with positive stories and the atmosphere is positive and good, we have folk who stay for hours and chat amongst each other, we have local, very experienced reefers who are in all the time helping others, it really has made it a friendly club like experience. Finding the right staff is one of the biggest challenges and I’m so pleased to have been able to find and train the right people who are on board with what I am trying to achieve. We have organized two events to date which were a great success, the most recent one in conjunction with 3 other stores. It is important for us all to work together to keep this great hobby alive, I don’t want to be an island in the middle of an ocean, the more people who see and discover this amazing underwater world, the little of which we can keep and study in our homes the more we learn as a whole.

We have already expanded the fish room this year with a new coral table dedicated to anemones and a separate bank of aquariums where we house the more unusual species such as Prickly Octopus, Feather Starfish, Flamboyant Cuttlefish, and Garden Eels, which I’m pleased to say have all done so well with the special care they require. The coming months will see 3 more display tanks being installed including a 10ft main display, this will be a fish-only display and be very different, taking me out of my comfort zone in full public gaze. I could crash and burn with this one, although I have been experimenting all year with a smaller fish-only display in the store which has largely gone under the radar, and have been working on making some of my own false corals. I shall be heading to Florida in a couple of weeks to attend Reefapalooza and then on my return, the 10ft display will be a nice project for the summer.