An industry that is in decline
- Thread starter WVMike
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Ok, so I just reread my post, and I cant find where I was name calling and attacking people...
Unless you dont like to be called KING?????
Hmmm??????
I am all for discussing ideas, just NOT with you. Im not going to be drawn into one of your little wars...
Unless you dont like to be called KING?????
Hmmm??????
I am all for discussing ideas, just NOT with you. Im not going to be drawn into one of your little wars...
You did, and insinuated that people (myself, even perhaps) was smoking crack.
You can tell that a nerve has been struck when someone responds in this kind of fashion to a detailed presentation of what they perceive a particular issue to be.
Debating the point on the table would be much more difficult.... and more fruitful.
Unfortunately, it appears that you won't entertain that discussion, but you will attempt to disrupt any debate that might otherwise take place on the merits of my observations.
nt...
Arnaud
Contributor
Mike, thanks. That's too much 
Karl, I agree with most of what you wrote and I know at least one LDS who's not playing the DEMA game, as you call it. They seem to be doing pretty well by what I can gauge.
However, I disagree that what you're describing is the essence of the problem right now. Yes, it's certainly playing a part, but the bottom line is that you have less students enrolling for BOW cert. these days. And most "divers" don't buy gear every week (not you, not me)
I don't have any figures, but every LDS seems to concur.
Karl, I agree with most of what you wrote and I know at least one LDS who's not playing the DEMA game, as you call it. They seem to be doing pretty well by what I can gauge.
However, I disagree that what you're describing is the essence of the problem right now. Yes, it's certainly playing a part, but the bottom line is that you have less students enrolling for BOW cert. these days. And most "divers" don't buy gear every week (not you, not me
)I don't have any figures, but every LDS seems to concur.
JohnF
Guest
Perhaps he took exception to your insinuation that dive shop operators are collectively exploiting and otherwise abusing the poor innocent consumer.
I think bludgeoned might be the better choice of words than struck. Methinks I'd wonder about any dive shop owner who didn't respond heatedly to your persistent carping against LDS's and manufacturers. Why would it surprise you that he takes exception to your attacks on his livelihood? I expect you struck a whole bunch of nerves. Your method is like using a shotgun to kill an ant.
It's fruitless to debate with a zealot.
Think of it this way. You, from a position of invulnerability because you have nothing on the line, appear to be collectively attacking all dive shops and equipment manufacturers. It's his livelihood you're playing with in this campaign of yours. You don't seem to care how much damage you do to individual businessmen regardless of how fairly they treat their customers. According to you only LP is fair to consumers. Is it any wonder he's a tad miffed? To you it's like a game. To him it's a living.
Unquestionably somewhere in your proposed revolution there's a kernel of right and logic. The arguments are tempting and can be used effectively to sway the masses. Unfortunately whenever charismatic leaders have managed to sway those masses, the system ultimately breaks down, proves it's lack of long term viability, as happened recently in the Soviet Union. Perhaps it's the character of the people involved, or perhaps it's the lack of initiative promotes in the so-called beneficiaries of the system. It appeals to those who want something for nothing. The problem with the concept is that eventually there's no incentive for anyone to produce goods and provide services and the shelves are bare. Then the price and profit margins are irrelevent. You've won. It's called a Pyrrhic victory.
I'm not suggesting there isn't a scintilla of evidence to support your contentions in some specific cases. I'm only saying that you demean whatever credibility your crusade has with sweeping assumptions and blanket accusations. You go at it like a vendetta. It's hard for some rational people to get behind irrational anger, and it's even harder for those whose livelihood gets soiled by the fallout.
YMMV
JohnF
that circumventing laws that are intended to prevent a particular behavior (in this case, vertical price restraints) is not a good practice "attacking someone's livelihood"?
You don't need to do that to make money in a business, you know. Tens of thousands of businesspeople don't undertake such practices, and yet they do just fine.
The usual argument against LP is that they're a "low cost" operator. That, of course, ignores reality - conveniently so. New York real estate, and its business climate and expense, is arguably the highest in the United States. I know - I've done business there. Its punitively expensive to be in NY.
It really is rather simple, at the end of the day. You have an industry that has gone from a cottage business, where there were no choices for the consumer, to one where consumers are becoming educated, the Internet is empowering them to talk to one another (and to buy from other sources!), and this change is not a genie that can be put back in the bottle.
The dive shop that operates on a puppy-mill mentality, and those who do it know who they are, have a serious problem. Blaming all this on a cyclical economic downturn is nonsense. Oh sure, the economy has gone through one of its normal cycles. The key word here is normal. The economy does that. If you, as a businessperson, do not have a way to make things work out for you during the normal economic cycles, you won't be eating for very long off your endeavors.
The historic reaction in this industry, as can be seen by the increasing "enforcement" activity over the last year or so by the manufacturers, has been to close ranks and try to squeeze their dealers when times get tough, in an attempt to insure that the pain is felt "equally" and nobody profits at anyone else's expense.
The problem is that this strategy is only effective if you can plug all the leaks, and for obvious reasons that can't be done.
Then add into this at least one EU investigation into dealer relations practices that I'm aware of - and by the way, the EU takes a VERY dim view of pricing restraints - and you've got trouble. Perhaps really big trouble.
The bottom line is that LP, DiveInn and Simply Scuba are not going to go away.
The dive industry TRIED to get rid of a "direct" marketer or SNORKELS once upon a time. Through a dealer association called "SRA", they attempted to organize a blackball campaign of the manufacturer. The FTC got involved and sued the SRA, and the organization ended up withering on the vine; the result was ultimately a default judgment against them.
Rather than learn, the manufacturers and retailers decided instead to get cute, and find loopholes in the law. Nobody denies they exist - they do. But exactly how big they are, and exactly how successful sticking your neck through a loophole is and will be, is never knowable in advance.
What is knowable is that from my point of view and in my opinion such an action is ethically bankrupt. Of course that's just my opinion - yours may differ.
This same kind of screaming and reaction to mail order sales (there was no Internet then) took place 20 years ago in the photography industry. I was there. I was shooting semi-pro at the time, buying both hardware and expendables (paper, chemicals, etc) in large volume. I had a camera shop refuse to honor a warranty on a mail-ordered item. That was very intelligent of them - it cost them over $3,000 worth of paper and chemical sales over the next six months from me alone. Oh, they made the same argument that the LDSs make now - "where 'ya gonna get your paper and chemicals if you don't support us?" I'll tell 'ya where - mail order. Yeah, the quantities to make the shipping worth it were a lot larger, so I pooled with a couple of other shutterbugs and we bought in larger lots. So what?
Two years later, they were gone; closed up. Why? Lack of business. Simple. The same story was repeated all over the country. Go ahead and try to find the little local camera shop with a full-line of cameras from "point and shooters" to high-end SLRs (now both in digital and film.) In the main, you can't. Nearly all of them are gone.
How many other people did they drive away? I don't know. What I DO know is that they drove me away on hardware sales with fixed-price, full-list practices, and they lost my expendable business (which up until that point they had nearly exclusively) over their hard-nosed attempt to "stick it" to me for being disloyal on my hardware buys, and they threatened me with claims that I could not possibly get what I needed to keep shooting pictures without them - just like the LDSs make the argument today about fills.
In short, they acted exactly like most dive shops act now, and they did it with the same collusion and wink and nod from the camera makers that the scuba manufacturers supply today.
The LDS operators would do well to learn from the past, lest they end up like the local camera store. All closed up. Now, hardware is primarily sold online; a few specialty retailers remain, but not many. Few people buy their "real" cameras from the full-price retailers. Most buy from 17th Street or similar. The local store cut off his own nose and bled to death right in front of me.
There ARE solutions that keep the LDS in business.
But they all involve having the LDS attitude changing from one of believing that divers need THEM to understanding that they need DIVERS.
You don't need to do that to make money in a business, you know. Tens of thousands of businesspeople don't undertake such practices, and yet they do just fine.
The usual argument against LP is that they're a "low cost" operator. That, of course, ignores reality - conveniently so. New York real estate, and its business climate and expense, is arguably the highest in the United States. I know - I've done business there. Its punitively expensive to be in NY.
It really is rather simple, at the end of the day. You have an industry that has gone from a cottage business, where there were no choices for the consumer, to one where consumers are becoming educated, the Internet is empowering them to talk to one another (and to buy from other sources!), and this change is not a genie that can be put back in the bottle.
The dive shop that operates on a puppy-mill mentality, and those who do it know who they are, have a serious problem. Blaming all this on a cyclical economic downturn is nonsense. Oh sure, the economy has gone through one of its normal cycles. The key word here is normal. The economy does that. If you, as a businessperson, do not have a way to make things work out for you during the normal economic cycles, you won't be eating for very long off your endeavors.
The historic reaction in this industry, as can be seen by the increasing "enforcement" activity over the last year or so by the manufacturers, has been to close ranks and try to squeeze their dealers when times get tough, in an attempt to insure that the pain is felt "equally" and nobody profits at anyone else's expense.
The problem is that this strategy is only effective if you can plug all the leaks, and for obvious reasons that can't be done.
Then add into this at least one EU investigation into dealer relations practices that I'm aware of - and by the way, the EU takes a VERY dim view of pricing restraints - and you've got trouble. Perhaps really big trouble.
The bottom line is that LP, DiveInn and Simply Scuba are not going to go away.
The dive industry TRIED to get rid of a "direct" marketer or SNORKELS once upon a time. Through a dealer association called "SRA", they attempted to organize a blackball campaign of the manufacturer. The FTC got involved and sued the SRA, and the organization ended up withering on the vine; the result was ultimately a default judgment against them.
Rather than learn, the manufacturers and retailers decided instead to get cute, and find loopholes in the law. Nobody denies they exist - they do. But exactly how big they are, and exactly how successful sticking your neck through a loophole is and will be, is never knowable in advance.
What is knowable is that from my point of view and in my opinion such an action is ethically bankrupt. Of course that's just my opinion - yours may differ.
This same kind of screaming and reaction to mail order sales (there was no Internet then) took place 20 years ago in the photography industry. I was there. I was shooting semi-pro at the time, buying both hardware and expendables (paper, chemicals, etc) in large volume. I had a camera shop refuse to honor a warranty on a mail-ordered item. That was very intelligent of them - it cost them over $3,000 worth of paper and chemical sales over the next six months from me alone. Oh, they made the same argument that the LDSs make now - "where 'ya gonna get your paper and chemicals if you don't support us?" I'll tell 'ya where - mail order. Yeah, the quantities to make the shipping worth it were a lot larger, so I pooled with a couple of other shutterbugs and we bought in larger lots. So what?
Two years later, they were gone; closed up. Why? Lack of business. Simple. The same story was repeated all over the country. Go ahead and try to find the little local camera shop with a full-line of cameras from "point and shooters" to high-end SLRs (now both in digital and film.) In the main, you can't. Nearly all of them are gone.
How many other people did they drive away? I don't know. What I DO know is that they drove me away on hardware sales with fixed-price, full-list practices, and they lost my expendable business (which up until that point they had nearly exclusively) over their hard-nosed attempt to "stick it" to me for being disloyal on my hardware buys, and they threatened me with claims that I could not possibly get what I needed to keep shooting pictures without them - just like the LDSs make the argument today about fills.
In short, they acted exactly like most dive shops act now, and they did it with the same collusion and wink and nod from the camera makers that the scuba manufacturers supply today.
The LDS operators would do well to learn from the past, lest they end up like the local camera store. All closed up. Now, hardware is primarily sold online; a few specialty retailers remain, but not many. Few people buy their "real" cameras from the full-price retailers. Most buy from 17th Street or similar. The local store cut off his own nose and bled to death right in front of me.
There ARE solutions that keep the LDS in business.
But they all involve having the LDS attitude changing from one of believing that divers need THEM to understanding that they need DIVERS.
JohnF
Guest
But apparently none of those fair businessmen are in the dive business, at least not the way you represent your case
Yes, it is.
But there's nothing wrong with scattergun hunting? Blow up all the banks and you might eliminate the bank robbers? The wounded innocent bystanders are just the cost of doing anti-business? To target all LDS's for destruction because you were slighted by a camera store 20 years ago is .... peculiar, I suppose. That's just my opinion.
He went ahead and made your day? 8)
But your premise ignores a few other facts that don't suit your argument. After the lds's discount the margin on retail gear, what will subsidize the training programs they offer as a loss leader now, or are they gonna continue to offer training at a loss out of the goodness of their hearts? Are you gonna make your compressor available to everyone nearby after the LDS shuts down their compressor because it's a loss leader as well? And where will folks get to try on the dive gear they want to buy if the LDS's follow the lead of businesses like LP and eliminate showrooms and displays to cut overhead. Will it all become over the counter, caveat emptor shopping?
There is absolutely no doubt that the margins are high, and perhaps too high, on many retail dive products, and companies like LP are offering excellent retail prices, albeit without showrooms for their customers to see and try on or try out the merchandise.
But your theory has some pitfalls for the consumer. If you get your way and drive the LDS's out of business, or at least reduce them to retail discounters and drop shippers, it means the training, service, and air fill part of their business will be in jeopardy without the retail margin to subsidize them. Oh, a few hardy souls will hang on, thinking they can make a go of it, and they'll continue to offer discount training and reduce the quality of the instruction accordingly as they cut the pay to their instructors. The concerns about air fill quality will be realized as fill stations cut corners making filters last longer and trying to get more production out of worn out compressors. The only people who will trust their regs to keep them alive will be the folks who learn to do their own servicing because the shops will be forced to hire cut-rate technicians who have cut rate training and cut rate standards.
But at least the consumer will be getting discount prices and that's all that really matters, isn't it?
JohnF
numerous posts to discern his point of view. Rather than continue his rant, I think we would all benefit by additional (not replacement) point of views.
In other words, Genesis, we understand. Many do not agree with your analysis, but are interested in OTHER points of view as well -- including something "different" from you.
In other words, Genesis, we understand. Many do not agree with your analysis, but are interested in OTHER points of view as well -- including something "different" from you.
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