Non-Scientific SCUBA Study

[Diver0001]

Curiously, I read your "study" quite differently than you do. 7 people out of 50 were interested enough to go to a dive shop and check it out. That's 14% of your population. I'd be doing the snoopy-dance-of-joy if I lived somewhere where 14% of my target population had actually been to a dive shop to ask about training!

Seems to me, if this study does hold any water, that good marketing will easily result in more than sufficient sales.... If you ask me, blaming the Wii and Dema for slow sales is like blaming the neighbours for the mess in your own house.

Ken, you've been in a negative mind set about this for several years. Perhaps it's time to entertain the idea that your negative mind-set may be causing a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

14% man! WOW!

R..

 

[g1138]

Might I suggest making this study more scientific.
You're buyist in your study.
You select your interviewees not at random but based on the statistic that there's more males than females diving. That's buyist.
Your sample size is also waaaay to small.
There's plenty of other flaws in your study that a stat analyst could point out to you, I'm sure of it.

And to give you some proof that this is flawed, we have 20 divers certified every 10 weeks at UC Santa Cruz in California.
I see open water certifications for many classes everytime I go to the the local hot spot on the weekends.

With UCSC we're talking college kids who are on a budget, yet they buy their gear, full set up within the year so they can become scientifically certified. It's the goal of a fair number of science majors here.

Those who do the class just for fun, go on vacation and dive when they can. If they can't then they go on the university's club dives. (I know this because of the two quarters I've TA'ed for the class, I've kept in contact with nearly all divers certified)

Around our area we have Moss Landing and Long Marine Lab. They're facilities that run for two seperate universities.
They certify classes of scientific divers twice a year every year, and the list to get in is high.

In the state of California you have the Moneterey Bay Aquarium, Hopkins Marine Research Facility, and Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory.
All of them have scientific divers and students who do diving for research.

That's only the tip of iceberg too. That's a bit of the science community, there's also the recreational, commercial, and military community you have to contend with.
Keep in mind that my explanation here only covers one state in one nation, there's Europe, South America, Australia, Croatia, and plenty of other countries that certify divers too.

Trust me, diving is still going strong. ;D

 

[mrfixitchapman]

This is that 'underwater breathing' thing that the little French guy on public TV is always talking about? It'll never catch on.

DC

 

[*dave*]

I've been affiliated with the LDS for the last six years. Things were booming in 2005, but I watched that taper off over the years to the point that several months had no class due to lack of interest. Last year, I went five months without instructing, then had four classes in a row with two or three students.

I had some theories as to why this downturn had taken place and a lot of it had to do with the economy. Still, the shop had certified hundreds of students in the last six years and none were to be found frequenting the shop.

This month's class had seven students, six of which are buying complete systems from us. Buisness is up 60% from our best month last year, divers are coming back to the shop and new divers are not going elsewhere for training.

We had been competing with three other shops in the valley which offered courses for $199, so we had dropped our cost to the same, with winter rates at 2/$199. We now sell the class for $299 and are well on our way to filling classes again. In my view, there is no shop between Portland and San Francisco which can offer the value we do. I invite people inquiring about our classes to shop around, check out the other facilities and talk to the instructors at other shops.

Downturn? Crap, we're kicking ass and we've just got started.

 

[irishsquid]

Here in "land-locked" Tn., I'm seeing what appears to be more classes of new divers showing up at the local dive holes, and running into more divers than I would have imagined since the downturn of the economy. Maybe a fluke?

 

[tgsmith]

I wouldn't say that the dive industry is going downhill at all. The current situation of shops closing is not indicative of that......we're in a depression, and most of them shouldn't have opened in the first place! Too many shops, too little customers........hmmm......who'da thunk they'd go out of business?

Two, I'm not all about price gouging, either. But I'm not exactly sure it's price gouging, and that the big bad capitalist-pig manufacturers are rolling in mounds of cash and using child labor with the blood of the homeless to grease their o-rings.....that's certainly the vibe I'm getting from you about your image of the manufacturers. First, the products are going to have a very high markup because it's a niche market, and you're just NOT going to sell that much no matter what you or anyone else does. They're not selling tires, cell phones or desktop computers which are mass manufactured and can have a very small markup due to volume of sales. You're just NOT going to get that in scuba!!!!

Also about the manufacturers........well, you guys want air integrated computers? You want more advanced algorithims in them? How'bout easy to read OLED screens on them, too? You want comfortable, stretchy, yet warm wetsuits? How'bout more durable guages, and regs that breath better but cost less to maintain? What about a drysuit that doesn't weigh a ton when wet, is lightweight for travel but durable as well? There are R&D costs factored into the prices of what they're selling. R&D is NOT cheap....especially in a niche market! You ain't gonna get it cheap, no matter what!

I think the market will improve when all the crap dive shops that should never have been in business in the first place go out of business. That's the first step in getting MAP's eliminated.

 

[DaleC]

I don't know what the industry is doing (and don't care thank goodness) but I think there is a grain of truth to the fact that it can be perceived as too costly for the average young person. $200 fins, $100 masks, $50 snorkels, $500 regs, computers and BCD's... and my experience is that local diving is down played in favor of expensive, exotic "destination" diving. Don't want to buy our "package" or sign up for another course? Well, I think there's an old piece of paper on the corkboard over there we call a buddy list (don't know really as none of our staffs names are on it).

Young people aren't really lazy, perse. My son plays tennis and road hockey with his friends all the time. They just can't afford to dive the same way the baby boomers can. Most kids can't afford to move away from home nowadays let alone travel to the GBR and don't know if they will even have their low paying, no benefit jobs tomorrow. They can afford an X box (once) and find entertainment, accomplishment and peer acceptance; compared to the cost of an X box every month, which is what the average diver spends when active (gear, charters, travel, EAN/Trimix fills). Maybe the kids are smarter than we think and just don't buy the high priced BS... and all the industry is currently offering is that.

Want to involve the next generation? Make diving a basic, grassroots activity instead of glorifying it as an "Uber" acheivement. Who's doing that these days? Who's saying all that expensive crap and advanced technical training and swimming with a whale shark/GWS/Humpback/Hammerhead (what's next on the list) isn't needed to just get out, dive and have fun. Who's reaching out and setting the example for young people locally? That's what Seahunt did for diving. Mike Nelson was just a guy that every kid could watch each week. He dove very basic gear, did very basic things, and all in the same locations that the viewer could easily access. Those kids could pick up a mask and some fins and feel like they were half way there.

 

[DevonDiver]

I agree... it is far to complicated, time-consuming and expensive to get a scuba certification.

Why not chop the course down to a single day? Self-study academics, confined water in the morning, 2 dives in the afternoon...and finished. That way you could charge less than $150 for it.

The knock-on benefit would be that cheap second hand dive kit would become freely available as more divers blew their ears, drowned or got too bent to ever dive again...

The expense of insurance wouldn't be a problem either... it would just cease be available.

 

[Kingpatzer]

I'm confused on the assertion that scuba is expensive. The initial investment is a bit pricey -- especially if you don't know what to shop for -- but it's not a huge expense.

I spend about $2000 a year on myself on scuba related stuff. I do 80 or so dives a year for fun. Both numbers ignore travel dives. If I weren't also doing instruction I'd dive more, but I'd also spend less). So I spend about $25 a dive. I could easily lower my costs significantly by not buying new gear, and staying away from some toy collecting that I tend to do.

But still, $25 a dive is pretty dang cheap. It is about the same as 9 holes of golf without club rental.

Yes a regulator costs some money up-front. But it's not like you can only use it for a year.

 

[captain]

I wonder:

Is interest in scuba really dying, or is it the same very small percentage of the population that is interested/active/attracted to scuba? The same percantage as it has always been?

If you asked 50 non-divers in the 1970's, 80's and 90's, would the percentage be about the same?

Shows like Sea Hunt, the James Bond series, Cousteau's series all helped generate interest in diving in the early days... would TV shows and movies do the same now?

Interesting discussion.

Best wishes.

I think you nailed it. A large number of people rotate in and out of the sport but that hard core percentage remains static.
TV shows and movies might momentary increase the rotation numbers but won't have much effect on increasing the hard core percentage.

I base this on my over 50 years involvement in the sport. I would say that 99% of the divers I have been associated with over that time are no longer diving