Diveprof,
The owner of the LDS that I teach out of and I had a long talk about this and the online sales when we first heard of it. My original reaction was very similar to yours. However, as we discussed it we both realized that the online sales actually might help LDS sales because the online people have to come up to MAP now. There is no undercutting grey market equipment now (or not as much, anyway). This allows us to be competitive with LeisurePro and Scuba.com as well as others. As for the parts for life, we talked about using the package deal to upsale costumers as well as offering an inhouse parts for life program for a min. charge. If we work it right we can hopefully make something tasty out of the lemons we have been given by SP. All of that being said, I do believe that SP has not been acting in their dealers best interest lately and really wonder if the people making these decisions have any retail SCUBA experience. The people that really got hosed are the poor smucks they talked into becoming platinum dealers in the last couple of years. They now have to eat crow and go after the companies they quit.
The owner of the LDS that I teach out of and I had a long talk about this and the online sales when we first heard of it. My original reaction was very similar to yours. However, as we discussed it we both realized that the online sales actually might help LDS sales because the online people have to come up to MAP now. There is no undercutting grey market equipment now (or not as much, anyway). This allows us to be competitive with LeisurePro and Scuba.com as well as others. As for the parts for life, we talked about using the package deal to upsale costumers as well as offering an inhouse parts for life program for a min. charge. If we work it right we can hopefully make something tasty out of the lemons we have been given by SP. All of that being said, I do believe that SP has not been acting in their dealers best interest lately and really wonder if the people making these decisions have any retail SCUBA experience. The people that really got hosed are the poor smucks they talked into becoming platinum dealers in the last couple of years. They now have to eat crow and go after the companies they quit.
