Any minimum price would still need to allow enough margin for dealers to be able to pay for the overhead of running their shops.yknot:First, wouldn't the minimum sales price just be north of cost? Any attempt by SP to justify uncompetative business practices is going to backfire. Consumers now have substantial options to SP.
Large volume on-line retailers who do not maintain a storefront or full service dive shop have an advantage there as they can sell items for not much over cost on a margin that would bankrupt local dive shops. Consequently, if/when on-line sales are allowed, there will still need to be price controls to ensure the LDS's have an adequate margin to stay in business. If you bankrupt your dealers, your parts and service support go down the tube along with your sales and that is in nobody's best interest.
Traditionally, the industry standard used to be a 100% margin, which for low volume sales of slow moving and expensive to stock items, may provide a 10% profit - not a lot but enough. However with many products, the margin is well over the industry standard and, in my opinion, Scubapro and other companies with excessive margins will need to substantially reduce the MSRP if they want to stay competitive. Their stuff is very good, but not all that much better than the competition, and things like warranty hassles on internet purchased equipment detracts from the over all value of the product.
I suspect that for many customers Scubapro prices are just too high and they are going elsewhere to purchase less expensive equipment. It's a question of making a lot of money off a few customers or making a little less money off each of a lot more customers. Once you get beyond the point of diminishing returns, sales drop off more than you can compensate for with price increases, which then only serve to further reduce sales.
I think part of the problem industry wide is that many advances have occurred to lower production costs (example: a one piece molded resin second stage case costing less than $3.50 to produce compared to the much higher cost of forming and/or machining at least four parts from brass, then brazing them together and chrome plating a brass case.) but those savings were never passed on to consumers, rather the company profits and dealer margins just increased.