So why wouldn't you support a good LDS?

[turnerjd]

It is true that Dive Clubs in Europe mainly, buy stock and teach in a group and it's MUCH cheaper. But the need must be there. In Europe it exist because the Mediterranean sea is not far, Cities are much more populated. So it's easy to take a Small Packed city and make a dive club. Here? Well it takes me 2hr per weekend to go dive. You'd have to have a LOT of DEDICATED divers. It's hard to find. In Europe, the city lies next to the sea, you can go to the Scuba club walking from your house in 10min, the beach is a 10min walk from there. Ya it's easier.

What is wonderful about the internet is that it will cull the LDS with bad business practices and help the LDS with good business practices. Furthermore, a LDS, IMO, should have an online interface or shop. Generally, online cart systems work hand in hand with an inventory system and accounting. This permits a better management and control on overhead. It's a bit hardcore for small dive shops but bigger ones can see the benefit from it.

You are quite right about dive clubs in europe. Often the LDS will give you a significant discount if they know which club you come from, simply because over time they build up a relationship with the club, and know what equipment the club uses, and the club members generally. Equally, once the relationship is established, then the clubs will send new students in the direction of the friendly LDS, where, they will almost always get the club discount on their first purchase/visit.

My old club has roughly 30 tanks, their own fill station and a whole bunch of equipment. The LDS knew that if they want to keep doing business like hydro and visual tests on the tanks, and servicing regs etc then they have to be competitive on everything. A lot of clubs use this as leverage in negociating with them. A lot of clubs also pay for somebody to be trained in the visual tests, or send them on a training for servicing regs.

In the UK, it is very easy for clubs to get to the sea and dive, as most people are only 2 hours or so away at the very most. OK, to go somewhere other than the closest point it might take a bit longer. However, from mainland europe, it is not quite the same. I have 10 hours in the car to get to the Mediterranean, or 4 or 5 to the North Sea.

Our LDS has to have good business practice, or it will go out of business very quickly. Allmost all their training dives are in local quarries, however if you are prepared to pay an arm and a leg, as well as a lot of time then they do organise long weekends to go and dive in the Med and do OW / AOW / deep etc dives then.

Jon

 

[Knight1989]

Im a big loyalty person. If I have a good LDS that caries the gear I want, I'll buy from them. Once I pick a shop i do just about everything with that one store regardless of price. Like I said Im a loyalty person. With that said though, where I live currently, the only 2 LDS, suck. They are inconvienant, jerks, and charge way more than Ive ever seen. So in turn, I wont even set foot in there. All my purchases are done online. If the 2 local shops close down, theres thier problem. It will be a result of thier attitudes and price gouging.

 

[turnerjd]

I can agree with that.

The LDS my old club went to was good to us, so we (as a club) were loyal to them. If their service starts to go down, then they will notice very quickly that club members are no longer comming in. The owner of the LDS would be on the phone to us PDQ to find out what was going wrong, and would act on it.

They had a few years ago a young idiot that worked there for a short time, it took the owner very little time to realise that his clients thought very poorly of this guy, and he was soon sent away.

Jon