You can either complain or do something about the problem: The choice is YOURS!

[flots am]

So, you just want an industry on YOUR terms. Well, there are a number of us who want to increase the popularity of Scuba Diving. You can hope/pray for our demise, but we won't go quietly. 'Nuff said.

Whatever happens, happens. Doesn't make much difference either way.

flots.

 

[nimoh]

As for manufacturers, I'm sure at least one manufacturer of each important type of equipment would survive and that's really enough.

Well, I know if I was a manufacturer of anything and suddenly found myself with a monopoly on my product the first thing I would do is raise my prices. This price increase would also result in large profits since there would be no reason to invest anything in R&D. I mean why make my product better when people will buy it regardless?

 

[redacted]

So, you just want an industry on YOUR terms. Well, there are a number of us who want to increase the popularity of Scuba Diving. You can hope/pray for our demise, but we won't go quietly. 'Nuff said.

I'm sure there are. Maybe that is because most of them just have such a love of the activity and such a love of people that they just want other folks to share in their joyful experiences. Or, maybe, it is because they make $$$ from other divers (and some of them don't really care if the customer gets value or not).

Sometimes, it is not so much what people do, but why.

 

[The Chairman]

Well said, Nimoh! People just can't seem to stand the fact that not everyone dives like they do. They blame the manufacturers who meet the demands of other divers. More divers will help to reduce prices over all by encouraging competition. That's good for all of us.

Don't forget, the impetus of this thread is to promote the Kickstarter program. If you haven't supported it yet, please go there now and get it done.

 

[flots am]

Well, I know if I was a manufacturer of anything and suddenly found myself with a monopoly on my product the first thing I would do is raise my prices. This price increase would also result in large profits since there would be no reason to invest anything in R&D. I mean why make my product better when people will buy it regardless?

That's the awesome thing about competition.

Especially for something as simple and unchanging as a SCUBA regulator, it would be almost no time at all before someplace like China was flooding the market with perfectly good $99 regulators.

I have a 40 year old regulator at home that's as good as the newest reg I own. In some ways, it's better. It's insanely simple.

This is the type of thing that could also produce cottage industries. There's no reason any competent machine shop anywhere, couldn't produce regulators. Instead of a dozen manufacturers, we could easily have a thousand.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Well, I know if I was a manufacturer of anything and suddenly found myself with a monopoly on my product the first thing I would do is raise my prices. This price increase would also result in large profits since there would be no reason to invest anything in R&D. I mean why make my product better when people will buy it regardless?

Outside of CCR and high-end tech computers/DPVs (a market that's 99.9% independent of rec scuba), where was the last big R&D-funded advancement? Our high-end regs are just refinements of designs unchanged for decades. Name one BCD change from a one-piece harness/wing/metal plate that matters, at all, to quality of diving rather than how many new sheep can be sheared. Masks? Fins? Tanks? Valves? Lighting and batteries come to mind, but they're largely scavenging off larger markets' R&D innovation and putting new tech in old dive-ready housings.

Serious question: point me to where the meaningful innovation has been. Because most of it outside what's needed for going deeper and staying there longer looks like marketing fluff to me.

Well said, Nimoh! People just can't seem to stand the fact that not everyone dives like they do.

I think the point is more that some people just couldn't care less whether others have the marketing-heavy hobby industry they need to get and stay in the water, because they're they kind who were going to be diving regardless--even if they had to cobble together their own gear.

 

[redacted]

Serious question: point me to where the meaningful innovation has been. Because most of it outside what's needed for going deeper and staying there longer looks like marketing fluff to me.

Scubapro has a couple interesting innovations. One is the unique seat used in the Air1 and D-series regulators. Now that Scubapro has withdrawn support for those designs, normal parts wear-out will become durability failures. (I have my stock of seats.) And I think they have laid the ground-work for a bigger but similar success story in the Mk20/25. Few folks realize there is an inaccessible o-ring (in the composite piston) in those regulators that will render them unrepairable when Scubapro ultimately withdraws support for those designs also. I think they may have found the solution to the infinite life potential of older piston regulators.

 

[Mike]

Well, I know if I was a manufacturer of anything and suddenly found myself with a monopoly on my product the first thing I would do is raise my prices. This price increase would also result in large profits since there would be no reason to invest anything in R&D. I mean why make my product better when people will buy it regardless?

And you can forget about R&D at that point. With so small a market that it only allows one manufacturer to survive you're talking about a market so small that innovation moves to people's garages on the weekends and dreams of if only there was enough market for this thing I am trying to create....

---------- Post added June 17th, 2014 at 01:29 PM ----------

This is the type of thing that could also produce cottage industries. There's no reason any competent machine shop anywhere, couldn't produce regulators. Instead of a dozen manufacturers, we could easily have a thousand.

Just want you'd want, a 1000 incompatible systems that consist of cottage businesses that come and go so quickly that the day you call their phone number to get a part or some information and the phone have been disconnected.

You're mixing two different principles, one the mass produced cookie cutter junk of a Chinese factory and home made junk that no two units have compatible parts that can be exchanged between two units made a week apart. No thanks, I'd rather have an industry where there is enough market for a business person to create a profitable business that has enough economy of scale to make a profit while producing quality mass produced, compatible products that will be around long enough to provide service and innovation.

 

[flots am]

Just want you'd want, a 1000 incompatible systems that consist of cottage businesses that come and go so quickly that the day you call their phone number to get a part or some information and the phone have been disconnected.

I have regs that go for years without needing service. If I paid $100 for a reg and it lasted for 3 or 4 years, and the company folded, it's not such a huge problem.

Broken reg? Take it apart and fix it.

Can't get parts? Toss it in the recycling bin, spend another $100 and get a new one.

For well over 90% of divers, SCUBA just isn't the big, complicated, dangerous activity that the industry has made it out to be.

 

[The Chairman]

For well over 90% of divers, SCUBA just isn't the big, complicated, dangerous activity that the industry has made it out to be.

I would love to see support for this fauxtistic. Drop out rates would indicate otherwise.