What with ScubaPro?

[SeaHound]

Whats wrong with these guys??? They dont sell stuff over the net? Their website doesnt allow you to make online purchases from the manufacturer, how do you get a product catalogue (paper one) from them? How could a reputed name such as these guys still live in the stone age? No internet presence whatsoever (except for that website that doesnt list all products anyways).

Thoughts?

[ronbeau]

Whats wrong with these guys??? They don't sell stuff over the net? Their website doesn't allow you to make on line purchases from the manufacturer, how do you get a product catalogue (paper one) from them? How could a reputed name such as these guys still live in the stone age? No Internet presence whatsoever (except for that website that doesn't list all products anyways).

Thoughts?

They claim that they push everything through the dealer channel although some former dealers would beg to differ with their assertion.

[Tienuts]

Cause there's a bunch of old school executives for Scuba Pro around a conference table thinking if they pray hard enough, the internet will go away.

Eventually, they will change, or go out of business.

[awap]

As long as their customers (retail shops) remain faithful, I guess it is working for them. Besides Scubatiys, anybody know of an LDS that has dropped their line. I don't think there are many. Their LDSs offer a product with good name recognition and they have little reason to engage in any price competition.

[fisheater]

Scubapro won't even let their dealers mail you the stuff after you call them and pay full retail!

Really sucks if you don't live particularly close to a Scubapro dealer.

Like others have observed, it's a matter of whether Scubapro goes under or changes its policy first.

[drbill]

In part this may be a result of the Johnson acquisition of Scubapro/Uwatec. It seems some of their products have changed to cheaper parts (bean counter decision?) and IMHO the quality of some of their product does not seem up to the old standards.

I'm not a SP basher... in fact almost all my life support equipment (regs, BCD's, computers) is ScubaPro, but generally older, discontinued models.

[keyshunter]

Scubapro execs, if they are literate, and capable of conscious thought, would do well to note the history of General Motors. I am old enough to remember when GM was "king of the hill". Their dealers almost always had the "we are top dog" attitude and consequently if one wanted to buy a vehicle from them, it was on their terms. Waits for vehicles, and lower discounts than other brands were the norm. It is not surprising, therefore, that many individuals, as well as fleets switched to other brands. How the mighty have fallen. Now GM is among the most competitive of brands.

I have not had much Scubapro gear over the years, because their dealers always seemed to exhibit the attitude I had hated when I dealt with GM. In fact I remember saying the Scubapro dealers must all go to "pr**k school". Scubapro's strength lay in their now diminished reputation for superior quality, the lack of communication between their customers, and their now decreasing small retailer base. My opinion is that unless they change their marketing strategy, the readily available information of the internet will lead to their downfall.

[DA Aquamaster]

The largest single reason GM lost it's once formidible market share was that they failed to realize that quality costs very little in terms of overall production cost and is in fact the least expensive way to add value to a product. Japanese automakers taught GM that lesson the hard way. I think the post JWA Scubapro has in the case of a few of its products been learning the same lesson.

When I started diving in the early 1980's there was Scubapro and then there was everything else in terms of quality. US Divers had just completed it's qualitative nose dive and it's products for the most part were of fairly low quality. Dacor was somewhere in the middle, but its offerings were not up to the Scubapro standard in terms of performance. Consequently, at that point in time, SP dealers could afford to be a little elitist.

However over the last 25 years the quality of other manufacturers has improved while the post JWA acquisition of Scubapro has seen more and more plastic and, I suspect, a shift from a company whose products were driven by engineering decisions to one where they are driven by marketing and accounting decisions. This has created a situation where the quality of some SP products had dropped to the point that they are no longer clearly superior to the competition. Once that occurred it became harder to demand a premium for "quality" that was similar to that offerred for less money by other brands.

The good news is that after several less than stellar decisions (rebranding some non-SP products such as the early R190 and the Mk 14 to address certain market segements, switching from a SPEC system to the TIS system in the Mk 20/25 with resulting cold water relaibility issues, replacing the D400 with the pre-maturely released X650, adopting plastic air barrels in the G250HP and S600, rushing some products to market too soon, forcing Scubapro to sell Uwatec computers with non user replaceable batteries, etc) the trend seems to be reversing. The Mk 17 after a long, slow and careful development process was introduced and has proven to be an exceptional diaphragm first stage and the G250V promises a return to an older standard of quality and performance that has not been seen since the JWA acquisition. And, finally, Uwatec has gotten the message and is moving away from batteries requiring factory replacement.

So perhaps the executives at JWA/Scubapro/Uwatec are finally getting a clue.

-----

The dealer practices are a different story. Scubapro takes much of the heat for pricing restrictions and for requiring over the counter sales of their products by dealers, but they are by no means the only company that does this. Many other scuba equipment companies have similar policies. Where Scubapro deserves critisim is in their two faced approach to on-line sales. On the one hand, if an authorized dealer sells a product on-line or through the mail, they will get stepped on if they are reported doing this as Scubapro does not authorize on-line sales. On the other hand, you can buy most of what Scubapro offers through Leisure-pro or other on-line retailers at discounts well below what authorized dealers are allowed to offer. Given that many of these items are serial numbered and could be tracked to the legitmate dealers who then sold them to Leisure-pro, Scubapro's claim that they are attempting to control internet sales is at best lip service, particularly when several other companies do a very effective job of controlling on-line sales. I suspect Scubapro is not aggreessive in stopping on-line sales as it probably derives a substantial portion of its gross sales through grey market sources - a situation that undercuts their dealers who are bound by pricing and face to face sales restrictions that prevent them from competing with grey market on-line retailers.

But in regard to the OP's original complaint, you have to be fair...right or wrong, Scubapro products are far more available from on-line through grey market sources than the products of many other companies, so if you are going to bash Scubapro for not having an (official) on-line sales presence, you have have to bash all the other companies that also do not officially recognize on-line sales.

The on-line sales issue will always be a matter of great debate. The fact is that Scuba equipment is a low volume market and it is also very cost intensive for the dealer. A dealer will pay perhaps $300 up front to purchase a regulator that will sell for perhaps $600. However the dealer has to sit on that $300 cost until the item sells a few months to perhaps a year later. To do that, the dealer also has to maintain a store front and sales staff to show items to customers and in most cases, the dealer also has to maintain a full service shop with a broad range of repair, training and compressed gas services - none of which are cheap to offer or maintain. From that perspective, companies that limit on-line sales are very attractive to local dive shop owners as there is no money in stocking items to show to prospective consumers who try the item out in the shop and then save a few bucks buying it on line. If Scuabpro has a potential problem with its dealer numbers, it lies in failing to control on-line sales rather than in failing to legitamize them.

[jscott099]

Who cares? If you want to buy your dive gear over the net, then go ahead (crying about it here isn't going to help). It may mean you can't buy much ScubaPro (although you can find it). Right now it appears that not enough folks are doing that. Companies respond to marketing pressures and will react with different retail strategies when competition begins to eat away their market share. In addition, I doubt the dealers are in any big hurry to give up their lucrative distribution channel.

[SeaHound]

I partially agree with DA Aquamaster that there are various market pressures involved in this business. As a consumer however, I am only concerned with only ONE thing:

1. Are SCUBAPRO products superior in engineering than the competition today? Or, am I driving all the way to the nearest dealer to buy over the counter (the stone age way) paying extra bucks so that I showoff the the brandname everyone associates with "starting it all!"

The fact that these people were pioneers of dive gear is little importance to me and many other divers today. If you want to buy a plane you would go to Boeing or Northrop and Grumman instead of Wright Brother bicycle shop that "started it all!!!"

As a company if their strategy was working for them we would see more and more divers on dive boats with scubapro gear. I dont see that! Are these guys a sinking ship with a glorious past?

[Coalcracker]

[QUOTE=SeaHound;3284857]

1. Are SCUBAPRO products superior in engineering than the competition today? Or, am I driving all the way to the nearest dealer to buy over the counter (the stone age way) paying extra bucks so that I showoff the the brandname everyone associates with "starting it all!" [QUOTE]

They did not start it all. US Divers, Cressi, Healthways, and others were here before ScubaPro emerged out of the Healthway brand.

Scubapro teamed up with NASDS and "fixed" prices so that every dive store had the same price and the same sales line. In many towns, large enough to support more than one store, there was the US Divers dealer, and then the ScubaPro dealer, each, usually, dissing the other. US Divers allowed mail order sales, the old New England Divers, "Honest Archie", Richards Aqua-Lung Center in NYC, etc. ScubaPro only sold through the "pro" store. Interesting now to see both Aqua-Lung and ScubaPro resisting the ever growing e-commerce side of business. Oceanic, Dive-Rite, Zeagle,
Sherwood, Mares, and others have emerged with quality products and a sane approach to todays market. Since I am in NYC working at least once every quarter, LP is now my LDS.

[vladimir]

Scubapro Dive Equipment from Simply Scuba (http://www.simplyscuba.com/SearchResults.aspx?Reset=1&Loopback=1&Manufacturer=1247)

[DA Aquamaster]

I partially agree with DA Aquamaster that there are various market pressures involved in this business. As a consumer however, I am only concerned with only ONE thing:

1. Are SCUBAPRO products superior in engineering than the competition today? Or, am I driving all the way to the nearest dealer to buy over the counter (the stone age way) paying extra bucks so that I showoff the the brandname everyone associates with "starting it all!"

The fact that these people were pioneers of dive gear is little importance to me and many other divers today. If you want to buy a plane you would go to Boeing or Northrop and Grumman instead of Wright Brother bicycle shop that "started it all!!!"

As a company if their strategy was working for them we would see more and more divers on dive boats with scubapro gear. I dont see that! Are these guys a sinking ship with a glorious past?My thoughts are that both Scubapro and Aqualung have extensive dealer networks and have a long history of providing parts and service support for long outdated products. Scubapro goes one step farther in making amny of their new developments retrofittable into older products through upgrade kits. So in short, you can still use a 20-30 year old Scubapro regulator and get first rate performance on par with any current offering where a reg by most other companies would either be outdated or obsolete through the non-availability of parts.

So if you gave me a choice between a Scubapro or, for example, a Mares reg of identical performance, I'd buy the SP reg every time and even pay more for it as I know I will still be able to get it serviced and even upgraded in 5, 10 or 20 years - long after the Mares reg will probably be good for little more than a paperweight.

Neither Scubapro or Aqualung are big on internet sales, but they are big on service and product support and that still counts for something with many divers - particularly those who plan on staying with the sport for a significant period of time. I have very few Scubapro or US Divers/Aqualung products that are not still useable, and after 20 plus years of diving I cannot say that about any other company I have purchased equipment from.

[SeaHound]

Very informative! Thanks.