The Mares vs Dacor question

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Avonthediver

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I'm a Fish!
So I must ask why did Mares do away with Dacor after they got a hold of a once proud line? I had and still do have a lot of Dacor gear and it was good stuff and it seems all mares did was eliminate a rival. Please someone bring some light to this for me.
 
The Dacor corporation was legally preparing to file for bankruptcy. Head Sports (owner of Mares and other sporting lines) purchased the line and began to incorporate it into their American lineup of dive gear.

Many critical comments were directed toward Mares for not "supporting" gear that was produced prior to the acquisition. For example, they did not manufacture regulator service kits. To be quite honest, to do so would not have made economic sense. Dacor's equipment was created from parts that were manufactured by outside vendors. Relatively few of their components were produced "in house".

For example, the creation of a simple part like an exhaust tee can easily cost more than than $10,000 just in mold fees. When one considers the huge investment it would take in order to adequately support the many pieces of gear that Dacor had in their line, Mares might never have broken even on the investment.

The last regulators produced by Dacor were overly complex, and utilized modular construction that relied upon an abnormally large number of O-rings. To be quite frank, they were not competitive products in a highly competitive market. Whether we like to admit it or not, sport diving is a relatively small market when compared to some other sporting avenues. There isn't much room for error in gear design and marketing.

In my opinion, Head (Mares) likely saw the Dacor name acquisition as a means of broadening their presence in North America. I personally don't think it was a wise move, and it did create hard feelings for the Dacor fans. Keep in mind, though, that the Dacor name was head for oblivion.

Greg
 
So at the risk of sounding ignorant, would it be prudent to steer clear of Mares/Dacor products as well as entirely Dacor products in the future? What about purely Mares? Would they be trying to change any of their products to incorporate any of the Dacor tech?
 
That's not exactly the story we got. But it's not far off enough to make a difference. We were one of the largest stocking Dacor dealers for many many years, selling hundreds of thousands of Dacor gear. In fact, we just ran out of service kits for Dacor regs in the last year or two.

Ultimately, I think it was a smack in the face. For more than two decades we were providing life time parts guarantees. Imagine you're a store owner and you tell a customer, "buy this reg, get it serviced, and you'll never have to buy parts again." Which is the sales pitch we successfully used for 20 years. Then one day, that customer comes in with his 4 regs and we have to tell him, "sorry mate, parts are gone, those regs are effectively junk." Now, when we witnessed what was about to happen, we literally spent thousands of dollars buying every parts kit we could find (we only just ran out). But still, our customers got screwed. And we look like the bad guy. I can't support a manufacturer that is okay with us and our customers taking a smack in the face like that. We immediately dropped the Mares line. I will never support them. I don't believe you should either. But that's just my opinion.

There are plenty of great regulators out there. You might as well buy from a company with a good reputation. In my opinion, Mares sullied their rep more than a decade ago. And frankly, their gear is just so/so anyway.
 
Superlyte27 I agree its sad that they have done this and I would hope that Mares will come around but I wonder as they now have SSI so you must wonder what will happen to them as well?
And ya Jon Dacor is now gone forever I fear and the only gear I find is used Jen had to retire her Dacor regs and before I found out about what mares had done I got her whole new set of mares. And she is happy with her gear and I do like some of the mares stuff like thier fins but it does put a bad taste in ones mouth when you find out things like this and that is why I had to ask my question.
I would like to her a mares rep on this subject.
 
It would be interesting
indeed to hear the "corporate" explanation.

Sent from my XT907 using Tapatalk
 
You're divers. You should know...never hold your breath.

That's pretty cute!

Head / Mares is a big corp, their one and primary responsibility to keeping their stockholders happy (make money this quarter). Pleasing customers, developing new products, supporting existing products are done when they is a profit to be had and skipped when there is not. Anyone who has worked for a large corp (and been laid off or otherwise screwed) realizes this. The sales reps are just a tiny cog in the wheel with no power and minimal understanding of the corporate plan (or lack of).
 
Dacor regulators produced before the Head Sports acquisition are:
Number series 1st stages, for example 360, 900, 960, and the Quantum, Extreme, Enduro.
......service parts difficult to find.

Dacor regs sold after the takeover were essentially really Mares regs with a different badge and trim.
These include, Viper, Eagle, America, HUB.
.......If you have a willing tech these can be serviced with current Mares parts (AquaLung parts also).
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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