Biggest thing killing dive shops?

[HantsDiver]

Stop thinking about bricks and mortar stores. They are a dying breed.

Amazon or another huge retailer will own the market before long. They will deliver stuff to your door the next day with prime for nothing. They will take it back if it doesn't fit. Very little in diving really required a great fit. A bcd is incredibly versatile in terms of size. Only a mask needs to be really tested. And you could order a few and send a couple back.

At the moment they are not really bothered - but the day will come where they are the biggest boys on the block for diving equipment. In the UK they do very little currently, in the USA they might do more.

 

[boulderjohn]

A chain of sporting goods stores on the west coast that offered scuba gear and instruction, Sport Chalet, went out of business a couple of years ago. A few years after paying millions of dollars to get the naming rights to the stadium in which the Denver Broncos play, Sports Authority went out of existence, leaving the Broncos to play in a stadium with a name that symbolizes the economic health of big box sporting goods stores.

 

[drbill]

I can't speak for national trends, but I have seen a number of my dive friends open up new dive shops here in SoCal and be successful. They didn't follow my advice re: making a million $$$ in the industry (by starting with two million $$$).

We had four dive operators out here until CDS and Scuba Luv merged (now three), but they undoubtedly do not make their money on equipment sales as they are oriented toward providing dive opportunities.

Of course SoCal may be quite a different animal than other sites.

I liked Trace's comment about relatively flat incomes in the middle class over the past several decades. Most of my dive friends are not wealthy (a few are and they have the cool boats, too).

 

[boulderjohn]

My last post led me to point out that a lot of people seem to be writing with the attitude that this problem is unique to scuba. Scuba is actually relatively healthy compared to other physical activities.

• Golf is struggling mightily. I read a couple of years ago that for every golf course being built in America, 100 are closing down. The USGA is doing all sorts of things to try to promote the sport. They are trying to get people to think more about playing 9 holes of golf instead of 18, figuring that the length of time required to play is a deterrent. (Speeding up play would make a bigger difference, IMO.) They are pushing the "play it forward" concept, in which golf courses are putting in a variety of tee boxes so that players don't have to be wondrously long hitters to get a decent score.
• A couple of decades ago, you had to wait in line for as much as a couple of hours to get a chance to play tennis, or you had to join a club and reserve your court time a week in advance. Now those courts are empty most of the time. I don't know what tennis organizations are doing to promote that sport because I stopped playing it, but whatever they are doing is not working.

 

[boulderjohn]

I liked Trace's comment about relatively flat incomes in the middle class over the past several decades. Most of my dive friends are not wealthy (a few are and they have the cool boats, too).

I agree with this.

Someone posted a meme on my FaceBook feed that compared the income of Bob Cratchit, the ultimate symbol of working poverty in the Dickens tale A Christmas Carol. I found the meme hard to believe and looked things up. I discovered that it is really hard to make a comparison because of the changing standard of living and the changing options and requirements for what we need to live today. I discovered that in terms of pure change in the value of money, Cratchit would still be very poor indeed, but in terms of purchasing power, he actually made several times the amount that a modern American makes on minimum wage. Yes, Bob Cratchits weekly salary of 15 shillings would put him in the middle class of America in today's purchasing power.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Most of my dive friends are not wealthy (a few are and they have the cool boats, too).

And some who are poor because they have a cool boat.

 

[drbill]

Yes, Bob Cratchits weekly salary of 15 shillings would put him in the middle class of America in today's purchasing power.

Well above the income level of the average dive instructor or marine biologist!

 

[JamesBon92007]

Keep in mind, that statement means almost nothing these days. Dicks is "meh", they are struggling. Walmart has found a sweet spot with both Retail and online. Best Buy seems to be doing ok against being "Amazonified". Home Depot continues to do well. The jury is out on Target, Macy's, Penny's, etc. Sears is all but out of business. Malls are predicted to be half empty in 5 to 10 years. Mercedes is looking at a business model of "selling direct", much like Tesla. it will be interesting in the first quarter of 2018 to see how the big retailers report to Wall Street.

My next-door neighbor, who works for Dick's, said they are busy buying out all the other Sporting Goods stores, aside from Big 5. I heard a rumor that Best Buy is going out of business (or closing), at least the one near me. Do you have any data to confirm your statements? Dick's may be struggling but, from what I heard, they are struggling to become a near-monopoly.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Another thing that will possibly hurt dive shops is that some equipment manufacturers now sell directly to consumers. I know ScubaPro does this. I'm assuming they sell for the retail price but at some point I suspect they may offer a better deal then retail.

They do??????
Since when!?!?!
Do they sell parts too then?

 

[boulderjohn]

UTD sells direct to the public and through shops: Products · UTD Scuba Diving

When I was a UTD student and an employee of a shop that taught UTD, the shop started to sell UTD gear as well. I needed a new canister light. As an employee, I could get one for 20% over dealer cost, so I sat down with our buyer and opened the catalog. There were several choices, and I had difficulty trying to decide between two models. I went to the UTD website to see if there was more information and discovered that the full retail price I would have to pay at the UTD web site was $100 less than I would be paying at my employee discount. A dive operation cannot survive selling goods without a decent markup, so there is no way our shop, an official UTD dealer, could compete with the UTD online pricing. The shop stopped selling UTD products soon after that. The competition with UTD itself was too much for them.

About the same time, I was in the market for new speakers for my audio system, and i went to a Bose outlet store so I could get a deal buying direct from the manufacturer. Nope. The price there was exactly the same as the price at my local audio store. When I mentioned that, the salesman explained that it would be unethical for them to undersell their dealers, and if they did, no dealer would sell their products.

So, I think it is very possible that scuba manufacturers will start selling direct to the public, and if they do it at discounted prices, then that will have a dramatic impact on ALL dive equipment dealers.