Did SSI just get bought out by Mares?

[alien]

Gee Aquanaut bought them and now they are left on the outer...

 

[maderadiver]

I just spent 5 minutes trying to figure out what everthing was and were it was going

It reminds me of those flying disks in batterys not included

 

[Scared Silly]

HUB - Horribly Ugly Blob

Come on Jim you can do better than that

HUB == Humongous Unfunctional Bcd

 

[Rooster59]

Paradigm Shift? They must have won a warehouse full of AT-PAK's on Storage Wars and need a way to unload them.

 

[flots am]

I just spent 5 minutes trying to figure out what everthing was and were it was going

I had a diver show up for a "SCUBA Skills Update" with one and after staring at it for a while, suggested that he either use one of the rental BCs or find someone who had seen one before.

Up close it looks like some sort of sex toy from the future. If you need to orally inflate it, you need to find this little hidden rubber hose and blow it, and I'm not sure how to deflate it. There's quite a bit of strings and plumbing involved.

 

[Bob DBF]

Paradigm Shift? They must have won a warehouse full of AT-PAK's on Storage Wars and need a way to unload them.

At least with AT-PAK's you could sell them to vintage divers, who would you sell a HUB to, besides an X-wife.



Bob
---------------------------------
I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night.

 

[pterantula]

For the benefit of those that are wondering why we're making fun of the Mares Hub, here's a picture:
View attachment 173159

All I can say is if you're going to have an emergency near me, please don't be wearing one of those, since I have no idea what the hell to do with it, and it's likely to undergo "catastrophic disassembly" if I can't make you buoyant very quickly or need to get you out of it in a hurry.

I also suspect that an air share to the surface could become "exciting" and a random buddy would take a while to figure out how to add and vent air.

flots

HUB, meet large, freshly-sharpened knife.....

---------- Post added December 16th, 2013 at 01:36 PM ----------

Of course all of these companies - certifying agencies included of course - need to make money, and that's fine;
allow me to propose an alternative: what about, say, "DICO" = "Dive Instructors' Co-Operative"..?
I.e., a non-profit co-op created by instructors, globally, based purely in the interest of maintaining high training & qualification standards, without any of the branded marketing fluff? Of course there would be millions of little details to work out, and maybe something like this already exists..... ?

 

[drrich2]

"I.e., a non-profit co-op created by instructors, globally, based purely in the interest of maintaining high training & qualification standards, without any of the branded marketing fluff? Of course there would be millions of little details to work out, and maybe something like this already exists..... ?"

I don't know just how close a match any of these are to what you're talking about, but...

1.) The BSAC model in Europe is said to be 'club based' and might have a somewhat similar appeal.

2.) The impression I've had from SEI instructor posts on this forum suggests that their agency got founded out of a desire to advocate for the goals you're talking about, although in the context of an agency, from what I understand.

3.) NAUI is technically a non-profit, though of course that doesn't mean it doesn't make any money.

Would market realities support what you want to see happen?

Richard.

 

[boulderjohn]

This is disturbing. Training agencies and gear manufactures have no business intermingling. Agencies teach diving, I think that we can all agree that there is more than one quality brand of gear. I dive mostly Oceanic for recreational diving. I dive mostly Scubapro and Dive Right for tech. Even I don't think that one brand is the best for everything.

Instructors teach diving. Agencies sell stuff. (Books, manuals, videos, c-cards, etc)

SSI offers a marketing course for dive shops called "Scuba University." I am a graduate. It was taught by Doug McNeese himself.

The key idea of that week-long marketing workshop is the critical connection between instruction and gear sales. According to the course, instructors should be required to wear a specific set of gear, their work uniform, which they purchase at a discount. They are to tell their students that they chose that gear because it is the very best. The instructors actually have no choice in it. The specific gear is selected by the shop ownership, and the specific choices are based on profit margin. Shops that follow the marketing strategy tell instructors to promote gear sales throughout instruction, and they are given specific strategies for doing that.

Doug McNeese was the president and owner of NASDS, and he honed his marketing plan while his NASDS headquarters was across the street from one of the shops he still owns. NASDS and SSI merged, and then McNeese bought out SSI and took over. He transferred the NASDS marketing philosophy over to SSI. Many of the SSA promotional materials are identical to the NASDS materials, just with a different name.

When the shop I was working with went in that direction, I chose to leave before I had to buy my uniform. It would have been a Seaquest Balance BCD, an Atomic regulator set, an Atomic SSI inflator (like an Air II), a Suunto Cobra III computer, Aqualung Slingshot fins, and a specific model Henderson wet suit. I could choose my mask because of the challenge of getting one mask to fit all, and there was no mention of a choice of bathing suit. I would have been required to tell my students I had selected each one because it was the very best there was, even though the only piece of that uniform I would have chosen was the wet suit. I would have been allowed to use the gear I had really purchased for my own diving only when students could not see me. All the gear I really did use for my personal use was sold by the shop, but it was not the specific models being promoted because of the profit margin.

To my knowledge, SSI does not require its shops to use any of these strategies, but they will teach them to you if you are interested. I understand it works well. The shop's profits are up significantly since they adopted these practices.

 

[Diver0001]

Paradigm Shift? They must have won a warehouse full of AT-PAK's on Storage Wars and need a way to unload them.

SSI *is* what they won at Storage Wars.....

Given the history Mares has with companies they've bought, I'm thinking SSI will be flipped for about 80% of what it's actually worth to some bozo whose idea of running a company is having a web-store that sells second hand underwear.

Being part of the "Mares family" pretty much means you're doomed. Every other company they've bought in the past has been bought so they could twist their neck and get them out of the market. If Mares wants SSI will will be for one of two reasons

1) to kill them
2) to push Mares gear under the flag of some agency that up to this point in time had some semblance of credibility. Once that semblance of credibility is squeezed out for Mares profits, SSI will be crumpled up and thrown away like a used piece of paper.

If you have an SSI cert then make sure you cross over to another agency while the getting is good. If you don't have an SSI cert, and especially if you don't want to dive in a HUB, then cut and run while you can.

In my personal opinion, of course.

R..