Future of DiveShops?

[scottwilson1]

The owner actually gets online to look up what an item sells for online,without the customer even asking for a price match. Usually we are the same price,if not , it's matched. Sometimes the online price is higher than what the stores price is,we sell it to the customer at the lower price. Has to be same exact product and not a close out item.

that's how my LDC operates !

 

[MrCultureJammer]

That's gotta be tough to have someone else setting your prices for you. It takes you and your shop completely out of the equation of being able to turn a profit when someone else far away decides what your profit shall be. Hope this other person knows my books well and knows what I need to make to stay afloat.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

That's gotta be tough to have someone else setting your prices for you. It takes you and your shop completely out of the equation of being able to turn a profit when someone else far away decides what your profit shall be. Hope this other person knows my books well and knows what I need to make to stay afloat.

The other option is to not carry brands that have a strict Map pricing policy.
Only carry brands that give you full control of your own pricing, and there are several that are just as good as any.
What used to irk me was when a certain company would hold their "authorized" shops to MAP prices but then supposed "grey" market items would return from Europe to fill the shelves of e-retailers in the US.
Or did the items ever even leave the US? We will probably never know the truth.
Seems like a pretty convenient way to dump a lot of unsold gear out the back door to me.

 

[oly5050user]

That's gotta be tough to have someone else setting your prices for you. It takes you and your shop completely out of the equation of being able to turn a profit when someone else far away decides what your profit shall be. Hope this other person knows my books well and knows what I need to make to stay afloat.

absolutely know how you feel. now that one of the largest online vendors is an authorized dealer for lines that previously was not, we find their prices in line with ours. Sometimes an item will be found that had MMAP pricing policy, but because it may be discontinued, the MAP policy is not held to it. For things like that which are rare we still honor a price match policy rather than lose the sale.

 

[Octopusprime]

Some dive shops see their value and others do not. Some dive shops to make ends meet raise prices, but then out price themselves from the online competitors. Brick and mortar has 2 values... First I can get it today. I will pay a little more to have it now but how much? Second is you can touch, try on, get help configuring, service etc. But how much more ? When I was shopping for my new wet suit I needed to try it on, shop recommended me a differnt brand that had more size options... Fit was great but then they told me the price it was almost 3x what I was expecting to pay. So I put off purchase, I looked online and it was less than 50% the price of the shop with free shipping. All of these mfg had map pricing so even the online retailer is making some margin. I would have paid 10-15% more for the service but not double.

Most shop owners got into scuba to offset the cost of diving or make money and dive. Without understanding retail sales, marketing and sales. When you sell a wet suit make sure you sell the cleaner, a hanger and any other accessories. They may be good at customer service geting them their size to try on but when was the last time you purchased a BCD and they tried to sell you a retractor, octo holder anything... For me never.

I was in retail for years and big ticket items allways have low margin and accessories have high margin. I think successful shops will limit in intros on high dollar items. Mother will need enough for people to try on then back fill stock. But increase the sq. footage for accessories. If you sell tanks make sure you sell them orings and dust caps. Most people will stop in a shop and look around and many leave with out purchasing but if you can get them to buy $10 item your better off.

Many shops do not carry enough accessories. I can not tell you how many shops I stopped at because I wanted to eliminate my slate from floating around and wanted to try a wrist slate a $20 item I went to 6 shops and no one had one. So I had to buy online. We needed a bunch of octo holders and the ones we like I went to 6 shops and no one had the ones that covered the mouth piece. The keep mouth piec clean on road bed and you do not need to bend hoses. So I bought online.

You our have to not look at how much I will make if I sell a dry suit, but how many you going to sell. It is about margin per sq ft. Lower your stock levels on big items and offer more sq ft for high margin by percent items.

 

[boulderjohn]

I decided to join this thread after learning of the closing of a shop I have used for years. Fill Express was a South Florida mainstay for many years. It had some ownership changes over the years as it struggled. I knew the most recent owners, and I liked them a lot. I liked everyone who worked there, in fact. The service when I used them was excellent. I did a lot of my technical training through them, and I was quite satisfied with it. I have some thoughts on why they are no longer in operation, thoughts that might be helpful to others.

In the last couple of years, I used them while visiting from Colorado because of my sense of loyalty as a satisfied customer. I almost felt it was a moral obligation to do so. That was, however, just about the only reason I used them, and I used competing shops a whole lot instead. If a satisfied customer shifts shops, there has to be a reason.

One big reason was the limited scope of their business. In the past, they were essentially what the name suggests--a place to get tanks filled. They were certainly that. They had a 15 tank cascade EACH for nitrox 32, 36, and 40. Their prices for fills were great. They had banked 21/35. You could get any kind of trimix fill you wanted. They did sell some gear, but that was about it for other services. One day during a long decompression stop, my dive buddy wrote on his wrist slate "I just bought Fill Express." When I later asked him what his plans were, he said he wanted to turn it into a full service shop. That didn't happen. The name was officially changed to GoDive Florida, but the sign out front still said Fill Express. More gear was offered for sale, but not much more, and the space for showing such gear was simply inadequate for it. If you went upstairs, the office area was about the same as the gear showroom area, and the classroom was bigger. Yet, they did not do all that much instruction. The instruction they did do was mostly technical. They did not have either a pool or rental gear to offer to OW students.

A few years ago some relatives came to Florida to get their OW certification from me while I was there. Last year some friends came to Florida to get their AOW from me. I was thus acting as an independent instructor, and there are a lot of independent instructors in the area. I could not use their shop because they could not offer me the full range of services I needed for instruction. Other shops could offer me discounted rates on gear rental and boat fees. If I went the whole package with a competitor, including gas fills, I saved a lot of money. I imagine a lot of other instructors must have felt the same way, meaning they were shut out of a sizable portion of the scuba market.

Because they did not have their own boat, as a customer you had to deal with two different operators. You would drop off your tanks for a fill the day before your dive. If they were not busy, you could wait for them to fill it then. If not, you had to come back later when they were filled. Then you would take them to the boat the next day. Each time you are lugging tanks in and out of the shop and in and out of the dive boat, and if you are diving with something like double steel 108s, that is a real issue. If you were diving several days in a row, you had to do a cross town shuttle run several times a day, a major inconvenience. In contrast, there was a lot of convenience in going with a full service operation. I could drop off my tanks the day before a dive and then show up the next morning to find them full and ready to go and taken onto the boat for me. If I was diving the next day, I didn't have to touch them--I would just tell them what mix I wanted in them next. Over several days of diving, that would amount to hours of driving time saved as well as not enduring the strain of all that tank lugging.

When my friend bought the shop a few years ago, I think he had the right idea in expanding the services he offered, but for whatever reason, he was unable to achieve that expanded vision. He therefore could not meet the needs of his customers as well as some of his competition. In that case, you are eventually going to lose even your most loyal customers, no matter how well you treat them. If they have no choice but to go to a competitor to get a service you don't offer, then at some point that competitor is going to start looking pretty good.

 

[drrich2]

John:

Reading over your post made me think of my 2 Florida dive trips, one to Key Largo, one to Jupiter. In both cases, as a tourist diver, I wanted to get close to the 'turn key trip' I get from Buddy Dive Resort in Bonaire.

Rainbow Reef Dive Center was at the end of the parking lot for Courtyard Marriott. So convenient I could squeeze in 2 boat trips/day. I didn't have that convenient lodging closeness in Jupiter, but Jupiter Dive Center does have a good dive shop beside the area people gather with their gear, near the pier to the dive boat. So tank & gear rental, air or nitrox, & boat trips, all in one place.

I wonder how this issue varies for dive shops at inland locations who don't see so much dive tourism? I'm guessing the customer base for a south Florida dive shop differs somewhat from that of a Colorado dive shop, so the range or product offering must vary, too.

A big recurrent theme in this thread, that I see in your post, is convenience. To the customer by having product immediately at hand to rent or sell. To private instructors via onsite indoor pool for confined water instruction or customers to try gear in. To dive tourists to handle travel arrangements. To make gas fills fast & easy. I wonder whether convenience is an underdeveloped product of many LDS?

Richard.

 

[thenewN2O]

I can share the perspective of a relatively new diver.

There are 3 LDS in my city that is a 500 miles drive to the nearest ocean dive site, and 200 miles to the nearest rec diving lake or quarry.

Two of the LDS are basically one-man sole proprietor training centers with a small low-cost retail footprint that sells mask/fins/snorkels and jacket BCs at full msrp to folks before their trip to Cancun.

The third LDS has an indoor training pool accessible to $150 club members. To dive in their pool for "insurance reasons" you have to either buy your regs and BCs from them, or you pay exorbitant fees per reg and BC annually for "certification". For their gear sales, they actually markup from msrp. So if I buy gear from LeisurePro at street price and tax-free, I may as well buy it from the LDS.

I end up buying online and just diving in my own pool.

 

[Octopusprime]

I think the key to the last couple examples is knowing your customers and meeting a need. Is the area tourist heavy, local divers, tech divers, shore diving or boat diving...

if your heavy in tourism diving your customers change every week, then you need network the hotel concierges. If your only about fills you must either have added value (like trimex and banked nitrox), be cheaper, or more convent. Not to mention be able to maintain sales to cover overhead.

Sounds like a couple of these shops did not use their space well. Training space is great because you do not need to maintain inventory to fill it but if it is not being used it is not coving the overhead cost. etc... Let's say I owned a shop and had a training space but do not want to do instruction... Why not rent space to independents? Maybe do pick up and drop off for charters. Being just like your competitors only works in high volume low information environments.

---------- Post added December 28th, 2014 at 10:38 PM ----------

I can share the perspective of a relatively new diver.

There are 3 LDS in my city that is a 500 miles drive to the nearest ocean dive site, and 200 miles to the nearest rec diving lake or quarry.

Two of the LDS are basically one-man sole proprietor training centers with a small low-cost retail footprint that sells mask/fins/snorkels and jacket BCs at full msrp to folks before their trip to Cancun.

The third LDS has an indoor training pool accessible to $150 club members. To dive in their pool for "insurance reasons" you have to either buy your regs and BCs from them, or you pay exorbitant fees per reg and BC annually for "certification". For their gear sales, they actually markup from msrp. So if I buy gear from LeisurePro at street price and tax-free, I may as well buy it from the LDS.

I end up buying online and just diving in my own pool.

Great example of knowing your market the 3rd shop has found a need the other 2 shops do not have the pool. That has created a need for gear to be certified (even if the insurance reason is a joke) the important thing is the customers do not see it as unreasonable to use the pool

 

[scubafanatic]

I decided to join this thread after learning of the closing of a shop I have used for years. Fill Express was a South Florida mainstay for many years. It had some ownership changes over the years as it struggled. I knew the most recent owners, and I liked them a lot. I liked everyone who worked there, in fact. The service when I used them was excellent. I did a lot of my technical training through them, and I was quite satisfied with it. I have some thoughts on why they are no longer in operation, thoughts that might be helpful to others.

In the last couple of years, I used them while visiting from Colorado because of my sense of loyalty as a satisfied customer. I almost felt it was a moral obligation to do so. That was, however, just about the only reason I used them, and I used competing shops a whole lot instead. If a satisfied customer shifts shops, there has to be a reason.

One big reason was the limited scope of their business. In the past, they were essentially what the name suggests--a place to get tanks filled. They were certainly that. They had a 15 tank cascade EACH for nitrox 32, 36, and 40. Their prices for fills were great. They had banked 21/35. You could get any kind of trimix fill you wanted. They did sell some gear, but that was about it for other services. One day during a long decompression stop, my dive buddy wrote on his wrist slate "I just bought Fill Express." When I later asked him what his plans were, he said he wanted to turn it into a full service shop. That didn't happen. The name was officially changed to GoDive Florida, but the sign out front still said Fill Express. More gear was offered for sale, but not much more, and the space for showing such gear was simply inadequate for it. If you went upstairs, the office area was about the same as the gear showroom area, and the classroom was bigger. Yet, they did not do all that much instruction. The instruction they did do was mostly technical. They did not have either a pool or rental gear to offer to OW students.

A few years ago some relatives came to Florida to get their OW certification from me while I was there. Last year some friends came to Florida to get their AOW from me. I was thus acting as an independent instructor, and there are a lot of independent instructors in the area. I could not use their shop because they could not offer me the full range of services I needed for instruction. Other shops could offer me discounted rates on gear rental and boat fees. If I went the whole package with a competitor, including gas fills, I saved a lot of money. I imagine a lot of other instructors must have felt the same way, meaning they were shut out of a sizable portion of the scuba market.

Because they did not have their own boat, as a customer you had to deal with two different operators. You would drop off your tanks for a fill the day before your dive. If they were not busy, you could wait for them to fill it then. If not, you had to come back later when they were filled. Then you would take them to the boat the next day. Each time you are lugging tanks in and out of the shop and in and out of the dive boat, and if you are diving with something like double steel 108s, that is a real issue. If you were diving several days in a row, you had to do a cross town shuttle run several times a day, a major inconvenience. In contrast, there was a lot of convenience in going with a full service operation. I could drop off my tanks the day before a dive and then show up the next morning to find them full and ready to go and taken onto the boat for me. If I was diving the next day, I didn't have to touch them--I would just tell them what mix I wanted in them next. Over several days of diving, that would amount to hours of driving time saved as well as not enduring the strain of all that tank lugging.

When my friend bought the shop a few years ago, I think he had the right idea in expanding the services he offered, but for whatever reason, he was unable to achieve that expanded vision. He therefore could not meet the needs of his customers as well as some of his competition. In that case, you are eventually going to lose even your most loyal customers, no matter how well you treat them. If they have no choice but to go to a competitor to get a service you don't offer, then at some point that competitor is going to start looking pretty good.

It appears we can now safely dismiss the silly idea that local dive clubs that just provide gas fills (and let the WWW provide all gear sales) will spread across the land as the new 'model' for how the future will unfold if LDS's die out.