Here is your chance to tell the Scuba owners what you want

[Eric Sedletzky]

I'll second that! But it's a business and the marketers ("M A R -- K E T -- ERS,UC give me bucks --- give me bucks --- etc." ) will do whatever it takes to turn a profit. And that's what businesses are all about. If that means dumbing down the courses, reducing standards and shortening them to the absurd, so be it. One other thing, buying trinkets after the initial purchase. Have a zoom bag with weight pouches. Lost one. Replacing it costs more than the BC (I exaggerate). Q. Can we keep these costs at a more reasonable level (per my definition of reasonable)? A. No, it's just business and you're taking this entirely too personal.

Yes it is a business that needs to make money, but not at the expense of someone's personal safety. We do take this personal.
(Not aimed at you F106A, but the dive industry in general. Carry on)

 

[Avonthediver]

I need an air tank that is made from an alloy of aluminum and titanium or some other light weight metal which only weighs ten pounds or less, has the outer dimensions of a 19cf pony, has the buoyancy of steel when empty, holds 5000cf of air and ony costs around twenty bucks. Are you listening manufacturers at the DEMA show? Certifying agencies? What's that got to do with anything? You certify for life and forget them.

were are you going with this tank?

 

[NCadiver]

Sell service kits for regs.

At the moment I have to play silly games to get them.

As ian said and I'll reiterate. Sell me my service kits! I am in the process of getting rid of all my regs that the manufacturer will not sell me kits for. I don;t want to wait weeks for regs to get done. I have tools and training and prefer to do them myself.

As for DEMA stop putting so much emphasis on travel. I know they kickback to you for this but local divers are what keep shops in business.

And finally more emphasis on putting trained COMPETENT divers in the water- not underwater tourists that need to be led around by the hand to keep them from getting hurt.

dgreenh, highdesert, Jax, RoatanMan

Open a dive shop and they will sell you service kits. And if you are that good you local shop should be will to sell you service kit and parts, and if you have been trained you should be able to get parts from who trained you.
I can walk into five different shop and get serice kit and parts for any major brand no problem.

 

[Doc]

Open a dive shop and they will sell you service kits. And if you are that good you local shop should be will to sell you service kit and parts, and if you have been trained you should be able to get parts from who trained you.
I can walk into five different shop and get serice kit and parts for any major brand no problem.

I want service kits because I go diving in places where there are no supply chains. Somehow, even in these remote dive locations, if I have a service kit, the local barefoot DM always volunteers to do the work on a log that serves as a workbench/hitching post for a donkey.

Usually I give him a 'pocket-tool' just to say thanks and so he doesn't have to finagle it with that rusty screwdriver. He usually still has and uses a selection of rocks of certain shapes that are used for whacking stuff. The reg is serviced and operational before the next dive, and he has a collection of some serviceable used parts (plus a shiny new pocket tool), so it's a win-win for everyone.

If one of our party members insist on bringing his Poseidon regs, they're smart enough to bring their own kits. If you have a Sherwood, they're universally serviceable and interchange parts can be found in even the most remote diving operation or in a pinch you could cobble them out of a dead BIC lighter and a bicycle inner tube.

I can't get parts from the guy who trained me because he died at age 87 ~ let's face facts here, a regulator is a regulator. It isn't rocket surgery. But there are 100 spurious arguments to the contrary.

I appreciate the need for an LDS to withhold parts form consumers to protect profit margins, unfortunately they hide behind the lame excuse of liability from non-certified people performing technical tasks.

This is what the Glock pistol company does, but they make no such claims as to fear of increased liability. You just are a yearly certified Glock armorer, or you can not get the parts. Period, no explanation given or implied. It protects the supply chain.

All of my above silly rambling aside, the dive industry already knows exactly what the consumer "wants", and they are in no uncertain terms giving it to us.

They know the majority of new gear buyers are hot for shiny metal objects with serial numbers and circuit boards.
To this last available buying market, reliance upon technology is in their DNA. Thus, technology is what they offer. Titanium underwear and more.

They cater to the lowest common denominator which they themselves have created. Consider: Are any of the major BCD suppliers offering a viable and competitive BPW alternative? Why are the major manufacturers offering a string of functionally identical regulators at a preposterously wide price spread?

 

[David Wilson]

All of my above silly rambling aside, the dive industry already knows exactly what the consumer "wants", and they are in no uncertain terms giving it to us.

Why, then, is it so difficult for Americans to order the world's oldest mask design, the Cressi Pinocchio, from Europe, while it's so difficult, and expensive, for Europeans to order Scubapro's floating full-foot snorkelling fins from America? Both companies, or their concessionaires, seem to have decided that America doesn't want the Pinocchio mask and Europe doesn't want the Scubapro floating full-foot snorkelling fins. If the dive industry knows exactly what the consumer wants, how were restrictive decisions like these reached?

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I enjoy diving and teaching too much to open a shop! I should not have to go shooping for parts kits. The guy who trained me was not employed by a shop but a manufacturer and he no longer works for them. The shop I did the training at I no longer use for a number of reasons. The one I work with now is not a dealer for one of the brands I have. If I could order the parts myself JUST for my regs ( I only need 3 1st and 2nd stage kits) direct from the mfg it would be great. I'm not looking to open a reg repair business. I would not be taking anything from any shop that I ACTUALLY WOULD USE. I can go buy damn near anything for my car and if so inclined put it on myself. No problem. Why can't manufacturers set it up so LDS's can have parts counters? Some actually do. Dive Rite and HOG/Edge allow sales to the consumer. So when will some of these ther mfg's do it and see that many divers who don't have LDS's that do a decent job would get their regs serviced every year or two. They'd just do it themselves instead of having to let someone else do it. The liablility thing is BS and they know it.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Why, then, is it so difficult for Americans to order the world's oldest mask design, the Cressi Pinocchio, from Europe, while it's so difficult, and expensive, for Europeans to order Scubapro's floating full-foot snorkelling fins from America? Both companies, or their concessionaires, seem to have decided that America doesn't want the Pinocchio mask and Europe doesn't want the Scubapro floating full-foot snorkelling fins. If the dive industry knows exactly what the consumer wants, how were restrictive decisions like these reached?

By Dimwitted ad execs and marketing doofusses who have some degree that lets them decide what YOU want. Don;t give the consumer real choice. Just control them enough to grab the money and run.

 

[Doc]

Why, then, is it so difficult for Americans to order the world's oldest mask design, the Cressi Pinocchio, from Europe.....

+1 to Jim and... I do see what you're saying David. (The Piniochio was maybe my third mask back in the early 1960's! (Imagine trying to find a replacement purge valve in Northern Illinois!)

I had to shop in Canada a few years ago to get a very snappy low volume mask from USD. It is US Divers, right? They wouldn't sell it here because we Americans break delicate stuff and complain... or so I heard the reason as stated.

Cressi has had previous issues with US dealership treatment and cultivation thereof, but why their product line is not international, fiik.

On a US market observation- I have always enjoyed using the now defunct Mares ESA 6 window mask. They pulled it off the racks because they were waranteeing too many of them for cracks in the complex plastic frame. I have had mine operational for 6 years now and haven't managed to step on it or drop a tank on it. The message? Sometimes the manufacturer builds a beautiful product that kills their profit margins because of clumsy people exercising the warranty.

Remember when HEAD Ski Company used to warranty their ski gear from breakage? A complete replacement was the norm. That was in the 1970's. That stopped, too.

Come to think of it HEAD owns MARES.

(And thank you MARES for sending me six of the last ones in the warehouse when I wrote to them
bemoaning the loss of this great mask from their product line!)

 

[scubafanatic]

I don't really know what DEMA has to do with the real world of diving as far as the diving consumer is concerned.
DEMA is closed to the consumer. Dive shops are operating in a parallel universe to the real world of where diving instruction and products are going. They for some reason have it in their minds that people only want the latest split fin and poodle jacket. So the dive shop owner can go to DEMA all they want, it's not really going to change anything.

The internet has given birth to a whole new world of diving and has branched off and has a life of it's own. Haven't the dive shops (and maybe manufacturers) been paying attention??

So what's going to be at DEMA this year that's any different from any other year besides more of the same stuff but just in larger quantities. If the owner of my LDS goes to DEMA this year is he somehow going to transform his shop into carrying stuff that anybody further than a basic open water student will want? Or is it just going to be more elevator levers and padding?

On the internet we have all sorts of choices, some of this may reluctantly spill over into dive shops (some day) but most doesn't.
There's BP/W, DIR, Vintage, Minimalism (and associated gear), sidemount, spring straps, custom suits, and a whole world of other really cool and different items and ideas that simply are not available or even heard of at regular dive shops.
All the above things (and there's more) I learned about through the internet. If I had to rely on dive shops to get all my info I would have never known about all this new cutting edge stuff and ideas.
If dive shops knew about all this stuff from the beginning they sure do a good job of hiding it from us, or maybe they're just living in denial.

The internet is not going away anytime soon and all the gear deals, ideas and training methods that advanced or forward thinking divers really want and use will continue to elude dive shops and it's only going to get worse for them.

In California where recreational diving in the US actually began it's the worst. I've walked into many dives shops up and down the state and in virtually every one of them I see the same wall of poodle jackets and the same display of split fins, and the same rack of little dangly retractors and such. It's almost like they mould themselves after the exact same model. They have nothing I can use. All they want to do is run open water classes and slam the student right into a bunch of padded up fluff gear that they sell. Later that same student gets wise and maybe finds SB or other internet forum and after educating themselves realizes that they were overcharged on a bunch of gear that they now have to sell for pennies on the dollar to get the stuff they really want. This leaves the new diver irritated and resentful and they feel they have been scammed.
That same student also realizes the only place they can get the real gear they want for a decent price is the internet. At that point all the dive shop is really good for is maybe buying new steel tanks (if the price is right), weights, and airfills.

Sorry for the long winded rant but until dive shops open up their minds to where the real diving world is going I don't see anything changing.
In a way it's almost too late, they've missed the bus.

I wonder what % of dive industry revenues come from new divers certifying/buying gear versus 'lifetime' scuba divers? From what I understand, there's a very high drop out rate of new divers, the vast majority either stop diving shortly after certification or they're 'casual' divers (doing a couple dives per year off their annual cruise ship vacation), meaning perhaps from a revenue standpoint, it doesn't matter what crap gear they buy, as long as they buy SOMETHING when they first start and are still all excited new divers, the dive shop/manufacturers make their quick buck before these divers drop out of the sport for good anyway. The newbie divers are too stupid/inexperienced to know they've been had, so they're not pissed off either, hence the reputation of the dive industry isn't hurt, as these people were never going to be repeat customers anyway, so they won't feel as if they were screwed. If this represents the true business model of the dive industry (at least the gear sector), then maybe things DO make sense.

Completely agree with you in the irrelevency of DEMA to me as a diver, and the enabling power of the WWW......I'm often the first kid on the block to order/buy the cool new gizmo, just yesterday I picked up (arrived Friday from Oxycheq to Scubatoys) a new Oxy Universal Light Sock to experiment with, and the the sales clerk admitted he'd opened the bag up to check it out because he'd never seen one before and was curious, so I'm pretty much 'up' on current events in scubaworld and am sometimes the one alerting the dive shops about an oncoming new product that they need to be aware of or stock.

 

[mdb]

I enjoy diving and teaching too much to open a shop! I should not have to go shooping for parts kits. The guy who trained me was not employed by a shop but a manufacturer and he no longer works for them. The shop I did the training at I no longer use for a number of reasons. The one I work with now is not a dealer for one of the brands I have. If I could order the parts myself JUST for my regs ( I only need 3 1st and 2nd stage kits) direct from the mfg it would be great. I'm not looking to open a reg repair business. I would not be taking anything from any shop that I ACTUALLY WOULD USE. I can go buy damn near anything for my car and if so inclined put it on myself. No problem. Why can't manufacturers set it up so LDS's can have parts counters? Some actually do. Dive Rite and HOG/Edge allow sales to the consumer. So when will some of these ther mfg's do it and see that many divers who don't have LDS's that do a decent job would get their regs serviced every year or two. They'd just do it themselves instead of having to let someone else do it. The liablility thing is BS and they know it.

Jim: Your comments are, as usual, pretty spot on. Add Apollo to your list of those who will sell parts and provide service information, schematics and other help direct to those who are seeking to service their own equipment. We have a service manual included on our website to help those who could be in a remote location or are just searching for help with a local repair.