When customers are unable to easily see an advertised price difference between dealers you have realistically removed the ability of dealers to compete on price. Please dont pretend that your MAP requirements do not affect this by only affecting the advertising, and please dont pretend that you are the knight in shining armor for the store owners. A well run operation and a competitive business model are all that is necessary. Your MAP requirements are only supportive of closed market practices and are a behavior that only hurts the consumer. A dive business owner deserves the ability to compete with his or her peers including with the metric of price. Having moved to from America to Europe I have become accustom to open internet sales and clearly advertised price competition. This has allowed both large and small vendors to openly compete with each other and honestly earn my business. I now more often support a smaller LDS than i ever did in the US. Price is an important purchase decision for me as is service and after sales support. A smaller shop who is competitive with price in one area and has offered me a good overall experience will win my support with other items and other services and training offerings regardless of price. American consumers need to begin to resist manufacturers that apply such pressure to the industry, and spend their money with manufacturers that are more open to American style competition. Until that happens this consumer unfriendly practice will continue and all to the detriment of the person who matters most, the final customer. So HOG you need to decide if you are in business to create and sell products for store owners or for divers.
I create products for divers that is sold by Dive Shops. I am NOT removing the ability of my dealers to compete in any means.
Your own argument is circular, you start with telling me that I "have realistically removed the ability of dealers to compete on price" yet further on you state "A smaller shop who is competitive with price in one area and has offered me a good overall experience will win my support with other items and other services and training offerings regardless of price". Which is it? Regardless the truth is I control nothing in regards to pricing and service offered by my dealers, all I control is what I sell it to them for and require them to not devalue the product by advertising below a set MINIMUM Advertising Price (MAP)
It is interesting that you mention "American style competition", the supreme court of the UNITED STATES has ruled that a manuf. may in fact require dealers to not discount as a condition of being a dealer, in effect allowing the manuf.to set retail selling price points.That is a very common practice in the dive industry for all or some products among MANY brands that EDGE/HOG will not be following.
The truth is the very nature of the price point of EDGE and HOG make the product clearly exceptionally competitive in the market place based on price points.
EDGE/HOG views other brands as the competition, as such I structure my programs to allow me and my dealers to compete with other brands.
I disagree with your assertion that my policies hurt the consumer, you can purchase a HOG D1 Doubles Set up with two balanced Adjustable second stages, two D1 Balanced First Stages and a HOG SPG at
MAP from many of my dealers for $552.93. Think about that, I can list a dozen or more mainstream regulators that cost more than that for a single regulator and they offer no performance or feature benefit over HOG. (heck for fun check out this chart
ScubaLab: Regulators - July 2010 Expanded Data: Features Chart | Scuba Diving Magazine or even a better chart
http://www.scubadiving.com/gear/regulators/2010/04/scubalab-from-rec-to-tec-tech-regulators)
My last point is one that may not occur to you, the EDGE area of Scubaboard is actually an area where the manufs get to edit or delete posts. Yours will stay here, I promise you other brands wouldn't have....
