if $470 is the price, that's going to ruin his market share because the only thing he has going left is the parts availability, but most of us have ways of getting them from Hollis and Dive Rite. To jump that D3/Zenith from $325 to $470 though is going to run most people away. That and the BS about having reversible and non reversible regs, just make them all bloody reversible, it will save money over time only having one SKU and one part to make, Apeks and Dive Rite have both done it and while 98% of the regs will stay one sided, if that's what your two primary competitors are doing, probably best to follow suit....
If he was smart he would drop the D1 completely, ditch the classic first stage, make a reversible second stage design like the XTX. Hell I sent him a boat load of pictures this summer on how the reversing is done. Poseidon has 2 first stages *would be nice if they had a third with a turret*, 3 second stages, Apeks XTX line has 5 first stages, 2 sets of 2 of which are basically the same, and essentially 2 second stages, one with an adjustment knob, one without. Dive Rite has 2 first stages, one second stage. Sell 4 first stages, Edge Epic, D2, D3. Sell 3 second stages, Edge Epic, whatever the octo is called, and the Zenith. The Epic is basically just a chrome D2 with a yoke, so you have 3 sku's, 2 first stages, then 3 second stages, costs go down, people get happy again.
I know 100% fact that if the prices jump up that much I'll never buy or recommend another Hog reg. I believe in what they are/were trying to do, but if I can get an XT set from Dive Rite or DC1/212 from Hollis which are basically the same regs with a bit larger more established company for $430, I'd be a fool not to. Hell at that point you can get an Atomic Z3 for $530, made in USA and higher quality.... There's no reason to take away the one thing that Chris did in the beginning which was getting us quality regulators at a fair price, no need to get greedy and try to make it the next Dive Rite or Hollis that have to be sold at 100% markup just to get the LDS' to sell them, it's BS. Mike and Edd individually probably sell more regulators than every other dealer he has combined and with the cave and sidemount community pushing them to Edd, this site pushing people to Mike, Jim being as active as he is on here, there's no reason to push all of that away. I'm interested to see what Edd will do with the prices being jacked up that high since he has Nick by the balls on Hollis pricing, it'll be interesting to see if he switches over and tries to get the DC1 turret extended like he did with the D3, and then just starts selling and using those if he can get the price down to $350 or so. This is stupid