Well, I agree that PADI is acknowledging what is already happening. But at least they are embracing it instead of resisting it. If not, they would get left behind in it's dust. Now I'm not a "go padi" person, but for the industry as a whole I think this is a positive change.
I wonder how many 'brick-n-mortar-only' shops that are PADI and don't do any internet sales will this piss off though? I'm sure plenty, but it's the same ones that need to change themselves.
2. Embrace the Net: The modern retailer is not likely to survive trying to pretend the internet isn’t there.
Boy,
Aqualung needs to read this clearly. Otherwise they are doomed. They make a good product, but they are already being left behind by many other high-end manufacturers. Question is will they admit they are wrong and change or be hard-headed and go down with their ship? I expect the later.
It is such a shame the world is coming to this money for nothing and cheaper is better attitude. Do you buy your groceries on line? Lets all start doing that and push the local grocery stores out too.
Actually the originator of this post, Phil Ellis, is a perfect example of your post about grocery stores. He ran a small local dive shop in a medium sized town that is hours away from the ocean. It's obvious that sales were not huge in this envronment. Just like a small grocery store trying to compete with the new big-brand stores in town or any internet grocery store. Here, people could go online and buy the same scuba gear for 20% to 40% cheaper. It makes it hard for him to compete. He could either suffer from the internet or use it to his advantage. Now he operates a very successfull local store and internet commerce site. For his local customers, they can now get internet pricing at a walk-up local dive shop. For everyone else, they great prices remotely/online and still get can get great customer service. It's the best of both worlds.
You'll find several dive shops that have chosen this model and are thriving because of it. Scubatoys, Dive Sports, and more. Some have just seen the change before the others. Ironically, within a 1 hour drive of me, we've had 4 local dive shops go out of business in roughly the past year. Almost 10 failed LDS's within 1 hour drive in the past 10 years. They couldn't compete in the changing business model. It's that simple.
When my sister lived in NYC, she actually could order her groceries online. I'm not sure which store it was, but she could go online, buy her groceries (it was somewhat limited in selection though), and they would deliver it to her apartment. It was a local store of course.
I would actually pay extra for that. We pretty much buy the same things every week anyway. start with a standard online list, edit it slightly per week as needed, click submit and bill my credit card and the grocerys show up at the time I requested on my order. I'd pay an extra few bucks for this.
