Hello! I recently got open water certified in Curacao.
Welcome
There is a dive shop near my house that has their own pool, their own lake, and they do a lot of dive trips to places all over the world. I went it yesterday to check it out. I really liked the place. The guy talked to me for 30 minutes and I didn't buy anything.
Having a relationship with a shop is useful but not as critical as it once was. There are other information sources, Scubaboard among them. Scubaboard has a systemic bias, but local dive shops also have a (different) bias.
However, the only gear they sell is Scubapro. I asked about servicing since I'm going to buy my own gear. I bought some fins and a mask while I was in Curacao. They just happen to be Scubapro. Still, the guy at the dive shop said they only service Scubapro gear. Is this pretty typical for a dive shop?
In my experience, the typical situation is that dive shops officially service only whatever gear they are dealers for. If you have a relationship with them, and bring in gear that they officially don't service, they may service it anyway. Often dive shops have relationships with other local shops that allow them to get parts for competing brands on the q.t.
Bear in mind that not all gear requires service. e.g. I dive a $30 mask. If anything goes wrong with it, I'll just replace it. Gloves, boots, compass, same deal.
I do like Scubapro but not everything. I'm not crazy about their wet suits and definitely not crazy about their dive computers. Their BCDs are pretty nice but I think there are better options out there. I like to buy locally but I'd like to be able to get it serviced locally as well. I'm not opposed to ordering online either. I'm pretty new to this sport but I'm already hooked and looking at going diving as soon as I can.
I have bought most of my gear used, but I also patronize divegearexpress.com, leisurepro.com, freedivestore.com, makospearguns.com, and piranhadivemfg.com. I service my own gear. I have a good relationship with two local dive shops, which I use for air fills and instruction.
Is it typical for a dive shop to only deal with one brand of dive gear?
The shops I've visited typically have a primary brand, or maybe two primary brands. They add other brands to bring in product lines that are insufficiently covered by their primary brand or where they want to offer a contrasting price point. It's old-school retail, and markups are high. The thing to remember is that the industry is fairly mature and there is little difference in the products themselves among brands. Your experience of diving will be no different (trivialities like hose routing and minor differences in weight aside) whether your regulators are Scubapro or Atomic or Mares or Hog or Deep Six or Cressi or Poseidon or U S Divers. The differences will be in how, where, and at what cost you get service, and in whether you can buy parts to install yourself.