BC manufacturers must be Raking it in...

[SparticleBrane]

One of the reasons I dislike dive shops is because I find that most of them are generally clueless and overpriced.
The shop right down the road from me will fill my double Al80s for $12 with "regular" air but it's $14 if I want O2 clean air. Why are they even pumping something that isn't O2 clean if they have the ability to do otherwise? If I want nitrox, watch out...stuff is $$$$. They also require nitrox wraps to fill your tanks with nitrox.
I can go to a different shop (1.5 hours away) that pumps clean nitrox and will give me a good fill for $12. This shop doesn't require nitrox wraps.


Another hangup I have is that most dive shops treat their customers as if they're stupid, and they make me play their stupid games to get what I want. :no Whatever happened to "The customer is always right." ??
I am the customer. I am paying you money. Connect the fill whip to my tanks, or I will go elsewhere, and make sure every diver I know understands that your shop sucks. I'm practically shoving cash in their hand to fill my tanks, and they won't because they're afraid some new OW diver is going to mistake my doubles for their tanks and go kill themselves.

 

[Thalassamania]

Spoken like a true keyman. IMO, one of the things that turns divers off to their local dive shop is the feeling (valid or not) that the high prices they pay for gear and trips are subsidizing the gear and travel of the people at the shop.

The entire dive industry seems at times to be something of a pyramid scheme or shell game. I think that reminds customers of the car dealer and turns customers off.

I don't work in or with shops, thus I can not partake of shop based programs. But I've been around long enough to know how the programs work. There is no reason that anyone should resent such programs, they do not raise customer prices, all they do is eliminate all profit down the distribution chain and put gear in shop staff's hands at about manufacturer's cost. There's no subsidy. As far as the "tag-along" Instructor or DM, they are usually provided for in some form, typically they actually go out on the boat as crew rather than passengers (that way they do not count against the 6-pack or 12-pack license.)

... The difference between diving and ever other activity I know about is that a couple of of organisations (mainly padi) control what gear is right to a large degree. They control the whole system with stores and courses. A new innovation must first get into thier manuals before most divers get to know about them. I dont belive this is a fast system and I dont belive padi care as long as they make money. A ski manufacturer try to sell the concept to skiers and the instruktors have to follow. A dive gear manufacturer need to sell the concept it to an organisation and instructors. It is large difference here.

nitrox seems to be an example of this and people say that padi didn't want it until they understood that they could get money from it. A similar concept to nitrox in skiing would probably be popular faster.

The padi dive concept right now needs a lot of instructors, a lot of stores that earn money on gear sales and fast courses to get new gear byers. I dont belive that it is that strange that the price in the store might be high.

It's always good to remember that for many year both U.S. Divers and PADI were essential run by John Cronin. As for the skiing comparison, I do not buy my gear from my ski instructor, the lift operator, or the bellman at the lodge.

 

[The Chairman]

Why would you put them in poor equipment:no I provided good equipment for my students so they didn't have an issue either.

Therein is the REAL difference. I don't see most BCs as "junk" and I don't blame the gear for my student's successes. It's clearly MY responsibility to make sure they learn and learn well. As has been pointed out, a BC is a pretty low tech device. If you can't make one work, then you would probably have an issue using a hammer!

 

[fireflock]

I don't work in or with shops, thus I can not partake of shop based programs. But I've been around long enough to know how the programs work. There is no reason that anyone should resent such programs, they do not raise customer prices, all they do is eliminate all profit down the distribution chain and put gear in shop staff's hands at about manufacturer's cost. There's no subsidy. As far as the "tag-along" Instructor or DM, they are usually provided for in some form, typically they actually go out on the boat as crew rather than passengers (that way they do not count against the 6-pack or 12-pack license.)

You don't need to explain to me how thing work. I understand. I'm telling you, as a regular customer who talks with a lot of other regular customers, the perception I talked about is out there.

I'd venture to say that brand new divers have a perception of dive shops and the scuba industry that is as good as it will ever be. As they hang around for a while that good feeling drops a bit and they start to see things they perceive as less than fair. You start to hear divers talking about the super high margins, price fixing, subsidizing shop trips, short fills, poor service, shops just trying to rip them off, and so on....

The industry can explain all they want why it isn't so (and I'm inclined to agree with some of the industry arguments) but the retention numbers for both local shops and the industry in general speak for themselves. There is something about the experience that customers don't care for. I think the perception of an unfair playing field is at least part of it.

Rich

 

[PhilEllis]

Edited after reading the remainder of the thread... already covered

Well, we can get a LITTLE more specific on the quantity of buoyancy vest sold. I will give you figures for a rolling year.

From October 2006 to September 2007 , ALL BC BRANDS COMBINED, the total buoyancy units sold at retail (wholesale numbers will obviously be different) was 78,732. Earlier, I stated a market share of total scuba equipment sales in error. Of the total scuba equipment sales in this time period, buoyancy vests represent about 11% of those sales.

"It's a small world after all"

Phil Ellis

 

[Otter]

One of the reasons I dislike dive shops is because I find that most of them are generally clueless and overpriced.
The shop right down the road from me will fill my double Al80s for $12 with "regular" air but it's $14 if I want O2 clean air. Why are they even pumping something that isn't O2 clean if they have the ability to do otherwise? If I want nitrox, watch out...stuff is $$$$.

Well you probably know that generally it requires another filter stage to get O2 compatible air vs. air. As for nitrox, my guess is that due to cost, most shops use partial pressure blending. To do that properly means extra labor and perhaps 2-3 cycles of filling/cooling to get the desired %. So there is more cost, but more importantly more value. Why do we pay more (and more!) for Premium vs unleaded gas?

They also require nitrox wraps to fill your tanks with nitrox. I can go to a different shop (1.5 hours away) that pumps clean nitrox and will give me a good fill for $12. This shop doesn't require nitrox wraps.

I agree that most of the noise around nitrox wraps is just another way to make $$.

Another hangup I have is that most dive shops treat their customers as if they're stupid, and they make me play their stupid games to get what I want. :no Whatever happened to "The customer is always right." ??
I am the customer. I am paying you money. Connect the fill whip to my tanks, or I will go elsewhere, and make sure every diver I know understands that your shop sucks. I'm practically shoving cash in their hand to fill my tanks, and they won't because they're afraid some new OW diver is going to mistake my doubles for their tanks and go kill themselves.

Most dive shops are staffed and far too often operated by divers, not businesspersons. The ones that are run by both perform the best. Because of the failing/mature state of the Scuba Industry, the 'hourly' staff is often the guy who just got certified incredibly enamored with diving and 'wants to work in the dive industry' and is willing to do so for peanuts. I have also seen the industry veteran, ego-centric experts, that know everything (except that selling starts with listening) that won't give ya the time of day.

The customer is NOT always right...thats an old wives tale started by customers. A healthy business relationship exists with there is an (relatively) equal exchange of value -- traditionally money for product/service. If its unbalanced by either party, there are problems. While its easy to say, but more difficult to execute (for some), there are some customers that are too difficult, too demanding, too expensive to service for the value (profit) they offer. You get Nordstrom's service at Nordstrom, not Wal-Mart....why, because you pay for it with a better value proposition.

 

[MikeFerrara]

One of the reasons I dislike dive shops is because I find that most of them are generally clueless and overpriced.
The shop right down the road from me will fill my double Al80s for $12 with "regular" air but it's $14 if I want O2 clean air. Why are they even pumping something that isn't O2 clean if they have the ability to do otherwise?

It depends on how their fill station is set up. My compressor and normal filters pumped air that tested to modified grade-E standards "O2 compatable". However, should a filter or the developes a problem that could change and I might not know. When I needed modified grade-E air, I ran it through a hyper filter. That thing wasn't cheap and there was a built in flow restrictor and filling was necessarily very slow.

I don't think I ever charged extra for air but rather rolled the extra cost into the cost of a nitrox fill.

If I want nitrox, watch out...stuff is $$$$. They also require nitrox wraps to fill your tanks with nitrox.

Some shops are clueless, however, this is another one of those things that can be comming from the agency. For instance, if I remember right, IANTD facility standards require a shop to use the tank marking that they specify.

I don't remember that being a PADI requirement but...the nitroc course clearly states what marking "should" be on a tank and a shop who has only had that training is likely to require those markings.

Either way, this nitrox wrap thing needs to be adressed at the agency level.

Another hangup I have is that most dive shops treat their customers as if they're stupid, and they make me play their stupid games to get what I want. :no Whatever happened to "The customer is always right." ??

Sometimes the shop is wrong but whoever said "the customer is always right" was an idiot. Customers are often wrong, however, you have to make them happy in order to make money. Whether they are right or wrong just doesn't matter much.

I am the customer. I am paying you money.

I know you feel that way but depending on where you are, you may not be doing them the favor you think by buying air there.

In my shop there was no way I could make a profit selling air. I just didn't sell enough of it. The only reason I even had a compressor was because in order to call yourself a dive shop PADI requires you to provide air AND I needed it to teach classes in the pool.

I figured it out once that with the amount of money I had in my fill station, lab costs and filter costs and the amount of air that I pumped in the time I had my shop that every AL 80 I filled cost me like $25 or something rediculouse like that...I charged $5. All the tanks that I filled for classes (the bulk of the compressor hours), were included with the class...that I was already losing money on. The fill station was essentially just part of the cost of teaching.

Since it was so vitally important to me to have that compressor running for classes, I always prefered it if our divers got their fills at the dive site so I could keep the hours off my machine. The outfit that service our compressor was 5 hours away and they charge $60/hour from the time they left their shop. In other words it cost me $600 just to get them there. That is 120 fills just to pay for the service technicians driving time. That was for a repair that wasn't scheduled. Scheduled servicing was done when they were in the area and I didn't have to pay that trip charge then. Not to mention the fact that they all want to come in 5 minutes before you close on a Friday night to get air for Sat morning. There is NO money in any of that.

Why did I pay someone else service the machine? Traceability. If my air would have hurt someone, I would have been able to easily show that I had everything done that I was supposed to have done and that it was done by someone who is qualified to do it.

This is an interesting topic and I keep reading that dive shops MUST be making money on gas but it just isn't true. In order to make money on it, you need enough sales volume. Even then, you need a machine that can handle the peak demand. My compressor and banks were more than big enough for the amount of air I pumped and too expensive to ever pay for with air sales. However, if my wife was filling student tanks in the afternoon and a bunch of people walked in for fills, I essentially had to pump the whole weeks worth of gas in one day. The peak demand is too much, you run the banks down and then things get slow and there is no way to get paid for that time AND the people who have to wait get mad. A bigger system solves the demand issue but then you need that volume all the time in order to pay for it.

LOL, anyway noone who ever baught air from me was doing me any kind of favor unless they baught a BS or something while they waited for the fill.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Correction:

I made a mistake in my last post. I stated that it cost me $25 to fill an 80 cu ft tank. That's not what I calculated. What I calculated was that I would have had to charge $25/tank in order to get a two year payback on the capitol invenstment at the sales volume that we had.

 

[SparticleBrane]

Well you probably know that generally it requires another filter stage to get O2 compatible air vs. air. As for nitrox, my guess is that due to cost, most shops use partial pressure blending. To do that properly means extra labor and perhaps 2-3 cycles of filling/cooling to get the desired %. So there is more cost, but more importantly more value. Why do we pay more (and more!) for Premium vs unleaded gas?

The particular shop in question banks 30%. All they have to do is connect the fill whip.
I've worked at a dive shop before; I understand that sometimes it's a little extra work to get the fills just right -- fine, that's part of a tank money's job description. I've filled untold numbers of tanks; it isn't particularly difficult.

I agree that most of the noise around nitrox wraps is just another way to make $$.

I absolutely agree, 100%. See my rant here.

Many times the customer is an idiot, yes. I will definitely agree. The problem arises when the customer is right and the dive shop is wrong. I'm not expecting to be treated like royalty when I walk into a dive shop but it would be nice if they would stop treating me like a child. I'd rather they cooperate with me, listen, and let me buy what I want to, rather than try and play their games.

I can usually get my tanks filled for free (with air) at school since I volunteer with the scuba program there. But if I want nitrox I have to get it from a dive shop.

Mike, I'm doing my training with GUE. Thus, no stupid nitrox wraps (which I would agree with whether or not I train with GUE). The shop in question has hosted GUE classes in the past, but won't honor their fill practices? BS if you ask me.

 

[PhilEllis]

..... that's part of a tank money's job description.

Man, I keep hearing all you guys talk about these tank monkeys. I sure wish I knew where you get them. I personally think a monkey that could fill tanks, mix nitrox, and maybe even do the cylinder cleaning, would be a lot cheaper than the full time, professional employee I currently have doing that task.

Sparticle, you guys got a monkey training operation over there in Raleigh? If so, give me the particulars. I wanna buy one already trained.

Added Information: I don't want a flying monkey like on the Wizard of Oz. I want one of those real monkeys like in the Career Builders (I think) commercial.

Phil Ellis