My understanding is that the CEO of Dive Rite is a respected cave/tech diver who designs diving equipment to address practical requirements and actively uses his stuff.
I own and operate DeepSeaSupply. (see the link at the bottom of the page)
I am directly responsible for the design of all of our offerings.
I'm an active tech diver.
We used to offer a "complex" harness. It was a nicely executed piece of kit. It sold with nice margins too. I could again start offering these tomorrow if I wanted to.
I stopped offering them when I began to see divers remove them, either piece by piece, or all at once and replace them with a single piece harness. While it may seem trite, our "mission" has always been to deliver the maximum value to our customers, and we try very hard not to sell any goods divers really don't need. We had many divers coming back to us for simple harness kit, and virtually nobody that started with a simple harness returned looking for the complex harness.
IMO "delux" harnesses exist because a simple BP&W can "look scary" in the showroom of the local dive shop. Almost all new divers train in a Jacket / vest BC and a BP*W look stark, and potentially hard to use, if you don't know how to adjust the harness.
Most new divers are conditioned by their instructor / sales clerk that they will want to "move up" from their rented training BC to a "full featured" BC with lots of drings, lots of padding, endless features. $$ = Features = what you *really* need
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Most dive shops either don't have staff that actually dive a BP&W, and as such they can't fit and explain a BP&W, they need BP&W's to essentially sell themselves, and the delux, comfort, magic 9 way quick release padded harness sells it's self better than a plain plate with a simple harness.
Shops that have qualified sales staff that dive and understand a BP&W have no trouble selling simple harnesses.
As I have said for years, don't let pre purchase perceptions override post purchase reality.
Tobin