A shop closes...

[Puffer Fish]

we face a epic battle, and like your industry there are many who feel "it's just the economy" or worse "we can stop that little problem" (RIAA, or in my industry, just don''t allow our stuff to be sold online LOL). the first is stupid, the second moronic because instead of figuring out the problem and the potential cust. base it puts you at odds with them. Actually both are stone dead stupid.

Today I exchanged a PM with another brand here on SB, in it I expressed the following

"I am starting to believe that we could easily see another 20-30% down in sales thru this time next year industry wise. Not good as we are sitting approx 40-55% down from 3 years ago already.

The big picture is that diving is about to lose it 'consciousness of existing" as a valid recreational activity to the masses. Of course in survival mode many in the industry are missing that tidbit..."

Knowing what I wrote above I start to reason that my best course of action is to stop fighting to get some common sense applied to our problems, instead continue to grow EDGE (which has been rocking thanks to all of you!) and after the dust has settled and there is virtually no dive industry left, band together with the other fire tested survivors and start over making diving something cool again. Of course I would prefer that we stop the bleeding now, it has gone on enough. But for the purpose of maintaining the status quo we don't (and I suspect won't) have the will among the accepted "industry leaders" to do that. Those stupid power games will end up costing them...dearly.

If you look back over the history of diving (rather short actually)... The early days were carried on the backs of a few individuals, with everyone else just riding along in their wake. It acted very much like a sport, not a recreation.

Note: The difference between a sport (say football) and recreation is that one tends to stay fairly stable and the other goes up and down like a yo-yo. Bicyling in the US is recreation, and from a up year to a down year varies over 100%.. add in economic issues and that can be twice that. In Europe, it is a sport, with kids growing up wanting to be the next great cyclist and historically they varied around 10%... big difference. Sports have the activity and stars that draw the next generation into it.

Note2: For the record, I was one of the builder of the small bicyle company called Trek.

To me growing up, and to the next generation, we had people that wanted to be like our hero's...we don't have those today.

That, and with the help of the certifying agencies, we have successfully made the sport.. a recreation.. and with that, we now have to fight for every recreational dollar out there. And right now, we don't have a lot of reasons.

Add to that several of the major equipment suppliers are essentially acting like an animal caught in a trap and see the only way out as chewing their leg off, along with all their customer and you have where we are today.

Anyone that expects that to be different tomorrow without anything being done is living in a dream world.

There are lots of things that should be done, but it would take an organization... what a DEMA should be, to do them. They seem to neither have the vison or the will to do so.

I hope that this will one day change or diving and big bands will be talked about in the same way.

 

[Leadking]

Puffer Fish;

You nailed it. Back in the mid-nineties I tried to show the Board how stable we were as an industry. According to DEMA's sales information we moved up of down a few percentage points a year. Incredibly stable by any measurement, but as anyone is business knows, growth is what was desired. I pointed out that other sporting goods/recreational groups sales were moving up and down in numbers that would scare us. Those of us who are old enough remember the tennis, running, rollerblading, and golf phases. Looks like we caugh up with them!

 

[SDE Dennis]

Wow there are a lot of good posts and ideas on this thread. I agree with almost all of the above. The main problem I also see is that we are not training many life long divers. Just divers with a passing curiosity or ones that lose interest when they don't know where to go after the big dive trips are over. Dive shops would do better if they mentored the divers after they become certified. Most divers are extremely social when they get together. Clubs are great especialy when their linked to the shops. A dive of the month club at all LDS's would be a good thing. Make the new divers feel like they just joined a cool new family (wimho they did). This would take them from being interested in diving to living the diving lifestyle.

 

[cappyjon431]

One of the things that has contributed to the decline of the industry is the dive magazines. Instead of plugging local diving (which they occasionally provide lip service to), they promote diving in places like Fiji, Bali, Truk, Palau, etc. It is not a matter of these not being desirable dive destinations, but they are financially out of reach for your average divers. When I peruse the latest copies of dive magazines every picture offers unbelievable visibility and encounters with either big or exotic critters. This is what divers want to see, but sadly it is outside of most people's financial means.

I own a small shop in a beautiful area on the Caribbean coast of of Panama. The diving is good, but certainly not "world class." Visibility averages about thirty five feet and can be substantially lower. While we have incredible coral growth and unbelievable macro life, it is not the type of diving portrayed in most dive mags.

I am always amazed by the number of either uncertified divers or newbies who come into the shop and decide not to dive because they "heard" that the visibility isn't very good here, or that they want to dive where they can see mantas, whale sharks, and turtles on every dive. The scuba mags have created a mindset that if you don't have 100 feet of visibility and big animal encounters on every dive the dives just aren't worth doing. I believe this is why we see so many divers become certified and then hang up their fins to pursue other interests.

I don't know how to go about doing it, but we have to bring back the sheer joy of diving for diving's sake. Most of us remember the rush we got the first time we donned gear and went diving, and if you were like me, you didn't care if you were diving in a lake with less than 10 feet of visibility and an underwater landscape of old tires and a few bream here or there. The point was, we were DIVING. I have never cared if I was diving in a lake, a river, a swamp, or on a beautiful coral reef--I was DIVING! The expectations raised by the media promoting "glamour" dive destinations does a disservice to the industry and IMHO it is partly to blame for the high attrition rate of divers, the ones who get certified and then leave their gear in the garage to collect dust. Keep people interested in local diving and local dive shops will begin to come back.