BC manufacturers must be Raking it in...

[The Chairman]

If anyone doubts that these various brands compete just look at DEMA. Booth after Booth after Booth selling BC's. Why did these brands choose to spend $10-20K to expose their goods to retailers if not competition?

And most of them described all the other BCs available as "junk". Too funny!

Or, is it possible that THOSE OF USE PARTICIPATING in this thread simply don't have a clear grasp of what the new diver really wants?

Or needs! This tripe about the BP&Wings being the "optimal" or "only" solution is myopic at best. It sure makes you sound important though!

 

[MikeFerrara]

Of that very small number, $444 million in retail sales, about 20% of it was buoyancy vests. Of those buyoancy vests sold, 92% of them were the form meets function, multicolored, gadget buoyancy vests we are all complaining about. Are THAT many people being force fed a product, or is it possible that THOSE OF USE PARTICIPATING in this thread simply don't have a clear grasp of what the new diver really wants?

Before you jump and say they are only buying these vests because they are presented no other options, take a minute to think. Gone are the days when customers have no way to educate themselves. I read an estimate that 87% of scuba divers in the United States visit the internet at least once per day. If they do ANY search at all, they will get this website, which is full of people that think you should only dive in a backplate and wing. So, why do they then come into the scuba store, or on the internet, and purchase the poodle jackets?

I think they do often buy what they see and what they were trained in. Walk into the average dive shop anyplace and you won't see the BP/wing stuff very well represented. Go watch some OW classes and see what the instructors and students are wearing.

When I had a shop and had jackets, back inflate BC's and BP/wing and I taught in a BP/wing and had some students in them, guess what the overwelming majority purchased?...BP/wing.

I remember one guy inpartucular because for the amount of time I spent with him, I should have been paid for about 20 BC's. I trained him and he used a BP/wing in class. When he was ready to purchase, he tried several BC types from my store AND other stores. I even gave him one to dive for a weekend beyond the equipment that I provided during his training.

Even after he had dived both himself and knew which he liked better he kept comming back and asking the same question. Over and over he asked..."If the BP/wing is so good why don't any of the other stores sell them?" Had it not been for me, he would have never seen one or had the chance to try one. Guess what he baught after all that shopping and diving to compare?

Why don't more stores have them OR try to sell them? Phil, you should know. Most manufacturerrs, have opening order requirements, anual volume requirements and often insist or at least pressure you to stock their full line. If you are an aqualung dealer (as an example) you are heavily invested in aqualung and simply MUST move lots of aqualung stuff in order to keep your dealership. Sell too many Halcyon wings and what do you do with all those poodle jackets? Not only that but a small shop often has trouble moving enough of any kind of equipment to hang onto a dealership with more than a couple major lines. They simply can't afford to have the "breadth" of murchandise. In all likelyhood, the shop owner and instructor learned the same way they are teaching and don't have experience with anything else themselves.

Sorry but by the very nature of the industry and the fact that it's the manufacturers controling the retailers, divers are indeed force fed certain brands and styles of equipment. Just as they are also force fed certain types of training. It's not because they have researched, compared and made a choice.

A new diver can choose between a shop A and a PADI OW class using Aqualung jacket or shop B and a PADI class using a scubapro jacket. Shop A may do the class working in the evening over a few days for $250 and shop B may cram it into a weekend for $255. Once they get out more and see a few things, they switch to a BP/wing and take a DIRF so they can learn to dive off the bottom. LOL

 

[bleeb]

Of that very small number, $444 million in retail sales, about 20% of it was buoyancy vests.

Not meaning to be negative, and somewhat tangential to te current discussion(s), but I just wanted a quick sanity check. 20% of $444M is $88M. Arbitrarily assuming $1k/buoyancy vest (which I think is high, but it's just for argument) that's 88000 vests/year. Are there really that many sales? As previously pointed out in this thread, vests of any form tend to last a lot a long time, so presumably, the majority are relatively new divers.

 

[PhilEllis]

Not meaning to be negative, and somewhat tangential to te current discussion(s), but I just wanted a quick sanity check. 20% of $444M is $88M. Arbitrarily assuming $1k/buoyancy vest (which I think is high, but it's just for argument) that's 88000 vests/year. Are there really that many sales? As previously pointed out in this thread, vests of any form tend to last a lot a long time, so presumably, the majority are relatively new divers.

I was typing from my memory of the last Leisure Trends monthly report. That category includes ALL buoyancy items. I don't know exactly how that group items, but I will take a closer look at my next monthly report and see if that number is correct. There is no doubt, the buoyancy vest is one of the largest categories in scuba. They is why every manufacturers has 15 models.

I will make sure that number is correct and post back.

Phil Ellis

 

[Thalassamania]

I would like to ask a very serious question of all of you...................

How much innovation and variety do you expect from an industry that had only $444 million in dive equipment retail sales (everything but training and travel) in 2006?

That amount of revenue is about one half of the annual sales that you might see in a single papermill for a year.

That amount of revenue is what would you would find from the aggregate of any 10 Wal Mart stores in the Alabama.

One decent sized hospital in a major city would produce more revenue in a year than the entire scuba industry.

Menduno and I used to go play Boccie Ball (great courts in Key West) and even planned a first annual aquaCorps Boccie Ball Tourney (never happended, but we planned it). You know why we wanted to put it on? To drive home the point that Boccie Ball equipment is a bigger industry than diving equipment.

So, why do they then come into the scuba store, or on the internet, and purchase the poodle jackets?

Because students buy what they see their instructors wear, to do otherwise is to admit that they made a huge mistake in selecting their instructor in the first place and no one ever wants to look that foolish; and once they've bought into their BC (be it poodle or BP/W, either way) it is then doubly hard to backtrack and admit error.

Most manufacturerrs, have opening order requirements, anual volume requirements and often insist or at least pressure you to stock their full line. If you are an aqualung dealer (as an example) you are heavily invested in aqualung and simply MUST move lots of aqualung stuff in order to keep your dealership. Sell too many Halcyon wings and what do you do with all those poodle jackets? Not only that but a small shop often has trouble moving enough of any kind of equipment to hang onto a dealership with more than a couple major lines. They simply can't afford to have the "breadth" of murchandise. In all likelyhood, the shop owner and instructor learned the same way they are teaching and don't have experience with anything else themselves.

Sorry but by the very nature of the industry and the fact that it's the manufacturers controling the retailers, divers are indeed force fed certain brands and styles of equipment. Just as they are also force fed certain types of training. It's not because they have researched, compared and made a choice.

A new diver can choose between a shop A and a PADI OW class using Aqualung jacket or shop B and a PADI class using a scubapro jacket. Shop A may do the class working in the evening over a few days for $250 and shop B may cram it into a weekend for $255. Once they get out more and see a few things, they switch to a BP/wing and take a DIRF so they can learn to dive off the bottom. LOL

Mike points out the hjighly anti-competitive nature of much of the dive industry. It is very difficult for a small, specialty manufacturer to wedge their way in to a shop's inventory because of the purchasing rules that the "majors" set up. Most shops are cutting their own throat when they sell the product of a small specialty manufacturer. Whilst there may be a great deal of competition between U.S.D. and ScubaPro and Mares and Oceanic, etc., all that serves to do is push specialty manufacturers to the edge. Innovation happens in the specialty market and then is gobbled up by the majors driving the originator under (just look at what happened to ORCA Industries). Some forward thinking majors like Oceanic are even have their own OEM and specialty lines now (Pelagic and Hollis).

 

[raymond phule]

How much innovation and variety do you expect from an industry that had only $444 million in dive equipment retail sales (everything but training and travel) in 2006?

I dont know but I can compare it to other sports.

There are maybe 150 000 paraglider pilots in the world. The "training industry" is much smaller compared to diving.

But the glider companies produce new wings every year. The new wings on the market today are a lot better than the wings 5 years ago. To not even talk about the wings 15 years ago.

It is similar in other sports that I belive are smaller compared to diving.

Of course the difference could be that diving is more mature but I am not sure.

The difference between diving and other "extreme sports" is that diving is extremely commercial compared to all other activities I have done. You need to take a lot of courses and organisations like padi have a lot of power.

The organisations seems to be pretty conservative. For example I cant belive as a new diver the response nitrox got.

A lot of people wants to work with diving and the system require them to certify a lot of divers and sell a lot of gear to actually own some money. I belive there are more stores in my town than are necessary. Why should a lot of divers be certified when just a few of them continue to dive?

The dive industry is like the adventure industry, i.e. people trying things like rafting, tandem paragliding and bungyjumping. The difference between the adventure industry compared to the "sport" is the difference between for example bying for a one day guided rafting experience and some one that loves to raft or kayak in their spare time. They play by different rules in most sports.

Diving has the same rules for both types of diving activities.

I dont belive the dive industry is conservative because it is to small but because it in some ways are to large and is to much about making money. I dont know about any other activity that are even remotely similar.

 

[MikeFerrara]

And most of them described all the other BCs available as "junk". Too funny! Or needs! This tripe about the BP&Wings being the "optimal" or "only" solution is myopic at best. It sure makes you sound important though!

I don't think that's the issue though. I have a garage full of BC's. I've used all kinds of stuff and, in a pinch, I can make any of it work.

however, I ended up using a BP/wing because it (together with the rest of the configuration) elegantly solves several "problems" that got to be more and more of a problem as my diving progressed.

You're in Florida but here in the land of winter, we have an awful lot of divers out trying to dive in drysuits or heavy wet suits, an aluminum tank, buoyant padded BC's with integrated weight systems that aren't designed to hold the amount of weight needed in all that buoyant gear. They end up trimmed head up and struggling just like they were taught. They have plenty of d-rings (usually none in the right place), retractors and enough accessories and toys that they should be able to fly the rig to the moon.

I know how to solve some of those problems without a BP/wing but they don't know how to solve them at all.

Some years ago, I spent the weekend with a scubaboard member who was trying to get ready for a dive trip. He had just finished an AOW class and was having a rough time and wanted some help. He had also just spent a bunch of money on new equipment. This expensive BC he had was equiped with a plastic hard pack that didn't even permit any adjustment in the hight of the tank. If you can't get your balast in the right place, you're going to have trouble and it wasn't easy on what he had. There were certainly some skill issues but without spending a lot of time figuring out how to make things work with that junk he had, he would have never gotten anyplace. Some shop sold him that fancy crap and took him on trainaing dives...like a deep dive...and never helped him get the rig functional or even tell him what functional is.

If you don't need a lot of weight and don't have to carry much (tanks, lights or whatever there isn't any reason that a jacket can't work reasonably well. I don't even know if anyone sells one that I would consider bucause most manufacturers seem to want to take a concept that isn't too bad and clutter it up with buoyant pading, cumberbuns, bulky weight pouches, d-rings in stupid places and so on. They mess up the back-inflate BC's the same way. You have all kinds of stuff hanging on you but no place to put anything useful.

Does this stuff represent inovation? I think not. What does a BC have to do? It needs to allow us to add or subtract gas for buoyancy adjustments and keep that gas where we need it and NOT get in the way of other things we need to carry or do. So many of the features we see on new BC's not only don't help with that but they actively interfere.

Do the people that design this junk dive? What kind of diving do they do and are they any good at it?

 

[cool_hardware52]

I dont know but I can compare it to other sports.

There are maybe 150 000 paraglider pilots in the world. The "training industry" is much smaller compared to diving.

But the glider companies produce new wings every year. The new wings on the market today are a lot better than the wings 5 years ago. To not even talk about the wings 15 years ago.

It's an age thing. Scuba is ~60 years old, paragliding is much more recent.

In the early days of any sport (or any activity really) you will see small firms with competing ideas, some good, some less so. How many auto companies were there in the 1910's and 1920's?

Look at suspension Mountain bikes for example. In the first years there were maybe 10 (or more) different schemes. Now there are only a few. Some just didn't make the grade, some were too expensive to produce, some had more marketing horsepower behind them.

The early days see a lot of changes. As these ideas converge into the 2-3 that survive, and the survivors get larger and more dominate, you see much less innovation.

If paragliding grows in popularity I'd expect the same thing to occur. Enjoy the diversity while you can.

Tobin

 

[amascuba]

I would like to ask a very serious question of all of you...................

How much innovation and variety do you expect from an industry that had only $444 million in dive equipment retail sales (everything but training and travel) in 2006?

That amount of revenue is about one half of the annual sales that you might see in a single papermill for a year.

That amount of revenue is what would you would find from the aggregate of any 10 Wal Mart stores in the Alabama.

One decent sized hospital in a major city would produce more revenue in a year than the entire scuba industry.

Of that very small number, $444 million in retail sales, about 20% of it was buoyancy vests. Of those buyoancy vests sold, 92% of them were the form meets function, multicolored, gadget buoyancy vests we are all complaining about. Are THAT many people being force fed a product? Are that many consumers wrong? Or, is it possible that THOSE OF USE PARTICIPATING in this thread simply don't have a clear grasp of what the new diver really wants? And after all, it is their money. They get to by what THEY want, not what WE think they should have.
Phil Ellis

I think that many people REALLY don't know their options when it comes to selecting a BCD. Their are too many small dive shops around the country that don't show the complete picture of what the industry has to offer, but instead only the two or three vendors that they deal with. Too many dive shops force poodle jackets on the consumer because the training agencies say that is the norm... I've had a PADI Course Director tell me that I would fail his IDC if I showed up to class in a backplate/wing and that the only way for me to pass his class is if I used a jacket BCD. This is coming from a person who has NEVER seen my teaching ability OR my in water skill. I've seen this same attitude from many instructors, not only locally, but in many of the places around the world that I've talked to about taking an IDC... This leads me to believe that at least one training agency drives the market by telling their instructors what is and is not appropriate gear to wear while instructing courses.

 

[Teamcasa]

This debate is not different than a similar debates in other sports and hobbies.
For instance, I build furniture as a hobby. It’s a serious hobby and like SCUBA, I participate in woodworking forums as well.
A serious woodworker never likes to use Sears Craftsman tools and like poodle BC divers, users of Crapsman tools are abused by those that tend to use higher end tools.
Hobbies also have their splinter groups. Woodworks who shun modern tools are called Neanderthals. In Scuba they are called vintage gear divers. The comparisons go on and on.

My point is that here, on ScubaBoard most of the regular participants take their diving very seriously and as such tend to like the higher end gear. Most are not the once a year vacation diver that for the 10 or so dives a year a jacket BC works well for them. Add to that, many vacation divers tend to take long hiatus from diving and once they decide to return, it’s off to the shop to check out the new gear. The cost of new gear to this group of buyer is not nearly as important to them as it is to the serious diver. Afterall, it is the serious diver that will actually wear out gear, where the vacation diver tends to outgrow it long before it wears out!

Frankly, I could care less what gear works for you, how much it costs, or the profits made by the manufacturer. I do care that my gear works for me.