I can appreciate all the comments made here. I've been in all the shoes you talk about. Consumer, Instructor, Manufacturer, Retailer and Distributor. Today I own a professional dive center AND I own a manufacturing/distribution company. We operate with BOTH a brick and mortar retail store AND an active webstore. What I am about to share with you might just help you better understand how all of this works.
As a dive retailer we embrace a few lines of equipment from a few major manufacturers, in our case AquaLung, APEKS, US Divers, SeaQuest Suunto, Cochran, USIA Luxfer, Xcel, etc. We make committments to these companies because they make certain committments to our customers. The committments they make to our customers is that they will have inventory, maintain parts, provide us with training, continue to work on research and development, and most important provide us (retailer) with no question asked customer service. Did you know that Aqualung requires an authorized dealer to maintain a 30 day return policy? That they will provide parts for free for life when serviced by an authorized dealer ? In exchange for that they ask us to maintain a certain price level on certain products and enforce fire sale discounting from happening. Nevertheless you can buy AL products online from a company in NY. How they get them I dont know, but they do. However the largest known discounter in California (SC) switched to Aqualung about 18 mos ago and maintains MSRP pricing (within 10%) Why ? unprecedented service.
Here is an example of the service we can pass to a consumer on many products. This past weekend I was in Laguna Beach diving with some of our clients. A girl was wearing a wet suit for the 3rd time. The thread came loose and frayed off. It did not hamper her use of the suit, but it was unsightly. I had her come in on Monday morning and handed her a new suit. Why ? 1 - I can and value the customers 2. I know that DeepSea would replace the suit on my say so. Her entire inconvinience ? 5 minutes time. On another note a client had his tanks filled someplace else while off in Cali diving. When I went to fill the tank (i always sniff) the air did not smell right. I did not have time to clean the tank on site but gave him 2 rentals for the weekend at no charge. We cleaned the tanks, found water in them, serviced the valves and he picked them back up on Monday. No charge..... why? Because we can.
Margins -- In the garment industry they work on 200% margins, in the furniture business its 200%, restaurant 150%, Diving industry, travel = 5-10%, training 25%, equipment sales 35-50% at best, tanks, laugh at 18%. The minimum net value it takes to run a business is about 35%-40% so........ some is at 60 some is at 20 and at the end of the day ........ after all the goodies .... we make a living. But ....... this all comes with service, performance, customer relationships, honesty, and a fair deal.
Now to the other side. Our on-line business. 1. We do not sell many of our prime lines there, mostly because we embrace the face to face concept of those sales. However we do have on our website over 500 items that the average dive shop does not stock. Why ? 1. we know how to source products, 2. we know how to buy them, 3. we know what you want 4. we know how to stock, service and support those products. 5. we know most dive shops can't have everything.
We price our products on the web at what I like to belive is a reasonable price for the item. We list MSRPs based on average prices around the country, then we price them at what we need to earn on a product to make it worthwhile to fill the 3000 sqfoot warehouse we have for it all. But when you want a 22inch hose for this and a 9 inch hose for that, and a valve part to fit this, and a sensor to fit that, and a tank band to fit that old set of 72s ...... guess what ? We have it. Online business amounts for approximatley 2% of overal dive industry sales. It amounts for about 15% of my company's sales. Oh and one more thing, We stock everything we list on our website. Unlike many on-line sites that order as you order, we stock it all. I have at least 3 clients who are other online stores who order 1 and 2 of an item as they sell it on their site. You wait 10 days from them, you wait normally no more than a day from us.
So what's the answer ? Professional retailers are embracing both methods. Consumers drive the way we do business, you want it both ways, a retail operation for quality service and the ablity to purchase items on-line. To have both you as the consumer need to embrace both methods. In the end everyone wins.
Regards,
