WARNING: Going way OT WRT to the OP now, but I think it's germane to where the conversation is now.
Yes, it is ridiculously expensive. I have been trying to find insurance for my - I don't know if club is the right word. I suppose it is. We're a 501(c)3 (sp?) non-profit, but we do have members that pay dues.
Anyway, that club is somewhat specialized and doesn't have wide appeal among divers in general. My club is focused on technical diving of WWII wrecks. So, I was thinking of trying to start a local club similar to how BSAC works at the local level, but without national ties. Something that would have more broad appeal to the local diving community. Ideally, a club that could grow big enough to have its own compressor and tanks, BCDs, and regs that club members could borrow or rent for cheap. As well as offering club members instruction, also for relatively cheap.
I think the biggest impediment to local clubs is insurance. It's a chicken and egg problem. If there were enough local clubs that all wanted insurance, it might be worth it to an insurance company to offer policies that are affordable. But, there are so few that the insurance company has to charge a ridiculous amount to be sure they can still show a profit even if they have claims. So, there are not enough local clubs to jumpstart the insurance industry. And there's no affordable insurance to jumpstart building local clubs.
And the biggest impediment to a national level organization (a la BSAC) is the combination of local shops and the dive equipment manufacturers. Basically, shop bread-and-butter is a composite: Selling training, selling dive trips, and selling gear to people who are doing training or going on trips. There's a synergy there that doesn't work without all the components.
A large network of local clubs would take away from shops selling trips. Example: One shop local to me was selling a weekend trip last year to NC. They were charging $450. I checked into the details and I could have booked myself on the same boat, for the same days, and stayed in the same dive lodge - for $300. If I started a local club, the club would be organizing trips like that and offering them to members for a LOT less than what the local shop would charge. And, club members would often (I expect) be able to borrow gear they need from other club members. I offer stuff on loan to people I know all the time. If people from my club were going somewhere and needed a light for a night dive, I would be happy to loan them mine. I also imagine that a club would end up with members that are instructors and that those instructors might be inclined to offer training to members for a lot less than what a shop offers. I know my current club does. I got my SDI Deep and SDI Wreck full specialty certs by taking a class through my club. It cost me $200 (for both certs, combined). The same class through my local shop is $350.
Strong local clubs would undercut shops on trips, undermine gear sales (where I didn't even mention people sharing information and steering people away from some of those ridiculous purchases like certain recreational BCDs, etc.), and take away training sales. So, local shops, as a rule of thumb, do not want local clubs - except ones that are specifically affiliated with that shop. Clubs with a shop affiliation are clearly a sales tool.
Scuba equipment manufacturers have an interesting business model. I was talking to the owner of a local shop yesterday, whom I consider to be a friend. I was remarking on how, as an example from a different industry, in motorcycle equipment sales, any shop will likely have 1 or 2 suppliers that are a one-stop-shop for everything except the motorcycles themselves. Tucker Rocky is a big one. A m/c shop gets setup with a Tucker Rocky account and then they can stock pretty much everything they want to sell just by ordering from TR. And they don't get shafted with having to buy huge minimum orders of specific brands just to carry that brand.
The scuba industry is clearly different. AFAIK, there is no one stop shop that a scuba shop can order from to get a few ScubaPro regs and wetsuits, a few Aqualung regs and wetsuits, a few Atomic.... etc.. Every shop has to get setup with each individual manufacturer. With a few exceptions for stuff that qualifies more as accessories than necessities (e.g. Innovative Scuba, Trident, etc.).
The manufacturers have a very direct reliance on the local scuba retailers to move their products. The manufacturers don't want groups of people forming clubs and having an inventory of suits or regs or BCDs that club members can "check out" and use. They don't want people loaning each other equipment. They want people to have to buy their own. That's good for them. And they want people to buy it from their local shop, so the shop stays in business and the manufacturer continues to have all these individual reps out there (the shops) pushing their brand of gear. The manufacturers seem to require each shop to buy so much gear, as a minimum order, that it seems like many shops end up really only carrying 1 or 2 or 3 brands. They can't afford the minimums to stock SP, AL, Apeks, Hollis, Oceanic, Dive Rite, Hog, Poseidon, Waterproof, Fourth Element, Tusa, Ratio, Liquivision, Shearwater, etc..
So, the local shops and the manufacturers all have direct financial incentives for this country to NOT have a large network of clubs, which each have no affiliation to a particular shop.
And that's why I think we don't have ASAC.
