Frustrations with Aqualung/Apeks – anyone else seeing this?

[iain/hsm]

Hold on- my Apeks drysuit hood is one of my favorite pieces of dive gear. It wraps my head in a toasty, fuzzy neoprene cocoon. Granted, it and my drysuit valves are the only Apeks gear I own. And the Apeks hood is really just the same as the Aqualung, but with trim around the edges. But I still love it.

And this is the result of mommy taking away your comfort blanket too soon.

 

[Still Kicking]

Not bad, 30+ years from being given the design they built everything off of to developing something new on their own. Don't want to go rushing into these things. They haven't exactly been innovators in anything other than price gouging.

Yeah all the other manufacturers are breaking new ground all the time .....

 

[iain/hsm]

Yeah all the other manufacturers are breaking new ground all the time .....

Yeah But. Neoprene Hot Pants and a finger spool in pretty colours is breaking ground if you are an Apeks fan boy. You are talking ground breaking stuff to them.

But if your talking about Aqualung I still cant make sense of their Aquasense
Unless this Nonsense of Aquasense make sense to the Aqualung fan boys.

To me it's just a fancy perfume bottle with a typo for the label
Aqua Sense perfume with sonar technology. From a company that used to make aircraft and do real estate alterations over Germany. Breaking new ground so to speak as you suggested. Just saying.

 

[lizardland]

Yeah all the other manufacturers are breaking new ground all the time .....

Just remind me what innovations Apeks have come up with in the 30'ish years they've been manufacturing the same basic regulator... As I understand it, they didn't even come up with that original design, it was given to them as part of a MoD procurement contract and they spent the next three decades putting various shades of lipstick on the same basic pig meanwhile ratcheting the price £50 for every new letter added to the model number. I started diving young enough to remember the regulators they came up with in house, which were complete dog turds that pissed in water.

 

[Still Kicking]

I totally agree about the price increases. But I think that the problem has a lot to do with companies like Atomic, which keep raising the top end of the market, allowing other companies to raise their prices and yet pretend to be in the mid-range bracket.

After 30 years of diving Scubapro and Apeks, I think they are both great lines. I never had any issues worth mentioning with either brand on any dive.

 

[lizardland]

I totally agree about the price increases. But I think that the problem has a lot to do with companies like Atomic, which keep raising the top end of the market, allowing other companies to raise their prices and yet pretend to be in the mid-range bracket.

After 30 years of diving Scubapro and Apeks, I think they are both great lines. I never had any issues worth mentioning with either brand on any dive.

I think Aqualung just tried cashing in on the reputation Apeks had amongst technical divers. I don't know what the pricing was like in the US but in the UK they were always dirt cheap. My first regulator was a T40D in 1994 (which I still use as one of my main regs) because it was at the bottom end of the price scale and I was young and had no money. Throughout the 90's and into the early 2000's they stayed dirt cheap, so much so that I and all the other tech divers I knew had shitloads of them. If I had some spare cash I'd buy another "just in case" TX40, they were that cheap here. Then when technical diving kit started becoming a recreational fashion item AL started ratcheting up the price and filling Apeks' catalogue with tacticool junk that appealed to people who didn't know what they were doing but wanted to look like they did. They were just milking the trend for all they could.

I think that combined with the complete lack of meaningful product development and the guy who was fronting for Apeks on UK forums being so obnoxious that it really hurt Apeks in the eyes of more experienced divers. Apeks basically followed the same trajectory Land Rover did, going from a workhorse to something aimed at middle class posers and the original customers whose experience made the brand being priced out.

Brands like Atomic have no traction this side of the pond. The only real competitor here for the tech diving market is Scubapro (maybe Poseidon in the past but they don't seem very popular now) and I suspect AL just looked at their pricing and set Apeks' to match. In my experience, Apeks are a good cheap reg but just an OK expensive one. Equal prices then I'd choose Scubapro all day long. I can't see a market for an expensive Apeks line.

 

[MonkeyBubbles]

...and the most abundant items I saw put out for Labor Day sales in scuba shops? Aqualung regs and BCDs.

 

[Still Kicking]

...and the most abundant items I saw put out for Labor Day sales in scuba shops? Aqualung regs and BCDs.

Yes, old management was blowing out inventory prior to sale.