How big is the Technical Diving Market?

[cool_hardware52]

Ask yourself two questions.

How many dive shops in your area sell helium?

How much of it do they sell?

Even within a major metropolitan area located directly on the ocean, Seattle/Tacoma, when I left the PNW there were only two reliable, consistent (retail) sources of helium mixes (that I was able to discover, and believe me we looked): Fifth Dimension and Hood Sport & Dive in Hoodsport.

Doc,

That's an interesting metric, and I'm sure has some correlation to the numbers of "tech divers" in a given area. (depending on how you define tech vs rec)

I would suspect that with the exception of areas like Florida and San Diego, that the majority of Helium is being decanted privately. (In dark, subterranean, "speakeasy's" where you need to know the knock code to get in the door )

Tobin

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Ask yourself two questions.

How many dive shops in your area sell helium?

How much of it do they sell?

Even within a major metropolitan area located directly on the ocean, Seattle/Tacoma, when I left the PNW there were only two reliable, consistent (retail) sources of helium mixes (that I was able to discover, and believe me we looked): Fifth Dimension and Hood Sport & Dive in Hoodsport.

Things may have changed in the past couple years or so. But very few divers (like Gilldiver noted) are consistently doing 200'-300' dives in the PNW that require helium mixes, relative to the total number of divers and dive shops in and around the Puget Sound region.

There are currently five shops that I know of in the Pugetropolis area that sell helium ... and soon to be six ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Gilldiver]

The numbers I stated were for discussion as there really are no good numbers that I know of. When the agencies say that an active diver is doing 5 or more dives per year, just where do you go to?

But Doc does have a point, the availability of gas is an indicator of its use. First questions is, if a shop says it has NITROX or mix, is it just doing PP blending per order? Some will have one bottle of O2 in the corner and one guy who can do the fills – they are a NITROX shop, but are they a Tech shop in that they are active in "Tech" diving? How do you compare a shop with a single O2 bottle to a shop that banks NITROX or has a membrane system and does He mixes on a regular basis?

Second, how many shops have gas boosters so that they can give you over 2200 psi of O2 or He?

Third, how many "Tech" or mixed gas classes are held in your area per year? Don't count in the Dive Master or most of the other cert levels, just classes that use gas other then air deeper then 130 feet.

As for gear, ya we tend to get more pricy stuff, but how much does a shop carry? Do they have a selection of the $1,000+ lights or do they have one in the case (which may be the personal property of someone in the shop) and will order one for you? Inventory is cash and most shops will not carry any stock. Any shop can buy from a catalog, but does it make then a "Tech" shop?

Last, any idiot with a checkbook can buy the stuff, but how many use it in any type of an advanced environment? Most of the time I will find someone with what I want that has seen less then 10 dives over 2-3 years and get it at half price, or less.

 

[cool_hardware52]

Second, how many shops have gas boosters so that they can give you over 2200 psi of O2 or He?

The presence or absence of a booster (or boosters) is probably as good as any other definition of a "Tech" shop vs a Non tech shop.

Tobin

 

[louxwe]

Okay so I did some more detailed research and really put that MBA to good use. I used a bunch of different metrics and came out with answers that converged good enough to answer it in my mind. Some of the metrics I used: 1. list of most populus cites, guess at how many active dive shops with technical divers, and about how many divers per shop (example big city might have 5 shops with tech divers and 7-10 actives divers, smaller towns smaller numbers etc.) 2. Total numbers of divers and % of tech divers 1-3%, 3. One article in 99 said there were 1000 techies in the UK. 4. several articles I found with vauge references to numbers 5. Number of dive shops in the US times average amount of techies per dive shop. 6. Amount of divers who have spent over $10k on their gear 7. numbers of similar types of extreame sports (basejumping, high level white water rafting, etc. 8. 15,000 ish registered users on decostop.com

I used all of these to come up with some numbers and wanted to get some feedback on what you thought.

Broad category size: 50,000: This does not include folks with basic Nitrox, includes people who do some type of extended range, or decompression, cave, wreck, etc. even though they may not be fully certified.

Base category size: 20-30k: This includes properly certified technical divers who have likely invested close to the average $10-15k in their own technical diver gear.

Active category size: 8-12k: Globally at any given time there are probably only this many techies really actively diving (at least 5 dives a year)... it probably tends towards the lower end of this range.

I'm still playing around with some of the rev numbers but I think that the market is probably in the $25-50M if you include gear, travel, training, etc.


What do you guys think?
Back in the mid 90's there was a lot of excitement that this was going to grow very quickly, but I was not able to find any evidence of this at all. Too much time and $ investment for most people.

 

[DeepSeaExplorer]

Okay so I did some more detailed research and really put that MBA to good use. I used a bunch of different metrics and came out with answers that converged good enough to answer it in my mind. Some of the metrics I used: 1. list of most populus cites, guess at how many active dive shops with technical divers, and about how many divers per shop (example big city might have 5 shops with tech divers and 7-10 actives divers, smaller towns smaller numbers etc.) 2. Total numbers of divers and % of tech divers 1-3%, 3. One article in 99 said there were 1000 techies in the UK. 4. several articles I found with vauge references to numbers 5. Number of dive shops in the US times average amount of techies per dive shop. 6. Amount of divers who have spent over $10k on their gear 7. numbers of similar types of extreame sports (basejumping, high level white water rafting, etc. 8. 15,000 ish registered users on decostop.com

I used all of these to come up with some numbers and wanted to get some feedback on what you thought.

Broad category size: 50,000: This does not include folks with basic Nitrox, includes people who do some type of extended range, or decompression, cave, wreck, etc. even though they may not be fully certified.

Base category size: 20-30k: This includes properly certified technical divers who have likely invested close to the average $10-15k in their own technical diver gear.

Active category size: 8-12k: Globally at any given time there are probably only this many techies really actively diving (at least 5 dives a year)... it probably tends towards the lower end of this range.

I'm still playing around with some of the rev numbers but I think that the market is probably in the $25-50M if you include gear, travel, training, etc.


What do you guys think?
Back in the mid 90's there was a lot of excitement that this was going to grow very quickly, but I was not able to find any evidence of this at all. Too much time and $ investment for most people.

I think tec diving has grown a lot. Back in 1999/2000, I had to wait 6 months to find an instructor that could scrounge up enough students to put a class together. Now there's classes everywhere all the time due to diver interest and demand.

 

[Coalcracker]

What do you think is the overall new diver certs each year?

 

[texdiveguy]

Okay so I did some more detailed research and really put that MBA to good use. I used a bunch of different metrics and came out with answers that converged good enough to answer it in my mind. Some of the metrics I used: 1. list of most populus cites, guess at how many active dive shops with technical divers, and about how many divers per shop (example big city might have 5 shops with tech divers and 7-10 actives divers, smaller towns smaller numbers etc.) 2. Total numbers of divers and % of tech divers 1-3%, 3. One article in 99 said there were 1000 techies in the UK. 4. several articles I found with vauge references to numbers 5. Number of dive shops in the US times average amount of techies per dive shop. 6. Amount of divers who have spent over $10k on their gear 7. numbers of similar types of extreame sports (basejumping, high level white water rafting, etc. 8. 15,000 ish registered users on decostop.com

I used all of these to come up with some numbers and wanted to get some feedback on what you thought.

Broad category size: 50,000: This does not include folks with basic Nitrox, includes people who do some type of extended range, or decompression, cave, wreck, etc. even though they may not be fully certified.

Base category size: 20-30k: This includes properly certified technical divers who have likely invested close to the average $10-15k in their own technical diver gear.

Active category size: 8-12k: Globally at any given time there are probably only this many techies really actively diving (at least 5 dives a year)... it probably tends towards the lower end of this range.

I'm still playing around with some of the rev numbers but I think that the market is probably in the $25-50M if you include gear, travel, training, etc.


What do you guys think?
Back in the mid 90's there was a lot of excitement that this was going to grow very quickly, but I was not able to find any evidence of this at all. Too much time and $ investment for most people.

Would not have a clue as to the accuracy of your numbers....I do know that it is pretty small in comparasion to only recreational certed divers. But they share the same tends....tons of O/W divers vs. say Rescue or Master Diver level....larger numbers of Adv. Nitrox and Deco Proc. vs. say Full Cave, Trimix or Adv. Wreck level divers.

 

[DeepSeaExplorer]

In martial arts, they use to say that only 1% of those that started got their black belt and only 1% of those would go on to get an advanced black belt. From what I saw, I think it's a very good estimate.

Maybe the same % is representative of diving. If PADI has certified 8 million divers, and they're by far the biggest agency, then the number would be somewhere around 8 to maybe 11k total, and then 8 to 11k for the advanced tech divers. Seems reasonable to me...