LDS Closures

[ArcticDiver]

Elitist attitudes will kill the sport!

Demonstrably not so. A friend of mine is a GUE instructor. If I recall correctly he says there are 19 such instructors. Stop and think of the impact those 19 people have had.

In every field I'm aware of instructors who are knowledgable, challenge their students and coach them to meet the challenge produce active, involved graduates. What is cheap is often considered to be of little value. What is expensive is often considered to be of great value.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

This thread is about the health of local dive shops and that effect on the diving community at large.

There is a lot of impact from a diminished demographic. That ranges from less incentive to manufacturers to develop better products to charter boat operators to society as a whole allowing the freedom we currently enjoy.

So, yes indeed, we all benefit from a healthy network of local dive shops that have found the key to developing and maintaining a vigorous diving poplulation.

Although that's certainly true in certain parts of the world, and among certain diver demographics ... it's not always the case. And modern technology is making it even less so.

Right here on ScubaBoard you can find people to dive with, evaluate instructors based on their posts and the recommendations of other posters, locate the best deal on just about any piece of dive equipment you'd want to purchase ... and get first-hand evaluations on that equipment.

About the only thing you can't get online anymore is air fills ... and if the market were there for it, I don't doubt someone would figure out a way to use online sales to make that happen.

Dive clubs form another important link in the network. They don't sell equipment, but they do provide opportunities for trips, a social network within the community, and some of them even have their own fill stations. Many are not linked to a dive shop.

Don't get me wrong ... I would like to see a healthy network of dive shops in our area. But more often than not, the people running those shops don't understand (or care) how to treat their customers ... and are ultimately their competitor's best salesmen.

I don't "owe" an LDS anything ... if they want my business, they have to earn it. A little respect goes a long way in that category ... and that's what a lot of dive shop owners just don't seem to understand. No matter what business you're in, if you can't offer value, courtesy and honesty then you deserve to go out of business ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Papa_Bear]

Here is where I jump the standard regular ye'old dive shop! A lot of people don't continue for a lot of reasons, training is always available at most shops for those who want it, so it is something else. I think here in California it is people trying to sell new divers all the bells and whistles from the start! If a new diver is not comfortable he will not dive! A good wet or dry suite is the most important thing a new diver can buy! A lot of shops would rather sell the high dollar reg as life support, but if you go down in Feb to dive and it's 52* you wont! So your stuff sits in the garage and you don't dive and you end up not diving even in the summer because of a million reasons! We need to encourage shops to make sure their students are comfortable and should spend time on dry suites and sell them or custom wet suites if that will make the difference! I have seen it over the years! "Hey lets go diving" and I get "Na it's too cold" or "My wet suite doesn't keep me warm" My own Daughter will not dive cold water! So she dives a lot less and makes a very small impact on any dive store! The reason she gives "It's too clod!" My two cents! I believe in giving as many who want the opportunity to try SCUBA, just like skiing, or many other activities! Is it for me? This is the only way we won't see more stores close!

 

[SparticleBrane]

If more dive shops were run by knowledgeable people who understood that the current dropout rate is due to uneducated divers scaring themselves to death, we'd be much better off.

 

[Adobo]

Here is where I jump the standard regular ye'old dive shop! A lot of people don't continue for a lot of reasons, training is always available at most shops for those who want it, so it is something else. I think here in California it is people trying to sell new divers all the bells and whistles from the start! If a new diver is not comfortable he will not dive! A good wet or dry suite is the most important thing a new diver can buy! A lot of shops would rather sell the high dollar reg as life support, but if you go down in Feb to dive and it's 52* you wont! So your stuff sits in the garage and you don't dive and you end up not diving even in the summer because of a million reasons! We need to encourage shops to make sure their students are comfortable and should spend time on dry suites and sell them or custom wet suites if that will make the difference! I have seen it over the years! "Hey lets go diving" and I get "Na it's too cold" or "My wet suite doesn't keep me warm" My own Daughter will not dive cold water! So she dives a lot less and makes a very small impact on any dive store! The reason she gives "It's too clod!" My two cents! I believe in giving as many who want the opportunity to try SCUBA, just like skiing, or many other activities! Is it for me? This is the only way we won't see more stores close!

I dunno where you come from with your other posts but this one, in my incredibly humble opinion, hits the nail on the head. I can't count how many people have told me that they are divers but absolutely refuse to dive at home because it is so cold. (I suspect the vast majority of divers in the US and Canada have nothing but cold water to dive in at home.)

One of the most prolific open water shops in my area bangs out scubapro bc and reg packages like they are going out of style. And yet they struggle to sell the better wetsuits and drysuits. It's not difficult to see why so many new divers are hanging up their fins.

 

[ArcticDiver]

...Don't get me wrong ... I would like to see a healthy network of dive shops in our area. But more often than not, the people running those shops don't understand (or care) how to treat their customers ... and are ultimately their competitor's best salesmen.

I don't "owe" an LDS anything ... if they want my business, they have to earn it. A little respect goes a long way in that category ... and that's what a lot of dive shop owners just don't seem to understand. No matter what business you're in, if you can't offer value, courtesy and honesty then you deserve to go out of business ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I don't disagree there may be other possible alternatives to dive shops. The focus is different for dive shops and dive clubs, although some aspects may overlap. The preference is for dive shops to get their act together.

I never gave any indication that anyone, including you, "owe" any shop anything. I'm not sure why you jumped to that conclusion. It certainly isn't anything I've ever proposed or endorsed, even by implication.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I never gave any indication that anyone, including you, "owe" any shop anything. I'm not sure why you jumped to that conclusion. It certainly isn't anything I've ever proposed or endorsed, even by implication.

It was meant to address the general theme of the thread ... why LDS go out of business. The "loyalty" mentality most dive shop owners I've ever met somehow think they are owed tends to drive people away from their business. And when people walk away from a business, the chances of that business remaining viable tend to go down.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[vshearer]

One factor that has not been mentioned is The Boredom Factor.

SCUBA is often sold as an Adventure. But, so many times the only adventure is getting through the certification class. After a few trips to a reef and seeing the "pretty fish" the new diver thinks: "Gee this was nice, but I've seen the fish. This is expensive and I can see the same thing snorkeling".

Combine that with what seems to be a national trend to more urban activities and it is not hard to see the population of continuing divers declining. Faced with these demographics it is hard for a dive shop to make it in the first place.

Perhaps this is where the interest in "Technical Diving" is coming from. Leaving aside any precise definiton of technical diving, I think the interest revolves around looking at diving more as exploration. 20 years ago there really wasn't that much "cold water" diving. (again...it is relative) Yeah, there were the diehards, but now there are many and those diving under ice, in the Northeast and Northwest in winter, they are taking SCUBA to a sort of extreme sport. Not to mention the specialized Cave Divers and Trimix deco divers. Diving is a whole new animal today, and can be approached on multiple levels.

 

[RonFrank]

Gander Mountain SCUBA is here, in Lake Mary Florida.

It looks like they have potential, and are not there yet.

We have Gander Mtn here as well. They were associated with DD, but I don't blame them for ending the relationship. For example here they *stocked* Gander Mtn. So what did they provide? A huge isle containing spear guns! 3mm wetsuits (nothing thicker). Basically they did not bother to recognize that the Denver market is not going to support a lot of Spear Gun sales, and that divers here often want a bit more choice than 3mm vs. 3/2! I have to wonder if they were not just unloading stuff they did not want in some areas.

So far Gander Mtn is not doing well in the diving market here based on what I've seen. They don't seem to have the experience, but maybe that will change. On the up side, the rest of the store is busy.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

Perhaps this is where the interest in "Technical Diving" is coming from. Leaving aside any precise definiton of technical diving, I think the interest revolves around looking at diving more as exploration. 20 years ago there really wasn't that much "cold water" diving. (again...it is relative) Yeah, there were the diehards, but now there are many and those diving under ice, in the Northeast and Northwest in winter, they are taking SCUBA to a sort of extreme sport. Not to mention the specialized Cave Divers and Trimix deco divers. Diving is a whole new animal today, and can be approached on multiple levels.

I agree I started diving as a teenager to pursue both the inner and outer explorational aspects of it - it is as important to explore an challenge your pown limits as it is to explroe the world around you. I have been diving 23 years but for a few years in the middle, I dove very little as there was no challenge left within the confines of accepted sport diving practices and technical diving had not yet hit it's stride. Technical diving put the challenge back into what had become a very boring sport.

Modern recreational OW and even AOW cert programs are designed to allow a maximum number of divers to become certified and for the most part people taking the recreatioanl scuba class expect a cert at the end as more or less an entitlement for paying the fee and showing up. For the most part, in all but the most hopeless cases, they usually get one.

As posted by someone previously, I think this contributes to the high drop out rate. Students learn only enough to get themselves in trouble and scare themselves out of the sport. And the easy nature of the course, combined with every Tom, Dick and Harriet on the block being able to be a diver, provides very little sense of accomplishment or pride of ownership in obtaining a certification.

Consequently, a high drop out rate is not surprising as divers invest very little of themselves in the pursuit of the certification and do not value it nearly as much as divers did prior to the late 1980's when the serious dumbing down of the certification programs began.

So as before, I think you will always have a small core of die hard divers who will dive pretty much anywhere and anytime just because the opportunity to get wet it is there and the rest will just be casual diving toruists who try it briefly for a few years and move on to something else. In the end, the change in recreational standards to increase the potential market for trips and gear has done that, but only in the short term. I suspect over time, that change has not greatly increased the number of serious divers and if anything will serve to do that it will be the increasing growth of techncial diving - where (thank God) the risks involved and skills required put finite limits on how low the course standards can be lowered.