yknot:
As someone with ties to the dive industry, past and at least present, where are we today and where are we headed? Regardless of anyone's OPINION, training standards aren't going to get anything but easier and the internet isn't going to go away.
I think there are some interesting things going on. Shops, even though they may not know it yet, aren't going to get away with depending on high markups in a small local market to pay for all the loss leaders. It could go several ways but one possibility is that the shops that adapt to a wider market (internet) with lower markups but higher volumes may even ditch the training all together. The best way to get a new local customer to buy gear is to teach him to dive but that won't help if you're in Chicago selling to some one in China. So...why bother with a loss leader class.
I know a number of "good" instructors who simply won't teach for a shop. As time goes on I know more and more of them. We might start to see more specialization. What I mean is that the LP's of the world will sell equipment and the instructors will teach. The LP's have the big bucks to get large volumes at the right price and they have no reason to develop any dive training expertise. Some one will have to do it though. Independants? Dedicated dive schools? New agencies? Who knows? but either way the divers buying equipment are less and less willing to pay for some one elses class. For any one to teach they'll have to make it it's own profit center...or bundle it with something other than equipment.
Personally I'm all for better prices on equipment. At the same time I'm all for better training, as apposed to the total slop that's usually passed off as training. I'd also rather pay a good instructor to really teach than I would get a free but poor class and get hammered when I buy something. The total cost would be comparable but it would be distributed differently.
I really think we're already seeing some of this. Whan I started diving I went to the same place for training that I did for my equipment. I didn't have internet and if there was any place else to shop, I didn't know about it. The shop may have had a small local market but within that market they had little or no competition. Now divers often go online for gear and some place else (maybe local, maybe not) for training. That doesn't give the trainer much of a chance to use training to sell equipment. To take that a step further, I see divers go online or to a non-local shop to buy equipment. Then being treated poorly because of it or maybe just realizing they can do better someplace else they go elsewhere for training. This kind of student probably accounts for most of my students over the last year or so and I know instructors who do a lot more teaching than I do and this where lots of their students come from. So...the clasical shop didn't get any of the business.
Divers just are no longer tied to that local shop for anything so the old model of packaging training, equipment and diving is going away because it becomming more common to not be able to sell the whole package to any one diver.
When I first opened a shop I'll bet we sold mask, snorkel, fins and boots to 95% of our students. So (using made up numbers)...you teach a $200 class and charge $200 for the other stuff. No matter how you split it up it's $400/head. Maybe 25% buy the rest of their gear. I don't know what the numbers were when we closed but far more students came in already owning mask and fins. ooops...income from that student was just cut in half.
What are the alternatives? Sell fins for less? ok but you're still only going to sell one pair to that student. Sell to more people? ok but the only people in town who want fins at any price are the six students in this class. Charge more for the class? great but as long as there's one piece of dung shop pushing $99 specials trying to push those fins no one will pay more for the class especially when it results in the very same card.
During my last few months in business I needed to bring in a bunch of cash in a hurry. I broke all the rules in the dealer agreements. Of course by this time I didn't really care if I lost my dealerships because my intention was to tell the manufacturers to go suck an egg anyway. In fact, in the case of the better manufacturers, I even told them exactly what I was doing and why and they let it go. I simply got on the phone and the email and promissed every one the best price. Of course, LP sells some things for less than I paid for them but I wasn't pushing that junk. I sold some of the stuff in stock at a loss even but it turned it back into cash which I needed and people kept calling. I sold more stuff in those couple of months than I did in the 2 years prior. Almost NONE of it to local divers. The margines were real slim but I wan't ordering the stuff until it was sold so we were getting paid for making a phone call (to order) and to pack a box. I can do that for $100 (as an example). I don't need $600 for that.
During this time I didn't even run hardly any classes. Why? That was a risk. If It sold equipment to the students I'd make a little but if I didn't I'd loose. It's also a lot of work not to mention the liability risk. My time was better spent on the email and packing boxes. Just based on the economics we almost decided to stay open and milk it until the manufacturers caught on and cut us off. Of course by then we might have managed to find other sources. The building owner even offered us some time rent free. As a little digression...it was a nice place. The layout was almost perfect for a dive shop and the size was about right. The first building we had was a hole but I liked this location. In the end though the fact was that I liked my day job better than packing boxes and my wife had just had enough so I left the box packing to LP.
Any one who has a source of equipment and likes to pack boxes could probably make a pretty good buck this way. It doesn't require any diving knowledge at all. You don't need a compressor or anything. In fact you could do it from home. When you get too big all you need is storage space.
If the manufacturers allow this there isn't any reason for any one who wants to sell equipment to have a shop. At the same time if you have a shop (of some kind) you're going to charge more for training or it isn't worth doing.
