Major Industry Change re: Online Scuba Sales....

[captain]

Take a look at www.GanderMountain.com. They have just opened a store here in Lake Mary and they are on to this. Traditionally, they are a hunting and fishing store with camping thrown in. Now they have 6,000 square feet LOADED with gear, tanks, paraphenalia and spear guns. I do belive that THEY will convert more people who had never considered diving than a traditional Dive Store. How did they do it? They PARTNERED with Divers Direct to make it happen. While I know some of the particulars about their contract, I do not feel it appropriate for me to divulge any of that here.

I agree, a hunter or fisherman who walks in looking for something sees the diving gear and may start asking questions about diving and become interested but he would never have just walked into a LDS to look around. The all in one sporting goods store is the way diving equiptment originally was sold before the LDS's came into existence.

 

[RJP]

One of my relatives was a very promising architech, of the pencil and drafting board school. When blueprints were starting to be drafted by computers, he resisted, and did not make the conversion, preffering his drafting board over the PC. He now hands out free food samples at a BJ's warehouse in Long Island.

Then he wasn't a very good architect. Architects don't sell "blueprints" they sell "ideas." If he was truly "promising" then his ideas could be represented on the back of a napkin, and someone ELSE could render them in CAD. Not saying he should have resisted learning and working on the computer, but the computer is merely a medium. I doubt Frank Lloyd Wright ever rendered plans on a computer. Further, there hasn't been an explosion of super-talented architects since the advent of CAD. If anything the technology has allowed lesser talents to go further than they should have.

The same is true of the web. The internet doesn't create new opportunity, it is merely another tool that smart people can use to create new opportunity. You have to have THE IDEAS first - where and how you execute it is of secondary importance.

Someone is gonna come along with an IDEA! An idea that makes "LDS vs Web" irrelevent and both the LDS owners and the e-tailers are gonna sit there and say "what the ******* just happened."

Make the competition irrelevent!

 

[RJP]

Let stop cutting bait and fish shall we?

Guess what? When you have one profit center and you forget the consumer you are dead in business.

You wanna "fish"? OK.

As a professional marketer, here's the most important question I can ask you:

Who is Oceanic's competition?

I'll wait until you post your answer before I tell you that you're wrong.

 

[mdb]

Make the competition irrelevent!

RJP: The competition is already irrelevent. Some just do not know it. Glad to have a marketing person in this dialogue.

 

[Web Monkey]

Let's make it 25 bucks for all that...mask, fins, snorkel, regulator for 25 bucks....assembled and molded by slaves in ?????where?

$25 isn't going to happen, but I could easily see it happening for $125 from China.

where are you going to find a labor force...manufacturing...materials......insurable accountible company for these prices...
Just because walmart can do a pck of 20 socks for 3.99 doesn't mean it's good for america....

"Good for America" is irrelevant.

Almost nothing in WalMart is "Good for America", but they're doing it anyway, and everybody is buying.

How about this ? We get one time use regulators for 12 dollars you use them one time, and turn them back into the shop where you got it....
It's called a rental...we have them already...

Who wants a rental when you can own for the same price?

So I guess it's OK if LP cuts prices below where an authorized dealer can compete, but it's not OK if WalMart decides to cut prices below where LP can compete?

As I said before, it's a slippery slope. Once you let dealers set their own price, you can't pull back and say "Hey! I didn't mean that cheap!"

Letting the retail price find it's own level will invariably create bigger dealers and crush the smaller dealers, until ultimately, the products are sold only by huge dealers for very little money.

When everybody thought you needed a shop with qualified staff, a service bench and a fill station, selling SCUBA equipment was too messy and required too much skilled labor to be attractive to mass-merchandisers. Now that it's been proven that all you need is a website, a warehouse and good UPS driver, Pandora's Box has been opened. Now the biggest retailer will win and crush everybody else. It's inevitable.

I just find it sad that online SCUBA dealers think they have the problem solved, when in reality, they've only proven the business model that will in the end, destroy them as well as the LDSs.

This probably isn't terrible, divers still need all the services that have to be delivered in person (training, fills, quick service, tank inspections, etc.), but I beleive eventually getting equipment at a dive shop will be as rare as getting your window washed at a "Service Station".

Terry

 

[RJP]

RJP: The competition is already irrelevent. Some just do not know it. Glad to have a marketing person in this dialogue.

Ah yes, but you still need to know who the competition IS before you can make them irrelevent.

Who's YOU'RE competition?

 

[mdb]

Ah yes, but you still need to know who the competition IS before you can make them irrelevent.

Who's YOU'RE competition?

myself

 

[jeraldjcook]

I agree, a hunter or fisherman who walks in looking for something sees the diving gear and may start asking questions about diving and become interested but he would never have just walked into a LDS to look around. The all in one sporting goods store is the way diving equiptment originally was sold before the LDS's came into existence.

During a recent trip to Table Rock, I was amazed at the number of avid divers who dive solely to spear fish the lakes in southern Missouri. I bet that's a market people rarely think about. Redneck fishermen :fork:

 

[RJP]

myself

Nah - not gonna let you get away with any of that "you are you're only competition" sort of rah-rah, feel-good consultant rot!



You can think of yourself as your only limitation - fine - but who is your COMPETITION?

Do you even have the correct definition of "competition"?

I'm not trying to be pedandic here; this is important stuff.

 

[RJP]

During a recent trip to Table Rock, I was amazed at the number of avid divers who dive solely to spear fish the lakes in southern Missouri. I bet that's a market people rarely think about. Redneck fishermen :fork:

That's the case with several dive boats I dive on here in NJ. Frequently I'm the only "diver" on the boat. The other guys are hunters, diving is just the way they get down to where the lobsters are.

You wouldn't call skiers "car enthusiasts" because they drive to the mountain, would you?