flots am
Contributor
- Messages
- 3,226
- Reaction score
- 1,861
- # of dives
- I just don't log dives
Marketing: Are we ok, or do we need help?
- Thread starter Julieofthesea
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
New divers, who would be "first time gear buyers" are certainly most profitable for gear manufacturers.
For a shop the process is straightforward, though may not be easy. Find a new vacation diver. Train them, train their wife, train their kids, sell them each a set of gear, sell 'em a camera or two, sell 'em a handful of accessories before each trip, get them to book their trips through your shop,... then go find the next new vacation diver. Train them, train their wife, train their kids, sell them each a set of gear, sell 'em a camera or two, sell 'em a handful of accessories before each trip, get them to book their trips through your shop.
The scuba industry "bucket" is empty, there's a drought, and the well is dry ...
...and you're worried that the bucket might have a leak?
Diver retention is certainly an opportunity for some incremental revenue, but it is far from the the biggest issue.
Last edited:
:hijackedthread:
Why can’t they pull guys aside in high school and tell us that! Dating would have been so much more... err productive. My bride loves to explain how making her an Abalone dinner won her heart.
I just told my girlfriend who doesn't dive, yet, but wants me to teach her about this thread. She coaches figure skating. Anyway, she said, "Oh, wow! Would you do that for me? Go shoot a fish and make me something gourmet? That would be so hot. I've seen spearguns in your house do you ever use them?"
Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
Continuing with the freedive spearfishing thing.
My buddy happens to run the dive shop in one of the stores of a large Southern California based sporting goods chain. He actually sees who buys what in several departments besides the scuba department.
He goes on spearboard to see what's happening, and he is an avid freedive spearfisherman himself. He goes out diving in the kelp paddies of Palos Verdes for white sea bass. He sees a lot of youth out there.
It almost appears that it's getting back to basics again. Just like when diving started with skin diving.
This could be due to many factors:
Cost
Risk (the more the better)
Adventure
Coolness
Health
Chicks
Food
I also think there is a section of the youth that is sick of sitting on couches playing video games and doing nothing.
I think they are starving for some sort of activity that boost their egos (not a bad thing) and give them purpose.
Southern CA has a perfect social climate for this to happen. I think a few guys started doing it then it caught on like fire once the other guys saw what it was bringing them.
Scuba is an old fart sport. An old fart to them is anybody over 40. Maybe at some point those freedivers would get into it. Just like a gateway drug, maybe freediving is the gateway sport for some of them to eventually get into scuba.
Scuba stillremains a sport for people with large amounts of disposable cash, not the youngsters.
Why are people so concerned about the future of diving anyway?
It's never been a mainstream sport and never will be.
There will always be divers, just not very many of them.
Artificially trying to boost numbers by letting just about anybody get certified isn't going to increase numbers in the long run. It's going to decrease numbers if anything because the training will be so lousy nobody will feel like they are comfortable doing it.
Looking for the quick buck by constantly counting on the next batch of divers to get into it, get trained and buy gear, only to dump it a few years later, isn't a sustainable business model in my opinion. They need to get a constant flow of new divers AND keep people in it even if they (the established diver) tapers off on purchasing, combined they would help the industry grow. Right now more people are getting out of it than are coming in.
My buddy happens to run the dive shop in one of the stores of a large Southern California based sporting goods chain. He actually sees who buys what in several departments besides the scuba department.
He goes on spearboard to see what's happening, and he is an avid freedive spearfisherman himself. He goes out diving in the kelp paddies of Palos Verdes for white sea bass. He sees a lot of youth out there.
It almost appears that it's getting back to basics again. Just like when diving started with skin diving.
This could be due to many factors:
Cost
Risk (the more the better)
Adventure
Coolness
Health
Chicks
Food
I also think there is a section of the youth that is sick of sitting on couches playing video games and doing nothing.
I think they are starving for some sort of activity that boost their egos (not a bad thing) and give them purpose.
Southern CA has a perfect social climate for this to happen. I think a few guys started doing it then it caught on like fire once the other guys saw what it was bringing them.
Scuba is an old fart sport. An old fart to them is anybody over 40. Maybe at some point those freedivers would get into it. Just like a gateway drug, maybe freediving is the gateway sport for some of them to eventually get into scuba.
Scuba stillremains a sport for people with large amounts of disposable cash, not the youngsters.
Why are people so concerned about the future of diving anyway?
It's never been a mainstream sport and never will be.
There will always be divers, just not very many of them.
Artificially trying to boost numbers by letting just about anybody get certified isn't going to increase numbers in the long run. It's going to decrease numbers if anything because the training will be so lousy nobody will feel like they are comfortable doing it.
Looking for the quick buck by constantly counting on the next batch of divers to get into it, get trained and buy gear, only to dump it a few years later, isn't a sustainable business model in my opinion. They need to get a constant flow of new divers AND keep people in it even if they (the established diver) tapers off on purchasing, combined they would help the industry grow. Right now more people are getting out of it than are coming in.
By coincidence, I was speaking with a friend who is heavily involved in the industry just a few days ago. He said that the number of active divers worldwide is about half of what it was 10 years ago. Is that a symptom that something is wrong with how business is conducted or just a fluke of the economy and demographics? If it is a trend that is largely induced by how businesses conduct themselves, that is a problem worth exploring.
Here's some information from a consumer purchase/survey database I have access to:
In 2012 the participation rate in scuba diving (at least one member of a household has participated) among affluent households is as follows:
Household income >$100,000 - 2.1%
Household income >$200,000 - 3.7%
I chose to look at affluent households as comprising the population with the greatest likelihood of having disposable income and available leisure time. Not to say they are the only people that do/could dive, but they are clearly the most attractive market segment. It's a logical assumption that both initial penetration rate and continued participation rates would be lower at lower income levels.
Seeing as households earning >$100,000 comprise roughly 15% of the US population, what we see is that 2.1% of 15% of US households are an attractive target for "the scuba industry." That's 0.31% of US households... less than one-third of one-percent.
By comparison below are the participation rates for downhill snow-skiing and golf.
SKIING
Household income >$100,000 - 8.4%
Household income >$200,000 - 12.9%
GOLF
Household income >$100,000 - 21.6%
Household income >$200,000 - 25.5%
So four times as many "attractive market" households engage in skiing, and 10x as many engage in golf.
Both of these are activities that are gear intensive, require some level of initial and incremental training. Both typically require/involve travel to expensive locations and/or are unavailable seasonally to large portions of the country. (Hell, skiing anywhere in the US is a 4.5mo proposition best case.) Sounds a lot like scuba diving, no?
So cost, training, travel, and seasonality don't seem to prevent an attractive target market from engaging in sports. Hmm...
CAPTAIN SINBAD
Contributor
Very enlightening responses. It appears that recreational diving as an industry is a global failure. The number of people who dive for pleasure are very small and not enough to sustain an "industry." Besides sustaining a few dive shops, boats and a few resorts, they are not large / monolithic enough to sustain an industry.
Once we get out of recreational scuba, that is where scuba becomes more of an industry. There are militaries all over the world that (in my assumption) would be a major portion of dive gear consumers. Then commercial / salvage operations would also be another group though they may not be as large as the first one. My limited exposure to the "industry" tells me that if the word "industry" is to be used then it must be used in a larger sense than recreational scuba.
Once we get out of recreational scuba, that is where scuba becomes more of an industry. There are militaries all over the world that (in my assumption) would be a major portion of dive gear consumers. Then commercial / salvage operations would also be another group though they may not be as large as the first one. My limited exposure to the "industry" tells me that if the word "industry" is to be used then it must be used in a larger sense than recreational scuba.
In what "sector" of the alleged "scuba industry" is your friend involved?
A lot of things have happened to make things tough on industries that rely on disposable income and free time. Point of fact, one of the biggest issues to hit the travel and leisure industries in the last 10 years is the dramatic increase in time/hassle/cost associated with air travel due to post 9/11 regulation. Seeing as scuba is largely a vacation endeavor for the majority of diver. Add that to a generally down global economy in the same timeframe and things would be tough for the best marketers with the most robust budgets. How's a guy who quit his job to open an LDS (because he loves diving) supposed to make any headway?
Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
Similar threads
