It is an interesting conundrum (well, interesting to a member of the 'local community' one would expect Seaspace to want to cater to, obviously the whole issue is more than idle curiosity to those with a real monetary stake).
On the one hand - you want to throw an entertaining conference and attract both attendees for the door charge and for the exhibitors for the booth charges. Without attendees there's no reason for exhibitors to go and vice versa, chicken and egg, etc. (already commented on by Debraw and others).
To get attendees from a larger-than-immediate-metropolitan area (e.g. people like me driving down from DFW) there's got to be something to make it 'worth my while' that I can't find elsewhere (internet or local dive shop or travel agency). Usually this means some sort of discounts, whether it's on equipment, travel, or whatever, as well as a better coherent hands-on selection than I think I can get. Granted you'll never beat the "selection" on the internet - everything can be found there - but getting things all in one place so I don't have to surf page after page for comparisons, and can do real hands-on touchy-feely comparisons even if its not on the "complete selection" makes up for some loss of breadth.
So to get the exhibitors to go, you need to give them a big enough platform that they'll make up in volume/exposure what they'll lose in booth fees, travel costs, donations (to the silent auction or whatnot) and reduced per-item profit margin from offering the discounts those cheap-arse attendees are after. The internet already provides a bit of an artificial best-price-floor search capacity for buyers, which kind of means exhibitors wanting to sell things aren't going to be able to offer the 'best' price regardless, but there might be just enough wiggle room above the 'best' internet price that the hands-on service and support to the purchaser's decision is what justifies a bit of a premium on top of that - but a bit less so than when just walking into your LDS directly. Ditto with resort operators who can undercut what they offer thru travel agents (cutting their commission out of the loop) but again, the internet already offers that.
From what I've heard just on this board, it was LDS's in the Houston area who have kind of balked at or even blocked getting much by way of other dive shops there. I can understand the basis of that mentality - why invite competitors into MY market, especially for 'durable goods' that don't get replaced all that often (not that many of us re-spin our entire rig on a yearly basis) ??? But this kind of ignores the fact that any local buyers have to have the equipment serviced and get their training and fills somewhere, and would probably prefer that to be local, while the non-local buyers traveling in probably wouldn't have bought from them vs. an at-home shop anyway - but if they're competitive, in a setting like that - they just
might. At a trade show, coming in from another city, I certainly wouldn't feel any 'loyalty' to my LDS if I saw a better offer! (Sorry, Debraw!!!
) The way I see it, "local" shops in the venue of the conference benefit from the competition and exposure as long as they were 'competitive' to begin with...but someone with a non-competitive price would have more to fear.
As far as the manufacturers, they clearly don't want to piss off their own distributors (LDSs) by showing up and undercutting prices. Regardless of generating a future 'service' revenue for the shops, that's just plain horrible business. So their only potential benefit is to 'sell' product exposure to a large collection of divers at once and - if more LDSs could be enticed to attend - perhaps to new distributors as well. (Half the 'business' at a successful conferences is exhibitor-to-exhibitor, not just exhibitor-to-attendee.) But the former requires the agreement of the participating and maybe even non-participating LDS's to agree on a "show discount price" perhaps for the manufacturer's goods, so if attendees can't buy from the mfgrer they can still leave with a feeling they're getting a bonus for attending once they stop by their friendly participating LDS afterwards. (Zeagle took this approach this year - and if I had a half-ounce less of a daughter headed to college this fall, I'd have bit hook line and sinker for a new reg assembly and BC from my LDS once I got home!). As for manufacturers getting more LDS's signed on as distributors, there's already another show for that (DEMA), so that's never going to be as much motivation, especially in a smaller regional show.
Personally I don't see that the obstacles and counter-motivations should be totally preventative to having a show like SeaSpace continue - especially if they add the 'education' concerns as well which are their real charter outside the pure exhibition space. Some attendees will come for that and the 'comeraderie' alone (but not as many as the exhibitors would like). What I really see as the barrier appears to be (again, from only one year's attendance and from what I've read here, which should probably be taken with a block of salt) the intransigence of some of the LDS's who may or may not have a seat on the organizing committee.
None of this is intended to minimize the difficulties of running an LDS. Scuba equipment is by its nature fairly durable (long interval between large same-customer sales, also equates to fairly low maintenance income to the shops even with yearly scheduled maintenance considered), fairly expensive (hence long pre-sale times, not generally a 'whim' purchase), a bit of a niche market (training isn't required to purchase - but is to use, hence you don't get a lot of casual buyers or gift buyers not already inducted into the community by certification themselves), and due to the engineering requirements and market size, has a limited supplier base. Couple all that with competition from internet pricing (which frankly every market has to deal with - from houses to cars to groceries!) and it's certainly tough.
The one thing that is going to keep LDS's running IMO is the 'trust' and 'local convenience' factor - their divers trust them for maintenance, fills, training, etc without having to ship things off, deal with a new instructor with different expectations (and no sense of personal obligation to the student) for every class, etc. I personally don't expect my LDS to carry massive inventory of everything in stock and have my size on hand when I do decide I want another wetsuit* or want to check out a different BC design - but I do expect them to have at least one of each of whatever they sell for me to handle and compare and get a feel for my decision. I'll pay a bit more than 'internet' price in exchange for that service (unlike at a conference, where I have travel costs to recapture) - but still only a bit, and they doubtless know that and have to tread that narrow wire all the time. The dive shops that forget this and think if they block access to others on their turf they're allowing themselves more room than this are fooling themselves, IMO.
Wow - shut me up already. What was the original post about, anyway???
* ...speaking of which, that reminds me, gotta call and see if the wetsuit I asked for came in!
