According to the OP: That is their policy - to set a fixed price in the U.S. that their dealers have to conform to - mfr's policies are not open for discussion in their forums under the special rules so the thread was moved here.
Right, the thing most people object to is that Scubapro forbids the US dealers from discounting an item more than 10% of the MSRP. This is on an item where the markup is in the 100% range. So if a dealer pays $375 wholesale cost for a regulator, and it has a (Scubapro determined) MSRP of $759, the dealer cannot sell it for less than $683.10 or the dealer will risk losing his dealership.
The same dealer in Europe or Asia paying the same wholesale cost (whether it's in Euros, yen, whatever) is free to sell it for whatever he is comfortable with for a mark up. In this case, he may decide that at a cost of $375 US, he can sell it at $550 US and still have a comfortable margin.
And that might make sense as Scubapro requires cash up front so as soon as you stock it, you are paying interest on it, or at least have your money tied up in it, as well as the money you have tied up in the shop's overhead. Unfortunately, at the full MSRP it's not uncommon for a reg to sit in the shop for months, or even years for a small volume LDS competing with an internet market. If a shop can sell 3 regulators at $550 and make a gross profit of $175 each ($525 total) in the same time it would take them to sell only 1 regulator at $759 and a gross profit of $409, the shop is making more money moving a larger volume of product as the overhead is essentially the same over that same time period.
But Scubapro does not allow that freedom to it's US dealers, which leaves them at a disadvantage to both foreign competition and/or internet retailers.
The idea is well intended - to ensure a large margin for dealers to cover the larger overhead of a brick and mortar shop - but it does not work as the EU trade regulations do not allow Scubapro to restrict who their Eurpoean dealers sell to, how they sell the product (i.e no restriction on internet sales, while US dealers were until very recently restricted to face to face deals), or the prices they charge.
That potentially lets any struggling low volume dive shop in Europe open a web site and sell larger volume of product over the internet at reduced prices and then use the greater profits from sales to customers they'll never see to support the overhead on the shop and stay open for business serving local divers - and those same local divers will will buy locally as the shop has reasonable prices that remove any incentive to buy over the internet. It's a win-win situation for all involved.
Move that same struggling small local dive shop to the US, and all they've got is a small volume of product they have to sell against pressure from a zillion internet sources selling at significantly lower prices.
Part of the rationale is I think that shops will still have service work for local customers who bought those internet regs as a potential revenue stream - something that internet shops won't have. However the warranty and dealer restrictions on the FPFL discouraged annual service on internet regs, used regs and outside of US dealer network regs from the start as customers had to pay the cost of both parts and labor each and every year.
Now, even worse, we have the loss (for all practical purposes) of the free parts for life program for local purchases and that has a significant negative impact it has on service work and the revenue it generates for the shop. Obviously, fewer customers have the cash to buy a qualifying reg, BC and computer all in one shot) and if the customer does not have FPFL, the customer has no real incentive to come in for annual service. Instead they'll come in every other year, or every third year, or worse, they'll just buy another brand your shop does not sell and not come in at all. All of the above negatively and significantly, impact the profits made from service work.
In short, by trying to "protect" US dealers with the very restrictive dealer agreement, they are preventing them from competing while at the she time eliminating other revenue streams they need to keep the shop open. They are in short, killing their own dealer network, regardless of their actual intentions.
