seansrs36:
I am curious do the scuba manufactuers require dive shops that wish to sell their gear to sell it at the suggested retail price? The reason I ask the question, there is an interesting case that the Supreme Court is hearing right now regarding this practice in the handbag industry. The shop is suing the handbag company. The Court is hearing argurements right now and a decision is expected in June. I believe the case is PSKS Inc. vs Leegin.
If you'll do a search on here, you'll see other people talking about the Leegin case and how it will affect the scuba industry.
But as for pricing, it all depends on the manufacturer and the dealer agreement.
As was said above in a previous post,
Aqualung and
Scubapro dealer agreements say that the shop can not sell for less than 10% below MSRP. Many of us consider this price fixing. These manufacturers will punish their customers who can buy it for cheaper by yanking the dealership of dealers who sell for below this price set.
Other manufacturers such as
Dive Rite require the dealer to advertise and list their products in the store, on web pages, or nationally adverise at MSRP price, but they can sell them for any price they want. However, there are some other politics involved in this also.
Another form of dealer pricing you see is a manufacturer that has
MSRP and
MAP pricing lists. MAP is "Minimum Advertised Price" (per dealer agreement. This means that a dealer cannot advertise below a set price in the dealer agreement nationally, on their web page, mass mailouts, etc. (it all differes per manufacturer, but that's the jist of it). However, the dealer can sell the product for as little as they want. MAP pricing is in place with some manufacturers so that dealers don't get in advertised price wars against each other. In theory it puts them all on a level playing field. Examples of manufacturers that have this type of pricing structure are
Tusa, Oceanic, Henderson, etc.
An example of this above pricing structure is the Tusa Split Fins. MSRP is $189. MAP is $129, so you'll hardly ever see them on the web at an authorized dealer for less thatn $129. However you can often find them on sale for $99 at some of the bigger volume shops.
The other pricing model is the 'grey market' model. It's price it for what ever you want. These are typically grey market or unauthorized dealers. Leisure Pro is an example of this, however, they are dealers now of a lot of gear they sell and follow MAP pricing on a lot of if now. Of course there are some brands that they sell that they aren't dealers of, such as ScubaPro and Aqualung that they sell for much less that MSRP & MAP.
hope that helps some.
-Mike
