You mean Huish (Hollis) and Aqua Lung (Apeks) BP/W packages for $750+?
The question was how are you going to compete with the DGX package which is $400.
Question Teaching OW with backplate and wing from the very beginning ?
- Thread starter Roger Hobden
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The question was how are you going to compete with the DGX package which is $400.
My better half was taught with a BP/W, long hose and necklaced secondary. She had phenomanal instructors. Here is a picture of her on her second OW dive of her life.
53 years old and learned how to swim at age 46.
53 years old and learned how to swim at age 46.
I don't get the rec versus tec thing when it comes to backplates. Given the amount of lead required for most divers for diving in 7 mils or dry suits, it is nice to take 6 lbs (BP + STA) off one's back. Some, as @RobPNW has mentioned, get 10 lb BPs (or others double them up). I need 26 lbs with a single HP100. It is nice to reduce the amount of lead that I need to 20 lbs. That's just one of the benefits of BP in my opinion, a big one for cold water divers. The fact that I also dive in warm water with a SS BP + STA and no additional lead in my 5 mil isn't a big deal. It is a convience and a bit of luck (in terms of all I need and trim.
Unfortunately, most shops don't teach trim in open water. If they did, they may be more receptive to BP/W. Or maybe not. Change is just so hard in scuba for whatever reason.
Because the industry leaders (PADI, Scubapro, Huish, Mares/SSI, Aqualung) don't want change and they exert a huge amount of control over the information that gets out there.
The training agencies don't want change because it costs money to update training. So they'll resist until they can see a clear way to profit from it. They did this with nitrox training, tech training, online training and incorporating dive computers into training.
And the leading manufacturers want to keep margins high and small competitors from gaining a foothold. The way they've gone about doing this is through minimum pricing restrictions and trying to restrict the flow of information about anything except their products. This was all set up very deliberately by Scubapro starting in the '60s. They would only sell through dive shops that offered training, ensuring that everyone was interested in selling the shop's gear. They even began heavily promoting the dive training agency NASDS because they would only issue certs through dive shops. Ironically, NASDS turned into SSI which is now owned by Head, the parent company of Mares. I took the SSI Science of Diving online course and found it amusing that all the divers in the old photos were using Scubapro products and the new photos were using Mares products. Scuba magazines were the other big source of info back then. Scubapro kept them in line by refusing to advertise in magazines that accepted mail order ads or regularly covered products that weren't sold in dive shops.
The specific reason that the old line manufacturers don't like hogarthian BP/Ws is because they remove a very profitable source of repeat sales. You can't actually wear out a backplate and you can just replace whatever other parts do wear out. And since those parts are standardized you can't lock users into high prices for replacement parts. So they've spent the last couple of decades spreading FUD about the BP/W. Since that strategy is breaking down, they've switched to making them available. But at high cost from everyone and Scubapro is focusing on proprietary parts while Mares is focusing on using their training and marketing messaging to pretend they are for tech diving only.
Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
You and I know that BP/W can be used in both rec and tech, but unfortunately many dive shops are still stuck in 1999.
The only way I can explain it is that there are two parallel universes in diving, the internet world and the dive shop world.
If it was any other sports industry like bicycling, climbing, snowboarding or wakeboarding or other board sports; if there was some new cutting edge product that came out all the stores would be fighting to get the new stuff and ideas in. Scuba is the only one I know where the B&M stores push their heads further and further into the sand. It probably has to do with how microscopically small the industry really is and the dive shops life line connection to manufacturers. You can see why manufacturers have so much power over them.
In scuba the manufacturers run the show - they design the stuff then decide the trajectory of the sport and the gear used based on what they build. Whereas in other industries consumer demand and innovation run the show and manufacturers react to the trends and demand.
In a way dive shops are actually being held prisoner by the manufacturers by an invisible but very real threat of not being supplied if they step out of line.
johndiver999
Contributor
Those other sports are dominated by young people. Scuba is dominated by oldies, not sure about the demographics of divers getting OW training, however?
Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
That’s true and that has a lot to do with it.
Freediving is a much younger crowd too and it’s completely different from scuba.
Scuba is also very gear intensive and the gear is very technical in nature. In those other sports there is more homemade stuff that can set the trends in the industry.
Truth!
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