The changing Scuba Industry

[Aguablanco1]

I owned construction and service businesses for 35 years and the only type of customer I didn't like to serve was the one without money. As business owners we can pick or friends, we can pick our seat and we can even pick our noses but we really can't pick out customers, unless, of course, we don't care about staying in business. Shoot, I wanted to do high end garage doors exclusively but those pesky customers kept doing a cost benefit analysis and buying low to mid grade garage doors. The only constant is change and all business owners better understand that and adapt.
RichH

 

[drrich2]

Not everybody enjoys haggling. In some markets (e.g.: buying a house or car), it's expected, refusal to do it results in higher cost and a sense of having been taken advantage of as a food, and doing it too aggressively can make things ugly. I'd rather get a good price I don't have to fight over. MSRP is generally not a good price from what I understand. More something to make the 'real' price look like a bargain.

I like this shop I'm talking about. But, I have bought almost nothing there. I do go there for all my fills, VIPs, reg servicing, etc.. And one of the reasons I like them so much is that they have never made me feel even the slightest bit like they were bothered that I bought pretty much all my stuff somewhere else.

You like them but you don't buy from them, except rather lower cost services, and you mention them to others. If all the customers were like you, would their business model be viable?

Richard.

 

[drrich2]

Ah, one thing about the LDS vs. online vendor conflict. I drive past a side-road to a quarry with a dive shop on my way to & from work. I like them. But I seldom need dive gear 'same day,' and for selection, price and sheer convenience, I can order scuba gear off Amazon or from Leisure Pro, have it shipped to work where there's always somebody to sign for it, and take it home with me. More conveniently than I can pull into the local dive shop. Plus, it's easier to shop online and see what's there and in stock and what sizes, than to go to the LDS and browse. Amazon Prime-elegible items show up in 2 business days, and LeisurePro seems to ship in a timely way.

There was a time when retail stores offered convenience and instant gratification over online offerings; now, online is often more convenient, gratification is fast enough (vs. however long it'd take me to eventually pull into the dive shop on the tail end of lunch break) and reading online reviews to guide my decisions...well, unless I need an air fill or quarry dive, why go?

And I like my LDS.

Richard.

 

[BRT]

I'm wondering if some of these folks get mad when they go the grocery store and spend $1.29 on a can of green beans and then go back the next week and they are on sale for $.99. Different people pay different prices on everything all the time. From the pack of gum at the checkout counter, all the way up to houses / cars and other major purchases. Prices aren't fixed on anything in the U.S.

Nope. If you send out a coupon or have a sale that is all good. Selling to your best customers at a higher price than the tightwads is not good in my book.

 

[BRT]

Unless of course one of you happens to have a loyalty card that gives you a lower price. Happens all the time.

Wouldn't even bother me. Those are for people who buy there all the time.

 

[dmaziuk]

They want to try something new every day. Look at their favorite shop, Trader's Joe, for example. They still have black tea and green tea, like we the normal people drink; but most of their stock is flavored tea, like Mango-Cinnamon-Spice Chai, etc. Yuppies buy this kind of stuff because this makes them feel special. They think like kids, and kids like new toys.

You'd have to admit, though: it's only "normal" tea because you are used to drinking it. Otherwise why would it be any more or less normal than any other herbal concoction? They drink that stuff 'cause they don't know any better, poor things.

They do not eat just chocolate; they eat spicy jalapeno chocolate or sea salt chocolate because they are desperately trying to be different and they achieve this through different type of consumerism.

Oi! I resemble that remark! With salt & chili is the only way to drink chocolate.

 

[CuzzA]

why go?

Because if you don't, one day you might be driving an even further distance just to get a fill... Like I said, I give my shop the first crack at the sale. It's hardly a hassle and I enjoy talking shop.

 

[redacted]

Because if you don't, one day you might be driving an even further distance just to get a fill... Like I said, I give my shop the first crack at the sale. It's hardly a hassle and I enjoy talking shop.

So, if you spend enough money at your LDS, the owner will not run off with one of his students, die, retire, lose the shop to hiway expansion, or get sick; all resulting in another cclosed LDS?

 

[drrich2]

Yes, and for me the added benefit of having an in-town quarry with friendly people close at hand, a feature most dive shops lack. Air fills are often cited as a key reason to patronize LDS's, but I've also read them described as loss leaders by the time you compare low fill prices against cost of acquiring, maintaining and running compressor banks. If people just use the LDS for fills, that's not gonna work.

I've already read of threads talking about clubs getting compressor systems that members can use; IIRC correctly, it's sort of a 'club owns it, members can use it, if you're a member you can use at your own risk' sort of thing? I wonder if this model will supplant some LDS's?

I want to see the LDS model work. The dive community will lose something if it doesn't

Richard.

 

[KevinNM]

Some people seem to like paying full retail-100% markup-when they have a store that knows how to
play to the "You are a great diver, great friend" ego.

I bough a dry suit at extreme exposure for full price. It wasn't that they tell me how wonderful I am (it's no tech pass for you until you get more solid skills) but because they sell a huge number of dry suits to people who do the dives I want to do, they got a guy who literally measured thousands of people for dry suits to do the measurement and they have a really great customer service attitude. So when I broke the ds zipper through inspired idiocy it got fixed. I was expecting to pay a lot of money for it, but instead it was like $100 in shipping.