The changing Scuba Industry

[boulderjohn]

The change I see that really interests me is with what SSI is doing.

For those who don't know the history, two early agencies, NASDS and SSI, merged under the SSI name. The owner of NASDS, Doug McNeese, eventually bought out the SSI leadership and made the NASDS philosophy the SSI philosophy. NASDS began its life as a supporting organization for scuba gear retailers--the National Association of Skin Diving Stores. It eventually came to the conclusion that the best way to sell gear was to offer instruction through the stores, and it changed its name to the National Association of Skin Diving Schools. It maintained and strengthened its focus on using instruction to sell gear. That is why SSI instructors must be associated with a store. I learned all of this by attending a workshop on scuba marketing conducted by McNeese himself. There I learned that in an ideal situation, the student will have purchased all gear before beginning OW instruction, and a skilled instructor will make sure that the student has purchased the gear by the time of certification.

SSI was then purchased by Mares, so it now has a direct link to a specific brand of merchandise. They then bought rEvo rebreathers. In the past, GUE ownership also owned Halcyon and UTD ownership obviously owns UTD merchandise, but other than those, this is the first real trend where a dive agency is so closely aligned with gear sales. I am really curious to see how this works out.

 

[Steve_C]

People evolve. Early on I did not travel a lot. Then I got to the point where I was getting opportunities to do some traveling on other peoples dimes. I grabbed every opportunity. But a few years ago I lost the urge to see one more cathedral, one more mountain range, etc. Probably the knowledge that the time is more finite. More and more I spend the time doing what I want. Namely diving, looking at critters, time with family. I would rather go do another dive down on the NC coast at the Hyde (something I have done many times) rather than take a free trip to Paris, a place I have been many times for several months (and I like Paris). I see that in some others I have met where they spend more time diving later in live when they have more disposable income.

I buy stuff when it wears out or I need something different. Not an equipment junkie.

 

[RandomGuy1]

SSI was then purchased by Mares, so it now has a direct link to a specific brand of merchandise. They then bought rEvo rebreathers. In the past, GUE ownership also owned Halcyon and UTD ownership obviously owns UTD merchandise, but other than those, this is the first real trend where a dive agency is so closely aligned with gear sales. I am really curious to see how this works out

So my local shop is SSI and they make no qualms about pushing mares gear. I do know of one person who I sent to the shop and they were turned off a bit by they sales aspect of it, trying to tie instruction to the purchase of gear. They ended up not getting certified as far as I know. This was a person who is not a millennial, and has plenty of disposable income. They perceived it as high pressure sales and walked away.

 

[mdb]

The change I see that really interests me is with what SSI is doing.

For those who don't know the history, two early agencies, NASDS and SSI, merged under the SSI name. The owner of NASDS, Doug McNeese, eventually bought out the SSI leadership and made the NASDS philosophy the SSI philosophy. NASDS began its life as a supporting organization for scuba gear retailers--the National Association of Skin Diving Stores. It eventually came to the conclusion that the best way to sell gear was to offer instruction through the stores, and it changed its name to the National Association of Skin Diving Schools. It maintained and strengthened its focus on using instruction to sell gear. That is why SSI instructors must be associated with a store. I learned all of this by attending a workshop on scuba marketing conducted by McNeese himself. There I learned that in an ideal situation, the student will have purchased all gear before beginning OW instruction, and a skilled instructor will make sure that the student has purchased the gear by the time of certification.

SSI was then purchased by Mares, so it now has a direct link to a specific brand of merchandise. They then bought rEvo rebreathers. In the past, GUE ownership also owned Halcyon and UTD ownership obviously owns UTD merchandise, but other than those, this is the first real trend where a dive agency is so closely aligned with gear sales. I am really curious to see how this works out.

Their plan is running counter to what is going on in retail across the board.

Major retailers are closing stores.

Online sales continue to show double digit increases. This last holiday season
a big example.

The SCUBA market is in decline. Actual new certifications are way down.

Many small-SSI style retailers-are now closing.

Mares-IMHO-moved in the wrong direction.

 

[Wookie]

The change I see that really interests me is with what SSI is doing.

For those who don't know the history, two early agencies, NASDS and SSI, merged under the SSI name. The owner of NASDS, Doug McNeese, eventually bought out the SSI leadership and made the NASDS philosophy the SSI philosophy. NASDS began its life as a supporting organization for scuba gear retailers--the National Association of Skin Diving Stores. It eventually came to the conclusion that the best way to sell gear was to offer instruction through the stores, and it changed its name to the National Association of Skin Diving Schools. It maintained and strengthened its focus on using instruction to sell gear. That is why SSI instructors must be associated with a store. I learned all of this by attending a workshop on scuba marketing conducted by McNeese himself. There I learned that in an ideal situation, the student will have purchased all gear before beginning OW instruction, and a skilled instructor will make sure that the student has purchased the gear by the time of certification.

SSI was then purchased by Mares, so it now has a direct link to a specific brand of merchandise. They then bought rEvo rebreathers. In the past, GUE ownership also owned Halcyon and UTD ownership obviously owns UTD merchandise, but other than those, this is the first real trend where a dive agency is so closely aligned with gear sales. I am really curious to see how this works out.

Call Doug (if he will take your call, he is still in Colorado) and chat with him about it. He is the only person left in Colorado, BTW, everyone else has moved to Boca Raton. He is still getting paid and doing what he basically wants because he has 5 dive shops in the mix. They were NASDS home stores, and still are 5 of the biggest SSI stores left. I have a pretty foul taste for Mares. I tried to become a service center specifically for the MR-22 Navy. NOAA has hundreds of these regs, all needing service. I have no intention to service them for the general public, no intention to buy parts (NOAA buys their own kits), and no intention to sell their regulators, but as a long time NOAA contractor, I intend to continue providing a service for NOAA. Mares says no, I'm not a facility. Well I am a facility, and Mares says no, I don't have the tools. I have every tool NOAA requires, which is far in excess of anything Mares requires of their techs. Mares says no, I don't sell their regs. Which I can't argue with, and my corporate lawyer is also their corporate lawyer.

I think this whole thread started with the statement that some manufacturers were in a ditch and couldn't get out of the business model that worked so well in the 80's.

 

[sunshower]

Very interesting thread; a bummer too for me as a longtime diver. The LDS was full of cool gear needed for future adventures and was kind of like Cheers; good friends and good times. Now it's gone, and while there are many shops in my area, I can't find one that I really want to go to.

I can't help but wonder if making the training easier over time had unintended consequences. When I got into it in the early 90s, it wasn't just an activity for me, it became more of a defining characteristic. I studied and worked hard for the certification and felt a sense of accomplishment. I had become a diver and I wanted to do it as much as my wallet would permit. That sense of identity and accomplishment may be lessened in a framework where students study on their own and spend one weekend in the pool and one more doing checkout dives. They do a few skills good enough and check a smiley face. I think it also weakens the relationship between the students and the instructors/LDS. The value add is reduced; they're less connected, plugged in to the diving community; the diver identity isn't imbued to nearly the same extent.

No doubt there are many factors, the economy potentially a big one, but people are still people; they love adventure. I've never owned a shop or run a boat; maybe I'm way off but I can't escape thinking that making it easier was a bad trade; short-term gain for long-term pain.

 

[Wookie]

Very interesting thread; a bummer too for me as a longtime diver. The LDS was full of cool gear needed for future adventures and was kind of like Cheers; good friends and good times. Now it's gone, and while there are many shops in my area, I can't find one that I really want to go to.

I can't help but wonder if making the training easier over time had unintended consequences. When I got into it in the early 90s, it wasn't just an activity for me, it became more of a defining characteristic. I studied and worked hard for the certification and felt a sense of accomplishment. I had become a diver and I wanted to do it as much as my wallet would permit. That sense of identity and accomplishment may be lessened in a framework where students study on their own and spend one weekend in the pool and one more doing checkout dives. They do a few skills good enough and check a smiley face. I think it also weakens the relationship between the students and the instructors/LDS. The value add is reduced; they're less connected, plugged in to the diving community; the diver identity isn't imbued to nearly the same extent.

No doubt there are many factors, the economy potentially a big one, but people are still people; they love adventure. I've never owned a shop or run a boat; maybe I'm way off but I can't escape thinking that making it easier was a bad trade; short-term gain for long-term pain.

When diving was made safe and anyone could do it, a huge disservice was done to the industry. See, the problem is that diving isn't safe, but it can be done safely. When I became an instructor in 95, I was prohibited by my training agency from saying "you could die". It was actually prohibited to use the term. So, diving was the sport for everyone. Sadly, we've come to learn that you can die diving, and it isn't safe.

It is a huge adventure, and it's a blast, and after 20 years there still isn't anything I'd rather do. But it isn't safe and not everyone can do it.

As far as the week long class, and to add to the earlier discussion about SSI/NASDS, the NASDS OW class was 11 modules and took damn near forever, but a diver popped out at the other end. University divers are still the ones I want to take diving on my boat, because they are good. They spend a whole semester on Open Water class, and that doesn't include the Open Water time. Google the University of Miami scuba class, it may be scientific diver class, and look at their trim and buoyancy in the pool. It is perfect for a bunch of cave divers. Trim is trim, the instructors just happen to be GUE cave divers.

One reason I am considering getting back into teaching is because I discovered RAID. They teach that trim and buoyancy should be the first priority. I'm kind of excited, and I haven't been excited about anything scuba in a long time.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

In terms of OW instruction, the actual trend is the opposite of the ScubaBoard cliché--the PADI standards for OW instruction are stronger and include more than they did 5 years ago. Their AOW course has been punched up a bit this year as well.

That's encouraging. My biggest complaint about standardized training ... regardless of agency ... has always been that it often fails to produce divers who are capable of planning and executing their own dives without further assistance or training. Stronger emphasis on the basic skills can go a long way toward making divers feel more comfortable with the activity, which will help the retention level. As a fellow instructor and former dive shop owner once put it ... "we tend to teach them just enough to scare the crap out of themselves" ... and they then decide that it's not fun and go find some other way to spend their disposable time and money.

The standards seem to be more geared toward the occasional diver who's going to be spending that one vacation a year in a tropical location where they will have someone setting up their gear for them, and taking them on guided dives in relatively benign conditions. It's not well-suited for people who dive more locally in more challenging conditions, without the assistance of a dive guide. My perspective is geared more toward the needs of the latter, since those are the students I spent 12 years catering to. As a consequence, I tended to create my own training materials that were considerably more in-depth than what had been offered by any of the mainstream agencies.

How those standards are implemented, as always, depends upon the local shop. The shop for which I most recently did OW instruction (I now do only tech) quite frankly sees OW students only as potential purchasers of equipment and (especially) dive travel customers. The Director of Instruction said to me "Instructors are a dime a dozen." He said they have someone new coming in looking for work about every other week. They can all do the job required of them: get people certified so that they can buy equipment and go on trips. I think that is short sighted myself. I think that if a diver leaves a program feeling very safe and proficient, that diver is much more likely to continue diving than one who is unsure and struggles on that first dive trip. I think a diver who has a great time on that first dive trip with those superior skills is more likely to continue to buy gear and take trips, but many dive shops obviously think I am way off base with that idea.

This seems to be the popular business model ... and the reason why I spent all but one year as an independent instructor. I just couldn't rationalize being *that* instructor. I often think the problem that people usually complain about with dive training has less to do with standards than it does the incredibly low bar we set for creating dive instructors, and the inherent conflict of interest between the dive shop making money vs producing well-trained divers. The latter tends to encourage the "churn and burn" approach to pushing them through class as quickly as possible and upselling both gear and additional training. This tends to be short-sighted, as you'll get their money initially, but they'll quickly decide it's just not worth the investment.

Granted that my students tended to be a pretty self-selecting bunch ... which is true of most independent instructors, but I can safely say that the majority of those I taught over the years are still actively diving. And many went on to pursue technical training at some level ... which is where the real money is in terms of both training and equipment sales. I think this begins with strong foundational skills, which gives the diver confidence and some measure of commitment to the activity. It keeps them interested and involved.

Which gets us back to the changing scuba industry ... I would like to think that at some point, perhaps by necessity, we see the separation of dive instruction and gear sales. Only then do I believe will we see an overall improvement in training ... not because of anything that happens to standards, but because we will then remove the incentive to keep training to the minimal level that the standards will allow.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[dorsal]

So my local shop is SSI and they make no qualms about pushing mares gear. I do know of one person who I sent to the shop and they were turned off a bit by they sales aspect of it, trying to tie instruction to the purchase of gear. They ended up not getting certified as far as I know. This was a person who is not a millennial, and has plenty of disposable income. They perceived it as high pressure sales and walked away.

Many years ago I walked into a shop like this. The conversation with the shop went from "I'm interested in learning to dive" to a strong sales pitch with a running tally of thousands of dollars in gear and OW course. I walked out empty handed. That was maybe 15 years ago.

I also know a lot of folks who are mostly vacation divers who do a few 2 tank dives while enjoying their trip. Most of them own their own gear and many have bought from one of the 6 local dive stores.

 

[MelasLithos]

As a millenial myself, and a rather new diver, I can't really talk about the changes in the scuba industry. But here is what I can say about how I (and my friends) came to scuba diving, and how I am approaching it.

As has been mentionned a lot here previously, we (when I say we, I mean mostly me, but what I also see amongst my friends and other people of my generation) value experience above things. I don't really know why we differ on this subject to previous generations, but I believe one of the reason is that because we grew up in a consumer society, things are moslty disposable item. Something is to be bought, enjoyed for a while, thrown, and up to the next. Therefore, the are just tools, and not important. More important than the object in itself is what they offer us as a "user experience".

Also, we are a generation that moves a lot. We grow up in one place (or several - I'm an expat kid myself, so maybe not really representative), study somewhere else, than work in again another place. And when you move a lot, you don't want to own too much stuff. As mentionned previously, it's cumbersome. Ergo, again, the fact that we value experience. It's something that enriches everyone, yet doesn't take any space. So a lot of us would prefer to just rent gear rather than invest in some that would take space, is expensive, and will change soon (I know that good dive gear last long, but we are so used to planned obsolescence and cheap stuff that breaks soon and changes in fashions that it's hard to integrate that in our habits. It might last for a long time, but will we use it for a long time?).

Then, we are a digital generation. Everything we "own" fits in a cellphone or is in the cloud. Also, internet allows us to see everything. We see what is happening on the other side of the world, everything. So we want to see everything in person too. But there is just so many things to do and try! So much we are missing! So we just zap from one thing to another, to enjoy as much as we can. That's why I actually pretty like the fact that most certification agencies cut lessons and classes and certifications in small bits. I can do it one bit at a time, at my rythm, when it's convenient. Although I'll admit to having discovered recently the joy of taking things slowly, and I'm still trying to adjust for that.

Next, I think we are a generation that value lifestyle and convenience. We grew up in a world where everything is just one click away. Everything is processed and pre-packaged and offered to us in a immediately usable way. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way yet to have the ocean delivered to my door (in 24h of course, which is usually the norm in China for online deliveries), so our way to the ocean has to be convenient and easy. I think it's Wookie who mentionned previously a dive shop that offers trips, everything prepared, no hassles. That's what I am looking for if I am paying someone to do things for me. If it's only booking a hotel, flights, etc., I can do it myself, thank you. If I pay for a travel agent (or LDS) to organize a trip for me, than I don't want to have to think about it in addition. Also, a lot of us grew up as the center of our parents world, i.e. of the whole world. So we want personalized attention ^^ (well, that might be because I spent half of my life in China ;-) ). I'd much rather have someone to help me organize a personal trip, or for a small group, tailored to our needs, than join a big group. Unless, as also mentionned previously, this group offers something extra to just the trip (atmosphere, unique experience - again - , etc.)

And I think a last important point is that a lot of my friends have unstable careers and situation (I put myself aside on this point. I consider myseld lucky, with a good and stable situation, but it's pretty exceptional amongst my friends), we probably won't have any retirement when we get there, salaries are low for youngers people, we change jobs often, so it's not easy to find the funds and the time to feed and expensive hobby. For example, a friend of mine is at his third job already this year. We were supposed to take him on a trip for a DSD, but then he had to cancel because he had just resigned from his second job and had to pass interviews/was out of cash instead. Basically, most of us have to make a choice and decide on which experiences we want to spend our cash and time, and we will chose the one that will give us the most value for our money/time. Scuba might be expensive, but I think if we are shown that we can get a great valued experience from it, than I think we are ready to go for it.

So how does all that relate to my scuba experience?

Well, I got OW certified a bit as a "bucket list" item. I was curious about it, it was something I wanted to experience. So a friend and I went for our OW (at least we would get a certification that would last us for a lifetime, contrary to just a DSD). But we went to Boracay, which is not the best known destination for scuba diving, but is a rather "complete" destination. Why? Well, in case we hated scuba diving, there would always be other things to do ^^, others experiences to enjoy (for example, we also went on our first helicopter tour during this trip). And then I absolutely fell in love with diving. So even if I started believing that I would only be a "resort/holiday" diver, in my case, it ended up being much more than that. So I think it's OK to start like this, you never know where it might take you ^^

Of course, even if I loved scuba diving, for all the reasons mentionned above, I didn't buy any gear for a while. I don't dive locally (for several reasons, but mostly because of the cleanliness of the water - at the beach, the swimable part of the ocean is in a filtered area...), which means that if I have my own gear, I'll have to travel with heavy and big bags, and I like to travel light (my mother always complains that I travel with only a carry-on, saying that a real lady can't travel with so little stuff ^^). Also, I wanted to make sure to have a feel for what I would really need (I don't want to waste money on ill-advised buying decisions). So it's only after one year and a half and almost 70 dives that I finally started to buy my own gear (and I am the first of my close diving entourage to do that, but also the most hooked on diving). None of the people I know would even considering buying something just for OW classes, because we don't know yet what we want and renting is so convenient. And a lot of my friends will continue renting because it is convenient.

What made me finally change my mind about buying my own gear?
1/ I had a few less than ideal experiences with ill-adapted rental gear (leaking regulators, too thin wetsuits - I have a really low cold tolerance - , BCD that weren't confortable). So I realized that if I wanted to get the most of the experience, I needed my own gear.
2/ my instructor pointed me to the price of rental at my next destination. A quick calculation made me decide that buying will be more profitable in the long run. But contrary to a few of my friends, I can afford the high initial cost of it. Sometimes, even if they would like to, they can't shell out the money and it's easier for them to pay a little more each time for rental that once a big amount of money.

Well, I just realized that I got a bit carried away, sorry. I do tend not to know when to stop.

So as I summary, I'd say that I do believe that we are a generation that value experience above anything else, that values trying and experiencing as many things as possible. We also like what is convenient, instant. And unfortunately, we do not always have a lot of disposable income. So make scuba diving a valuable experience.

Which just makes an idea pop into my head right now (sorry if it seems completely stupid, I haven't really taught much about it yet, just throwing it out just now). Maybe the scuba industry should do the opposite of what it is doing just now? Don't focus on the gear and material part of diving, but on the experience. Don't offer instruction in order to sell gear. Offer the gear (well, maybe not offer, but at least sell it at affordable prices) and sell an experience (advises, a course, a trip, a dive, or whatever, but and experience, so not just a card/a flight/a boat ride/a tank of air or other breathable gas). But do keep an easy entry point! (DSD, compact OW, etc.) We love to sample first and decide after if we want to pursue this hobby.