The changing Scuba Industry

[TMHeimer]

Even at a couple of days per month the cost of renting must mount up quickly. If I only dived 1-2 week trips yearly I'd definitely rent, but that's the only situation.

 

[Marie13]

I used to think I was spoiled since I had half a dozen LDS within about 30-40 miles. Then one of them screwed up my reg. So we went to a different LDS. That one fixed my reg and a year later screwed up my divebuddy's reg.

My eyes have been opened.

I still think I am lucky to have a bunch of shops around. But I do not trust any of them to educate me or provide anything other than mainstream products.

It's very dependent on the shop, I agree.

 

[mdb]

I just finished binge reading this entire thread and can't get enough. Thanks Wookie for getting this show on the road! I don't have a lot to contribute, but one thing I have personally experienced and has mystified me (and maybe it has only been my experience-- so take it for what it's worth)-- has been the complete lack of enthusiasm from my previous LDS staff, ownership, instructors and divemasters to want to get out and do any kind of fun diving or create any ongoing sense of "community" around diving. I did my AOW, Rescue and Divemaster certs there over a number of years and could never get anyone out to dive with me. Super happy to crank out classes and get people certified, but no desire to get out and dive regularly. The whole reason I started down the solo diving road was because I couldn't find anyone that wanted to actually get out and just dive. I just found the whole business model a bit odd in terms of not proactively leveraging all of those newly certified divers into a "real" social network that would dive together and "buy" together. I have recently moved to another part of the country a thousand miles south and am already running into the same thing. I hope this is not a trend.

Unfortunately it is, and has been, "a trend" for a number of years.

Results are in, declining population of new divers, aging population of former divers.
Not a good scenario.

When I was first certified-way back when-the classes lasted weeks with at least 5 open
water dives and then lots of follow up courses, weekend barbecues, building a sense of
fellowship and community. I felt like a "diver" and was proud of it.

I hope the trend reverses.

 

[Schwob]

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.

Yeah this.
The push to buy one brand and nothing else and the fact that a BP&W was not carried and that anything that could even remotely qualify as "advice" was tuned to sell what's at hand very quickly killed my first LDS for me even so there was no hard push. Just not useful in the advice department. Not what I was looking for at all. Otherwise nice people and all, but really why should I subject myself to single-sourced-sales-centric-single-brand-focused advise at all? Why should anyone? So I walked. Luckily not from diving... Learned two things (for me):
1.) Single brand dive shops are for fills and emergencies and
2.) Running a small dive shop is hard!
That dive shop model (in conjunction with driving a seemingly senseless multiplications of DMs and Instructors to what? depress wages even further?) does not work for me at all. I think its hard for dive shops... it seems to be either limit yourself to one brand and pushing classes (create certification collectors) or be quite big... That seems almost impossible in many areas... And some may have an opinion on the kind of divers it perpetuates.

 

[Schwob]

EX

Exactly. As I said before, that isn't how the industry is set up. There are many trying to get to that point, but a lot of shops sit around and bemoan the loss of the other type of diver. But they will be gone soon. I mean, a dive shop in Tulsa, OK (forgive me, I know dive shops in Tulsa, and I'm not singling them out except that Tulsa isn't exactly a diving vacation destination) doesn't have a reef system, doesn't have a place where you can reliably get 60 feet deep and 100 feet of visibility, so they need to get the instruction, gear sales, and group travel bits sorted. But that isn't what you want. You want to go to the place where you can rent gear, have an experience, and take a helicopter ride. Now, you want more than that and God bless you. And you want to take your friend for their experience and God bless you again. I don't expect you will fly to Tulsa for that experience. You might go to Key West. Or Pattaya Beach, or Cairns.

And my experience is very US destination centric. As Bob stated, he has a fine time teaching in the Northwest, and still caters to divers he created and nurtured 12 years ago. But he doesn't do it through a shop. Because the shops are not supporting the diving he wants to teach. They support the same thing the Tulsa shop does, which is run them through a fast course, sell them a set of gear, and take them to Cozumel for an open water class. Which makes them almost dinosaurs.

I am wondering (not being provocative, just wondering) are dive shops at mostly non diving locations (compared to "diving destinations" partially contributing to the problem or the opposite?
Hypothetically, if dive shops were located mostly were the diving really is (sort of like ski schools are located mostly where the mountains with snow are...) would things be different ? (Well we have no mountains here, do have a few ski shops but the ski schools really are the nearest skiing site...) Not sure at all, just wondering about the wisdom of "seemingly overfranchising" (is that a word?) diving schools / shops... I sure would prefer diving friends or a true club of like minded self driven and self motivated divers over a shop "run" crowd of customers (consumers). Sort of like for the same reasons I try to stay away from cattle drive dives...
Although right now I would take any and all of that ... happily... Time to warm up already...

 

[SeaHorse81]

I am wondering (not being provocative, just wondering) are dive shops at mostly non diving locations (compared to "diving destinations" partially contributing to the problem or the opposite?
Hypothetically, if dive shops were located mostly were the diving really is

If there were only dive shops at dive locations, how could you build a community? People would only see each other on very occasional vacation trips, and then only by specific prearrangement. No community there. I would think that would be a more unstable model than the one we currently have, and also probably the death of diving because people can't get interested in something they never see.

If you drive by a dive shop every now and then in the course of living your life, you might someday get curious and go in, since the presence of the shop kind of shows that diving is available to regular people. If you never see a dive shop in your regular world, you're more likely--if you think of diving at all--to see it as something that other people do in other places. A few with the bug will get themselves into it no matter what, but I don't think that number of people would be enough to keep the industry going.

Also, how do you pursue additional training if there aren't many local shops? Get a new cert each time you go on vacation and spend your vacation with your nose in a book when you're not in the water?

 

[Schwob]

If there were only dive shops at dive locations, how could you build a community? People would only see each other on very occasional vacation trips, and then only by specific prearrangement. No community there. I would think that would be a more unstable model than the one we currently have, and also probably the death of diving because people can't get interested in something they never see.

If you drive by a dive shop every now and then in the course of living your life, you might someday get curious and go in, since the presence of the shop kind of shows that diving is available to regular people. If you never see a dive shop in your regular world, you're more likely--if you think of diving at all--to see it as something that other people do in other places. A few with the bug will get themselves into it no matter what, but I don't think that number of people would be enough to keep the industry going.

Also, how do you pursue additional training if there aren't many local shops? Get a new cert each time you go on vacation and spend your vacation with your nose in a book when you're not in the water?

Fair points.

 

[Steve_C]

In our area there is one active dive club that has outlasted the shop that started it, and three shop affiliated groups that do some trips and activities once in a while. All these groups plan regular local trips. There is also a large local and active facebook group that crosses all of the other three. We have a local quarry and an ocean two hours away. If you want to go diving you just post on face book or join some discussions. I have made several good dive buddies out of instabuddies at the quarry or the coast. I dive as much as I can work in but am not an active clubber of any of the four groups other than the online one. At least in our area if you want to dive you can find diving - if you make a little effort.

 

[Charred]

As someone who borders both the baby boomers and the millennials, let me offer a different perspective.

The Earth is changing. Some hobbies just don't seem like worthy investments anymore. I grew up in update NY and skied all winter. I have kids now and I'm not even bothering teach my kids to ski because there is no point. I live in Pennsylvania and it has snowed twice this year. Two weeks ago it was 65-70 all week.

Likewise, I am a big fisherman. We used to catch so many fish up on the St Lawrence. Now you can fish a whole weekend and be lucky to catch 1 pike big enough to bring in for dinner. My kids will never learn to be good fisherman because you have to catch fish to get better at fishing. I don't know where or why they are gone but they are.

You probably know where I am going right?

This week the news is filled with Australian reef bleaching. They keep saying on the news that the worlds coral reefs will be 90% dead by 2050. I'll be 80. I think I'll be one of the last generations to teach their kids to dive. What is the incentive to become to a diver? I'm kind of a new diver and I really love it but I have no disillusions that I am going to watch the reefs die over the next 20 years.

Note: I was in Jamaica last year and there are no fish there. Except in huge underwater cages set by the locals and the lionfish.

 

[stuartv]

because believing the only mark you can make is something along the lines of curing cancer. Once you believe that you are limited, you are.

Maybe that is a hallmark of the Millenial generation and one of the sources of change? An attitude of "I can't cure cancer, so I may as well not bother trying to make any real difference in the world at all. Instead, I'll just focus on doing the fun things that appeal to me" seems like one that goes hand in hand with the disposable culture we have become. Almost all the things people used to expect to buy once and use for years are now manufactured with planned obsolescence. People don't want to commit to having one car or one phone for the next 20 years. Similarly, they don't want to invest what it costs to start into a hobby that they will engage in for 20 years, either. Why bother? My life is meaningless. Nobody will remember me when I'm gone and I don't know how long I'll even be here, so why not just enjoy all the quick, cheap thrills I can get?

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

I frequent 2 local shops. One is by far the biggest in the area, with a huge showroom and Internet-competitive pricing. They seem to always be very busy, but I'm not sure if they are actually turning a profit, or still burning through a large initial investment.

The other is a small shop that is owned and run by a husband and wife who run the store, teach classes, do fills, do VIPs, work on regs, lead trips, etc.. They have a few employees that also do some of those things, but they do it all. When I first started going there, about 2 years ago, they were a PADI 5-star shop and also offered SDI and TDI classes. They didn't seem to be very busy back then. The husband is at the shop full time. His wife works a day job and is at the shop evenings and weekends. The husband always has beer in the fridge in the back and the very first time I ever walked in there, he told me to come on in and help myself to the beers. It was like I was an old friend. That friendly attitude is what kept bringing me back.

About 6 months after I started going there, I had gotten to be friends with the owners. They were approached by SSI and long story short ended up becoming an SSI shop in addition to the other agencies they offer. PADI didn't like that and screwed with them in various ways (e.g. deleting them from the list of PADI shops on PADI's site, even though they were still paid up and just as qualified by PADI as they ever had been, and even though they had been offering SDI all along). From what the owner told me, SSI basically gave them some coaching (my word, for lack of a better term) on how to change some things about what they were doing.

The results were that they made some changes. One that I know of is that they changed things so that when someone calls the shop and wants to ask questions about Open Water classes, they now offer to schedule a free consultation where the person comes in and gets a 45 minute or so presentation on everything they need to know about the process of getting certified as an OW diver. I don't know about other shops, but when this shop does it, it's a total no pressure situation. They basically try to educate the person to be able to make a good, informed choice on where they do their training. They are super friendly and they genuinely seem to have the attitude that they don't care where you do your training - they just want more people to get out and dive. I guess it is the softest sell.

As I said, I've gotten to be friends with the owners, so they have told me a fair bit about the business side of their operation. The results of the changes after starting to offer SSI (and actually dropping their PADI membership after about 6 months) were that in about 6 months they were teaching at capacity. Literally, every session they could get in the local pool was full. And, the percentage of their students that were buying a full set of gear before the end of their training went up to somewhere between 70 and 80%. And, most importantly, the # of students that they certify that are still diving 1 year later is also somewhere around 80%.

And that is all from a shop that charges literally full MSRP on the gear they sell. They don't discount for anyone (except employees, I assume). The owner told me "if I sell someone a regulator for full MSRP of $759 and then I sell the same thing to you for $500 because you're my buddy, that makes me an a$$h0le." His OW class also costs right at double what the "big, discount" shop nearby charges for an OW class.

The basic approach of charging full price for gear, premium prices for training, and having a goal of selling every student a full set of gear could be viewed as "bad". And I think many, if not most, shops that do business that way are probably hurting themselves and maybe even the industry as a whole. But, the way this particular shop does it is, I think actually good for them and for all the rest of us.

And I perceive the difference to come down solely to the attitude of the people involved. Other shops just look at people as walking wallets. This shop seems to be genuine in their feeling of welcoming everyone and just wanting everyone to dive, no matter where they go for gear, training, or dive trips. I think that the sincerity of that attitude is what engenders such loyalty in their customers. Their sincerity also manifests in the way they train, I think. They really work to make sure every student comes out a diver, not just a person who has been on 4 dives. I think that is also why so many of their students continue to dive afterwards. Of course, it also helps that many of those same people have invested a fair bit in their training and equipment, so they have even more motivation to keep diving. Or maybe it's just lower barriers to keep diving. Whatever.

I compare their OW grads to myself and the 8 other people that I went through OW with at the other shop. The majority of this shop's grads finish with the confidence to go diving on their own. Almost everyone in the OW class I trained as part of graduated owning only mask, snorkel, fins, and boots, and I am the only one of those 9 that is still diving.

I think the scuba industry went through a period of time where people really had little other choice but to patronize their local shops - for training, for gear, and for trips. As a result, a lot of shops had a good long run despite providing less-than-top-notch training or service and also not being the friendly kind of place that people were happy to visit even if it was just to stop in and say hi. In other words, many shops succeeded in spite of themselves because they were in a niche that gave prospective customers little other choice.

That era is over. It is too easy, now, for people to use the Internet for almost every aspect of diving. From buying gear to selecting an instructor and booking a trip. Before, if you wanted to learn, it would be much harder to arrange training "away" and very easy to arrange training at your local LDS. Now, it's even easier to arrange training "away" than it is to deal with almost any LDS.

The result is that the industry is having a lot of chaff separated from the wheat and thrown away. But, I think the shops like my small mom-and-pop LDS, DRiS, etc., are going to hang in here and thrive as their suck-a$$ competition falls by the wayside. The industry is changing from a seller's market to a buyer's market. The shops that offer great customer service (speaking in a holistic sense) will be left standing and stronger than ever. And the general population of divers will be less diluted by graduates of those crappy shops that produce people with C cards instead of producing Divers.

The industry is changing, but I think it will prove to be for the better.