It isn't just dive equipment that has become a comodity in diving. Training and diving itself has gone the same rout. It's training in a can and diving in a can. As time goes on those who want the real thing will have to look much harder to find it. The entire business is about the busy vacation diver who wants it fast and cheap and doesn't care to be bothered with the details or the finer points.
There are those who find value in a shop like mine but they are few. I have nothing to offer the casual vacation diver. At least nothing that's worth my time or theirs..
.... what is the problem with that Mike?
See, I went through this too, in a different industry.
My computer consulting/network access/network consulting business began long before (10 years, in fact) there was a thing called "the Internet" as we know it today. It began back
before Usenet news was moved by modem over a protocol called "UUCP", now a curiosity piece, a network service called "PC Pursuit" (originally designed and sold for people to call BBS systems in other states, which myself and a few other enterprising souls "adapted" for this purpose), and a few other bits and pieces. I got to be a pioneer in the transition of Usenet into the "public accessability", as opposed to "ivory tower university researcher" camps.
When the first "Internet" (real-time, dedicated line) connections were sold (and I bought one for resale) the only people who could use the Internet were those who either knew or were willing to learn the Unix command line structure.
That's all there was, you see.
No graphical interface.
No browsers.
Just a text, command line set of tools, most with very archaic names ("ls" to list a directory, for example.)
Those folks were like the original divers - robust, rugged individuals willing to invest hundreds of hours of their own time learning the ropes, willing to take personal risk (and frustration) in doing so, working with archaic (by today's standards) tools that were difficult to use, required memorization and very counter-intuitive patterns of behavior.
That group included myself; in fact, I STILL read email and Usenet using those very same (well, ok, later versions of) archaic tools!
My business clientele was quite small. A few hundred rugged individuals, who didn't often complain, expected some problems and bumps in the road, were willing to invest a lot of their time - and money - in learning and buying things they needed, etc.
Sound familiar? It should, because its exactly what diving used to be. And what Internet access used to be.
Along comes 1993/94, and the introduction of a thing called "Mosaic" for both the PC and Mac. The Mac had a SLIP and PPP dialer; the PC did not. The Mac became the first "user friendly" Internet appliance. Shortly thereafter, a pair of "dialers" were introduced for Windows 3.1, which shortened the curve somewhat, but still gave us fits in terms of support.
Then Windows 95 hit the market and the world exploded.
Suddenly there were a million - literally - inexperienced people who wanted only to surf the web. They not only didn't care about Unix, they didn't want to learn about it either. Any part of it. If you couldn't drop in a CD or floppy and load up the software in 5 minutes, with
zero trouble, hitches or hassles, you lost them as a customer.
Forever.
Further, they wanted their access CHEAPLY, even though they were MUCH more intensive to support than the former customer type was. They considered
any problem they had to be ours, instead of theirs, even if they bought the cheapest piece of junk equipment they could find and then had reliability problems.
It was still my problem, and the screaming and hollering became legend around my offices.
Sound familiar again? It should, because that's the vacation diver.
Now, I could have stuck to the old model.
And died.
Instead, I adapted. I developed new products and services that were easier to use. I adjusted my pricing. I came up with an "instant install", at significant cost, pressed CDs, started handing them out, and put in near-24-hour tech support. I re-wrote the entire administrative and customer management side of the business, spending over 1,000 hours of my personal time developing custom software to make what was a human-intensive process nearly 100% automatic handling billing, customer management, account setup and auditing.
Gross margins went down quite a bit, as support and overhead costs rose significantly. But revenues went WAY up, as the customer count exploded. Why? Because I catered to the market. I gave the customers of the day what they wanted. I found a way to adapt my business model to meet the market's needs, with what at that point was over a
hundred competitors in my local area.
And the customer count went from a few hundred to over 10,000.
All without a hint of price-fixing (in fact, quite the opposite), without lying about the others in the marketplace, or committing any other unsavory acts. In fact, there was enough business that I was able to stick to my guns on several issues of importance to me (like not providing access to stolen software or kiddie porn groups) even though they cost me a significant amount of business and made me highly controversial in the marketplace.
Is there a parallel in the diving buisness? You bet. No longer is the market primarily comprised of "rugged individuals." Now its primarily what you call, with derision in your voice, "vacation divers."
However, instead of adapting as an industry, virtually all of the LDSs have instead chosen to close ranks and try to protect what was a valid business model yesterday, but which will not work for the customers of today. They have no reason to pay price-controlled prices for commodity hardware when they can get it somewhere else for (far) less. They want a quick way to get in the water easily and with relative safety, and they have and can get that.
The response of the industry in trying to protect an old, no-long-valid model is disgusting. Instead of adapting, the industry has taken to protectionism, deception and outright lying.
And the end result? The LDS is dying.
And its their own fault.