The Scuba Goop off topic conversation

[FloridaRanger]

Was your review product based or just bitching about price?

No, it was product based and a very positive review; I only mentioned that it was a relabeled bottle of scribbles 3-d paint available in craft stores for about a dollar. So yes, I did talk about the price, but not in an offensive way, and I did say the product works great for marking gear.

 

[FloridaRanger]

So good that it bears repeating!

Debby, while I appreciate your concern, my efforts have not been that considerable.

Really, it's no trouble at all.

 

[ktomlinson]

Floridaranger I appreciate you letting us know about this practice. Others on this forum have taken your words and intentions out of context. There is something wrong with just putting a label over another product and charging more no matter how many examples are given to say there isn't. Mcdonalds for one does have high markups, but at least they are providing service as well as a product.

 

[ScubaSteve]

but at least they are providing service as well as a product.

Obviously you have no idea what it takes to run a business......carrying inventory, labour, buildings, insurance......none of them cost money (implied sarcasm) and Mr. Ranger seems to think he knows every single piece of information as it applies to Scuba.com an other shops such as what thier costs are etc..

 

[RAWalker]

As a merchant who also sells this same product, I will give you a few facts.

First, Scuba.com pays Innovative Scuba about $3.10 per bottle for this stuff. Innovative Scuba (and now Trident) purchase this stuff from a distributor, who probably purchases it from the manufacturer. If you order four bottles of it from Scuba.com, you would get free shipping (I think these nuts offer free shipping for any order over $25). The lowest possible cost for traceable shipping to any address in the U.S. is $4.95 via USPS Priority Mail. That brings their DIRECT cost of delivering the four bottles to about $17.35. This is a gross profit of $10.45, before the cost of packaging and handling, and all of the other indirect costs of doing business.

I can PROMISE you that Scuba.com is not going down to the local Hobby Lobby and purchasing this stuff for $1 a bottle, then going to the cost and trouble of printing labels to overlay the "original" label. They are simply purchasing the product from their supplier and taking advantage of a private label program, typical of what you find with mask defog, mask straps, hose protectors, and a variety of other products. It would make no sense to do anything direct, given the low sales volume. With this product, they would be extremely lucky to sell 200 bottles of it in a year. That is a total commerce realization of about $1400 for this product

Phil Ellis

So should we be mad at you also for not taking the time to either discuss this with your supplier and get a reduced price to pass on to your customers or order it throught your local art supply store in bulk for less than $1/per bottle (considering a quantity purchase) and marking it up to $2-3 and earning our business and admiration?

 

[RAWalker]

Obviously you have no idea what it takes to run a business......carrying inventory, labour, buildings, insurance......none of them cost money (implied sarcasm) and Mr. Ranger seems to think he knows every single piece of information as it applies to Scuba.com an other shops such as what thier costs are etc..

Obviously a art supply store is also a business and they have the same costs to do business but can sell the same product for $1/bottle?

If a dive business were to take the time to purchase Scribbles 3d Paint for less than $1 and put it on a counter or advertized it as the sames as Scuba Goop but less than half the price they would earn customers. It is little things like this that in many cases make a difference.

It isn't the few dollars price difference of this particular item that should concern us. It is the few dollars or more over the course of hundreds of purchases over the years that should be of concern.

How many of us use clones of popular regulators, masks, snorkels or fins because the name brand isn't worst paying the difference for the name brand version. We thank the dealers that find us these value produces.
This is no different!

I will no longer be purchasing equipment marking products from dealers that don't watch their cost and actual market value. I had already purchased paint markers from a local art store. I will now add Scribbles 3D paint to that list unless I see it for a price that is more in line with the convenience of picking it up at my LDS or including it in a online order.

 

[FloridaRanger]

Mr. Ranger seems to think he knows every single piece of information as it applies to Scuba.com an other shops such as what thier costs are etc..

Where did you get that idea? Certainly not from anything I've posted.

All I said was that I noticed someone had slapped a "scuba" sticker on a common product and charged us six times more than the normal retail price -- plus shipping. I found that to be interesting and perhaps useful information. When I mentioned in my product review on scuba.com that this was Scribbles 3-D Paint, the review got deleted. Scuba.com is not the only one selling this product and they don't even charge the highest price on the Internet for it, but they are the ones from whom I purchased it, and they deleted an honest, inoffensive product review.

While we all realize mark-up and profit are necessary to keep the lights on in any business, that kind of mark-up isn't. That is taking advantage of divers.

I'm not quite sure how saying this has made me an object of scorn, but it is an interesting phenomenon. I've been accused of being too poor to scuba dive -- or else I wouldn't care about gear marker prices -- and of being someone who must flip burgers for a living because I do not understand the subtle nuances of business and marketing. I've been described as obsessed and told to get a life. All by people who keep posting on this thread telling me to stop posting on this thread.

Interesting.

 

[merxlin]

>>>>>Obviously a art supply store is also a business and they have the same costs to do business but can sell the same product for $1/bottle?<<<<<

Many of you are missing some very big points here. 1)- no LDS (except for maybe a sporting goods chain with scuba departments) will ever be able to buy the product at the same price as the art supply chain. You need VOLUME to get those kinds of prices. An LDS might sell 2-3 bottles a week, or a month, where a hobby/art store would sell that many in a day. Go to a local mom & pop hardware store- are their prices the same as Home Depot?

2) This is not Scuba paint- a very astute scuba supply company found out the stuff works for marking scuba equipment, buys the paint and relabels it (the cost to do so is not free!) so that it is scuba specific. If your LDS just threw some hobby paint on a shelf, would you buy it? How much time should the shop owner spend explaining to you how to use it, and why it works on equipment? Or, how much is the shop owners time worth to go to the hobby store and buy it at retail (including sales tax etc)? Should he be able to mark that up?

3) Given all the items in the scuba store, why should the owner/operator worry about a single $5 item that is being carried as a convenience? YOU DO NOT NEED MARKING PAINT TO DIVE! On the list of necessary items in our sport, this one is wayyyyyyy down the list. I'd prefer that my lDS owner worry about the imprtant stuff. Save me $100 on a reg- I'll pay $5 for some paint if I want it bad enough.

Ranger keeps saying that the issue was the withdrawn review- yet everyone keeps bitching about the price. You have a choice in a free market- buy it or don't.

 

[FloridaRanger]

Many of you are missing some very big points here. 1)- no LDS will ever be able to buy the product at the same price as the art supply chain ... 2) This is not Scuba paint. ...

1) No one is talking about the LDS. We all love our LDS, and we all happily pay high prices to help support them. We are talking about a large online retailer that could if it wanted negotiate a low wholesale buy price and quite possibly has already done so. Someone posted here that they are the world's largest online retailer (presumably just of scuba gear! lol), and that's why they don't care about my opinion (or yours, by implication). I'm not going to spend time looking into that claim, but there is no question they are a bigger operation than the LDS.

I actually like scuba.com OK and have to confess I bought stuff from them after stomping my feet and claiming I wouldn't anymore. They are like the Harbor Freight of scuba. Good deals as long as quality isn't a big issue. But they are gouging us on this little bottle of paint, as are many other online scuba sites.

2) Correct ... this is not scuba paint ... but the product description says it is "specially formulated" for marking scuba gear. Isn't there something just a little wrong with that?

 

[ktomlinson]

Obviously you have no idea what it takes to run a business......carrying inventory, labour, buildings, insurance......none of them cost money (implied sarcasm) and Mr. Ranger seems to think he knows every single piece of information as it applies to Scuba.com an other shops such as what thier costs are etc..

Obviously your an ass picking a fight. I happen to know what it takes to run a business, and live a pretty comfortable life. My post just stated that everyone marks stuff up (I used mcdonalds as an example), I just disagree with being a lazy business and slapping a sticker over the other sticker. I also feel disheartened that this thread has went from someone letting us know we can just buy some art store product for less, to people thinking they know more about business than people they have never met.