The largest single reason GM lost it's once formidible market share was that they failed to realize that quality costs very little in terms of overall production cost and is in fact the least expensive way to add value to a product. Japanese automakers taught GM that lesson the hard way. I think the post JWA Scubapro has in the case of a few of its products been learning the same lesson.
When I started diving in the early 1980's there was Scubapro and then there was everything else in terms of quality. US Divers had just completed it's qualitative nose dive and it's products for the most part were of fairly low quality. Dacor was somewhere in the middle, but its offerings were not up to the Scubapro standard in terms of performance. Consequently, at that point in time, SP dealers could afford to be a little elitist.
However over the last 25 years the quality of other manufacturers has improved while the post JWA acquisition of Scubapro has seen more and more plastic and, I suspect, a shift from a company whose products were driven by engineering decisions to one where they are driven by marketing and accounting decisions. This has created a situation where the quality of some SP products had dropped to the point that they are no longer clearly superior to the competition. Once that occurred it became harder to demand a premium for "quality" that was similar to that offerred for less money by other brands.
The good news is that after several less than stellar decisions (rebranding some non-SP products such as the early R190 and the Mk 14 to address certain market segements, switching from a SPEC system to the TIS system in the Mk 20/25 with resulting cold water relaibility issues, replacing the D400 with the pre-maturely released X650, adopting plastic air barrels in the G250HP and S600, rushing some products to market too soon, forcing Scubapro to sell Uwatec computers with non user replaceable batteries, etc) the trend seems to be reversing. The Mk 17 after a long, slow and careful development process was introduced and has proven to be an exceptional diaphragm first stage and the G250V promises a return to an older standard of quality and performance that has not been seen since the JWA acquisition. And, finally, Uwatec has gotten the message and is moving away from batteries requiring factory replacement.
So perhaps the executives at JWA/Scubapro/Uwatec are finally getting a clue.
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The dealer practices are a different story. Scubapro takes much of the heat for pricing restrictions and for requiring over the counter sales of their products by dealers, but they are by no means the only company that does this. Many other scuba equipment companies have similar policies. Where Scubapro deserves critisim is in their two faced approach to on-line sales. On the one hand, if an authorized dealer sells a product on-line or through the mail, they will get stepped on if they are reported doing this as Scubapro does not authorize on-line sales. On the other hand, you can buy most of what Scubapro offers through Leisure-pro or other on-line retailers at discounts well below what authorized dealers are allowed to offer. Given that many of these items are serial numbered and could be tracked to the legitmate dealers who then sold them to Leisure-pro, Scubapro's claim that they are attempting to control internet sales is at best lip service, particularly when several other companies do a very effective job of controlling on-line sales. I suspect Scubapro is not aggreessive in stopping on-line sales as it probably derives a substantial portion of its gross sales through grey market sources - a situation that undercuts their dealers who are bound by pricing and face to face sales restrictions that prevent them from competing with grey market on-line retailers.
But in regard to the OP's original complaint, you have to be fair...right or wrong, Scubapro products are far more available from on-line through grey market sources than the products of many other companies, so if you are going to bash Scubapro for not having an (official) on-line sales presence, you have have to bash all the other companies that also do not officially recognize on-line sales.
The on-line sales issue will always be a matter of great debate. The fact is that Scuba equipment is a low volume market and it is also very cost intensive for the dealer. A dealer will pay perhaps $300 up front to purchase a regulator that will sell for perhaps $600. However the dealer has to sit on that $300 cost until the item sells a few months to perhaps a year later. To do that, the dealer also has to maintain a store front and sales staff to show items to customers and in most cases, the dealer also has to maintain a full service shop with a broad range of repair, training and compressed gas services - none of which are cheap to offer or maintain. From that perspective, companies that limit on-line sales are very attractive to local dive shop owners as there is no money in stocking items to show to prospective consumers who try the item out in the shop and then save a few bucks buying it on line. If Scuabpro has a potential problem with its dealer numbers, it lies in failing to control on-line sales rather than in failing to legitamize them.
