Where is the diving industry heading

[D M I]

Hello

Any one have any ideas to were the diving industry is heading. I've seen quite a few dive shops go under in the last two years and the only ones that seem to still be surviving are those that have no over head/ rent to pay because they own there property entirely, which makes a big difference when you don't have to fork over $3000 every month for rent and utilities. I Personaly think it dead right across north America and who is to blame my guess the distributors and manufacturers for all the games they play. I've heard that Dive Teck is now the Scuba Pro distributor for Canada my question is "what for" who buys Scuba pro any ways at those prices.

Alaway cool

D M I

 

[pufferfish]

D M I once bubbled...
Hello

Any one have any ideas to were the diving industry is heading. I've seen quite a few dive shops go under in the last two years and the only ones that seem to still be surviving are those that have no over head/ rent to pay because they own there property entirely, which makes a big difference when you don't have to fork over $3000 every month for rent and utilities. I Personaly think it dead right across north America and who is to blame my guess the distributors and manufacturers for all the games they play. I've heard that Dive Teck is now the Scuba Pro distributor for Canada my question is "what for" who buys Scuba pro any ways at those prices.

Alaway cool

D M I

Good question DMI and I have wondered the same. As far as DiveTech becoming the SP distributor for Canada that wouldn't be so bad as I didn't think much of Nadel. Are you sure about this? I know Dan teaches the SP service tech courses but the whole shebang now?

Anyhow you are right about the change going on in the industry and it does seem to be right across the continent. Shops that are doing well are those who have embraced the Internet, those who own their property, or where the owners have a second job to support the shop. The other trick that several of the shops here in TO do is sell pool chemicals, water ski stuff, and a lot of non-diving stuff just to stay afloat. The problem with that is the employees often know very little about diving.

Another part of the problem is that I find so many of the shops just don't know how to treat customers and think they are doing me a favour by selling scuba gear. That kind of attitude is a recipe for failure.

A point Dan Orr at DAN mentioned to me (he confirmed this trend is very real) is that there is much more choice as far as what sports a kid can start these days. I know when I started at 18 years old the options were ski in the winter and dive in the summer. Now there is mountain biking, windsurfing, and a whole host of other sports that scuba is having to compete with. Is diving still 'cool' to the younger generation like it was in the days Cousteau shows or is it seen as something their parents would do,...I don't know. Cost might be a factor for getting the younger student into the sport. They take a cheaper dive course through a club at university, but then look at the price of gear and their student debt and walk away. Student debt loads are far higher today than twenty years ago. What percentage of OW students are still diving five years after their cert? Maybe twenty percent. Maybe the amount of leisure time is decreasing for all of us. I know it seems to be for me these days. When free time decreases one has to prioritize what they do with it. Maybe time with the kids or out doing other sports wins the day,..just a thought.

You know my LDS here in the GTA has actually doubled in size this year and seen business increase. Their prices are competitive with Leisure Pro when shipping and taxes are taken into account. Their SP prices are often less than Leisure Pro. They provide good service, know how to use the Internet, and have friendly people at the front desk (well most of them). I don't think they will disappear anytime soon.

So maybe in ten years we will have half the number of stores but those that remain are larger and stock more gear. I don't see this as necessarily bad just Darwinism at work and the business cycle cleaning house.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Not long ago about the only place to buy gear was at a dive shop. Now, you can find about everything on the net. The old model og giving away training at a loss to sell equipment just doesn't work any more. To sell equipment you need to reduce the markup so now the equipment sales won't support the shop and certainly not the training when dealing with a local market.

We recently closed our shop because we were in a situation where I was actually funding the training out of my own pocket, working for free and just barely paying the bills with equipment sales.

Training will need to become a profit center.

With the low (or nonexistant) margins in training classes must be short and tought by some one willing to work really cheap.

I for one, no longer desire to be associated with the recreational dive industry on any level. We're still teaching and selling a few things out of the house but we're breaking every rule in the book. Our classes cost more, take longer and the equipment we sell is generally cheaper. If I teach I'm going to put out students who are good diver and I'm going to make a reasonable profit doing it. I won't give it away to make the manufacturers rich.

I can't even imagine an industry more screwed up that the dive industry.

 

[Big-t-2538]

MikeFerrara once bubbled...
I can't even imagine an industry more screwed up that the dive industry.

You don't work for the gov't do you mike?? ..

but seriously....I applaud the fact you are training as an independent....maybe if you keep going to gilboa and teaching over by the plae with your students....someone will catch on....but I'm not going to hold my breath so to speak....

again....best wishes mike, and are you going to be at the quarry SAT?

 

[MikeFerrara]

Big-t-2538 once bubbled...
You don't work for the gov't do you mike?? ..

but seriously....I applaud the fact you are training as an independent....maybe if you keep going to gilboa and teaching over by the plae with your students....someone will catch on....but I'm not going to hold my breath so to speak....

again....best wishes mike, and are you going to be at the quarry SAT?

I'm going to be there all weekend.

 

[pufferfish]

MikeFerrara once bubbled...


Snipped

Training will need to become a profit center.

With the low (or nonexistant) margins in training classes must be short and tought by some one willing to work really cheap.

I have seen several people mention that GUE is thinking of getting into the OW training game. I wonder if the 'raising of the bar' so to speak will translate into higher course costs for the higher quality. The problem will be that most students will not know the difference between curriculums and outcomes and will likely just flock to the lowest priced course but it will be interesting to see how it pans out if true.

 

[diverbrian]

I have submitted before and will continue to submit that the monetary cost of "raising the bar" won't be what causes students to go to another course.

It will be the cost in TIME. Time is an even more precious commodity to most of us than money. If you tell a student that I have a five day, ten session course over here and a two weekend course over on the other side for the same money, guess which one most students will take?

In fact time DOES cost me money. I had to burn five vacation days to take my initial OW course. Let's see.... vacation (8hrs x my hourly pay)......, that adds up to some major change.

I saw a sign in an auto shop once that said:

We do three kinds of work here:

Fast, Cheap, or Quality.... We can only give you two of the three, so you pick which two.

I am not agreeing or disagreeing with anyone here, just pointing out an extra fact to consider.

 

[D M I]

Hello

Wow all excellent answers to my question and we can see, that we all have different outlooks. I for one have been diving for 26 years now, I started as a technical sat diver working around the world in some of the worst conditions with some of the best and worst people in the of shore oil industry. I've palyed all the games in the diving industry with a wallet full of 47 plastic cards that I no longer feel they mean anything. The diving community has changed and I can't understand why all those big companies like USD etc can't see that sales are down across the board and they just don't do anything to support the people who made them what they are today. I loved the days when you ran to the TV to watch a Cousteau film and or SeaHunt and your spine tickled with excitement and you dreamed about getting out to dive. I'm seeing allot of cash grabbing these days as well terrible instructors who can't swim or dive teaching scuba and pumping out student like pop corn out of poping machine. I must say I DON"T LIKE PADI I find that this company has grone to large and now is expected to produce yearly cash margins and has and is pushing out instructors at an enormous rate to keep that financial figure in tact. I miss the old smelly dive shops with hard nosed divers and excitement, now a days you walk into a dive shop and you don't even get a hello but your expected to buy.I do all my shopping on line now because what ever is sold in shops I can always beat the price by almost 40%.

D M I

 

[pufferfish]

I agree DB that time is very important. When I did my OW in the 1980's it was ten weeks I think for three hours each time. This was with NAUI. I think it was a great course and I was well trained, but we did our open water dives in November in Lake Ontario holding on to a yellow line as the vis was zero. I had my mask kicked off by the guy in front of me as I couldn't see his Jet fins (we all had them then) but that was part of the training. My brother ten years later with ACUC did the same ten week course and same November OW dives in a snow storm. He is well trained and very comfortable in the water.

There is something to be said for repetition from week to week in learning skills and those weekend wonder courses just don't do it. There is lots of data from the emergency medicine and paramedic literature that shows skills need to be repeated many times over for the neural circuits and muscles to become familiar with them. What the weekend wonder course directors tell you is just unsubstantiated junk.

That being said I think in this world where we all have an element of attention deficit disorder the ten week course is too long. Maybe six weeks or five weeks two nights a week is the better way to go but you are right time is likley more important or as important than cost.

DMI I was like you in that I used to love to watch those Cousteau shows and he was a role model as kid we looked up to. There doesn' t seem to be a Cousteau these days just guys wanting to set depth records (yawn). I wonder who the younger kids look up to these days? Maybe someone like Lance Armstrong as I see a heck of a lot of young kids getting into cycling.

 

[MikeFerrara]

It's true that long classes turn students away just as fast as expensive classes. Every one is in a hurry. The problem is that I haven't found a way to teach some one how to dive if they can't commit the time and effort. If they won't pay me a reasonable fee, I don't want to teach them.

The agencies are turning out new instructors who are also new divers at an incredible rate. Most are happy to teach a weekend class for nickles and dimes. I don't even consider them my competition because we serve two different markets with two totally different products.