Why I have decided to stop shopping for ANYTHING at the LDS

[tobad78]

Okay I speak from someone Who owns a online shop a bit over a year. The best part it's not scuba gear but many things are similar..

It's a joke if you think it cost $55.00 a month to run it.

Things you need
High Speed Internet (Cable is close to 50.00 around here)
Phone Line (Vontage helps) cheapest 24.99
Helps to have another line for Fax's
Hosting Prices widely varies
SSL certificate the little yellow lock
Credit Card processing _Wow this is a racket try searching around to get decent deals

Ah the Big one a SHopping cart some go for flat price others I've seen 40-50 a month.
Then you need someone to set it up and configure it. Cost again varies.

I could go on but will stop.

Bottom line it, Does cost less But your badly mistaken if you think you can do it for 40-50 a month and be a reputable site.

Also I run my shop as extra income and enjoy it. It helps me buy more toys. I don't do it fulltime. But DIve shops need to expand and adjust the business model otherwise they are going to lose there a@@

 

[TomP]

There was a post a couple months back by someone who actually walked into the Leisurepro showroom http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=1585&page=2&pp=10

Apparently it was tiny and staffed by 5 people at computers. The actual in-showroom inventory was sparse compared to the poster's LDS. Sounds like little more than office space to me rather than a typical full-service shop.

I was there a couple of times too and the quoted thread is completely correct including the speculation of Leisure pro and Adorama being related, in fact LP used to be called Adoraqua. So, relative to brick & mortar costs it's a 3 story building in Manhattan.

Incidently, when I started diving in the early 70's, long before Al Gore invented the Internet, Central Scuba in Jamaica NY was selling scuba gear at great prices through mail order.

 

[SDAnderson]

Also I run my shop as extra income and enjoy it. It helps me buy more toys. I don't do it fulltime. But DIve shops need to expand and adjust the business model otherwise they are going to lose there a@@

Though you raised some valid points, I think you also just proved mine. You can run the business on a part-time basis and still make money at it because the CODB is so low for online businesses. There aren't any brick stores that can say that...

Peace.

 

[friscuba]

Okay I speak from someone Who owns a online shop a bit over a year. The best part it's not scuba gear but many things are similar..

It's a joke if you think it cost $55.00 a month to run it.

Things you need
High Speed Internet (Cable is close to 50.00 around here)
Phone Line (Vontage helps) cheapest 24.99
Helps to have another line for Fax's
Hosting Prices widely varies
SSL certificate the little yellow lock
Credit Card processing _Wow this is a racket try searching around to get decent deals

Ah the Big one a SHopping cart some go for flat price others I've seen 40-50 a month.
Then you need someone to set it up and configure it. Cost again varies.

I could go on but will stop.

Bottom line it, Does cost less But your badly mistaken if you think you can do it for 40-50 a month and be a reputable site.

Also I run my shop as extra income and enjoy it. It helps me buy more toys. I don't do it fulltime. But DIve shops need to expand and adjust the business model otherwise they are going to lose there a@@

Some of the retail stores I know already have all that, but no online shopping cart. Their only added overhead would be the price of setting up the shopping cart. I don't think that would add on a significant expense to their operations as others have claimed.

later,

 

[rigdiver]

let us see 40(fills) X 80 cu ft=3200cu ft. That is exactly what the BAUER packaging states the filter will process. Correct me if I'm wrong but 40 X 80=3200.
Now to some more advanced math as in ratio and proportion. When I started diving in 1970 an air fill was $3.00. Yes, three USD green reserve notes. I paid 12.5cents per gallon on gasoline back then. Of course I live right next to where they make it.
So 12.5/300=215/X. X=$51.60 Yes folks an air fill would be $51.60.
I think you need to open a dive store and show everybody how it's done. You won't need to feed the compressor anything but oil, filters, electricity, and annual service.
Stay wet;
Bill

 

[jonnythan]

Rough guess on a site like LP... $10,000 initial cost to build the web site and set up the back end, $500 in dedicated hosting per month, $1000/year for website maintenance, $2000 per redesign, $2000/year for the enterprise SSL certificate, etc etc.

This is not insignificant money to a single shop.

 

[H2Andy]

Yes folks an air fill would be $51.60.

sorry.... i have to disagree

your analogy assumes that the costs of producing one fill of air are equivalent
to the costs of producing one gallon of gasoline, and that both have
increased at the same rate

for a variety of reasons, the costs of producing one gallon of gasoline (including
refining and transportation) have skyrocketed, while the cost of producing
one fill of air has probably doubled, but that's about it

you could use the consumer price index, which has roughly gone up 425%
since 1970 (2002 values)

... so... a fill of air should be worth about $13.00 (that's price, not cost)

 

[Damselfish]

There are a number of ways to do an online shop cheap.

There are lots of online shops that are pretty lame.

I suspect these 2 groups overlap a lot.

 

[lamont]

Rough guess on a site like LP... $10,000 initial cost to build the web site and set up the back end, $500 in dedicated hosting per month, $1000/year for website maintenance, $2000 per redesign, $2000/year for the enterprise SSL certificate, etc etc.

This is not insignificant money to a single shop.

That's nothing compared to yearly salary for even a cheap employee to run a fill station, do some sales and run the register. And as a brick and mortar you'll need 2 or 3 of those.

Also, if you're online, you don't need location, you just need a warehouse, you should be able to keep your rents low. You also don't need to stock inventory on the shelves for people to browse. Plus you don't need to worry about having staff for VIPs and service -- for merchandise returns you probably either outsource to an LDS or else just eat the cost and ship a replacement.

Then the whole point is that you can sell to the entire country (or world) and not just locally which means you get higher volume. With higher volume you can survive on lower gross margins. Would you rather sell one apeks regulator at a 100% markup, or 10 apeks regulators at 20% markup? Particularly when in the former place you've got a salesguy occupied chatting the buyer up to make the sale, while in the latter case you box 'em up and ship 'em out as fast as you can pack them?

 

[jonnythan]

My whole point was that running an online shop ON TOP OF a brick and mortar shop increases the overhead.

Saying that Leisurepro and Scubatoys have lower overhead than a typical shop is beyond absurd.

Of course they're more profitable because they push higher volume with lower overhead cost per item. That goes without saying it's so obvious.

However, the fact remains that Leisurepro and Scubatoys no doubt spend more money on infrastructure (rent, utilities, internet, hosting, etc etc) than the local shop.