Anybody know what this is about?

...American manufacturing can't be beaten...

And just in case you were wondering - A fake Rolex Submariner won't be as good as the real thing - they look great from the outside but truley are crap on the inside & don't last - I bought the real thing.

All,

Just a few thoughts ....

What cost years of R&D? What cost Interllectual Property? What cost, Time, Energy, Frustration, and all that goes with .... lack of family time, divorce?

Respect where respect is due - that is was Rebreather most designers have gone through to get RB's where they are now.

That is what a lot who follow won't have to go through.

Fair do's to Martin Parker, Leon & Kevin Gurr & good luck if they make some money on the way - I wouldn't of bought an Inspo and later a Meg if I thought they were more expensive than the alternative - gas costs, time (when in a situation under water - what cost life??) and all the work that went into the development. I for one don't like the big multi nationals because they kill the little guys and then innovation .... and guess what - when they have the monopoly .... you get f@*k@d anyways!!

So go ahead - make your 'Made In China' alternative - I know a lot of people who won't buy it - British & American manufacturing can't be beaten - except on price - and regardless of what some say - it ain't always 'bout price !!!

It is also worth remembering that a manufacturing business is a lot more complex and has many more demands than your average Dot.Com ! Good Luck.

Believe me, I know exactly what commitment is required to run a company - in any space. You can diss on the ".COM" folks all you want, but I've got the battle scars - including all of the above and more than 10 years of 100-hour weeks with more 48+ hour days than I could count.

R&D and intellectual property are part and parcel of any business. They're real costs and must be amortized. What value sweat equity? I don't know - I made a lot of money doing my thing, but on a per-hour basis it wasn't nearly as much as some people thought it was......


I have no quarrel with any entrepreneur. I'm well aware of what's required to "do it", having "done it" myself. And while many dot.coms were just one-offs, there were actually some that had sound business plans - and made money.

However, let us not forget that entrepreneurs - myself included - do not do this "for the people." We slave away at our ventures in the hope of turning a profit for ourselves, and any entrepreneur who says otherwise is not being honest with you.

None of this changes the fact that complaining when competition shows up does nothing good for your bottom line and can actually hurt it severely.

Many times competitors would do this or that - that's the nature of business. Sometimes you choose to respond, sometimes you choose not to - having evaluated what they're doing and coming to the conclusion that you can't meet your own standards and also deliver at a price that allows you to make money, or that you just don't want to go down that road, you "just say no." That's ok. Many times I left parts of the market to others rather than chasing what I beleived was nothing other than a great way to lose money or overextend what are always finite resources and damage competitiveness at what we did best.

I am not in any way "attacking" Leon - or anyone else. I'm simply pointing out that from my perspective - that of a potential customer for these sorts of things - some of what has been claimed as "advantages" by one of these manufacturers are actually the reason I won't buy and am considering being a competitor instead of a customer.

What's driving me in that direction is NOT the price.

As for DiveRite and the Optima (as referenced above while I was typing this) IMHO DR shot themselves in the foot. Oh sure, they've sold some. But the reality is that THEIR claim that this would be a stocked item has not and may never materialize. The price claim wasn't mine - it was THEIRS, and the ACTUAL price is 40% higher. I'd call that a big fat whopper of misdirection on their part. There are rumors that the unit will be produced through its first production run and then that's it. The unit, while it appears sound, in no way met the marketing hype from DiveRite when it was announced in terms of how it would be sold, in what quantity it would be made available (e.g. "instantly buyable") AND the terms of the deal changed radically (particularly the second PIN and price) from announcement.

Why did I not start building a year ago? Mostly because I believed DR would keep its promises. They did not. My exploration of the alternatives began when the pricing change appeared, and my decision was made when the secondary PIN - which DR did not disclose up front - became known to me, and I was told there was no way around that particular piece of stupidity.

It was at that point that I cancelled my order for an Optima from Edd over at CA and decided that I was going to build rather than buy with certainty.

My goal is to have something diveable before the Oriskany goes down. From starting at "zero" in OCTOBER, I'd say that's fairly respectable if I hit the goal. I don't know if I will or not - we'll see - but contrary to claims I'm not playing "armchair quarterback" - unless resting my hands on the arms of my chair while coding counts. In that case, I plead "guilty as charged."

Well, coming from someone who sold what was essentially a commodity product (as a Rebreather is - there's only so many ways to skin that cat) I have to say that I hate sour grapes stuff like this.

First, ISO-anything just means you do it the same way every time, and get the same result. Consistency is all it measures. Is this a big deal? I suppose, but making it the cornerstone of your firm's claim to uniqueness is a bit like saying "the color blue will always look exactly like the sky." Ok. What if I wanted red? I do appreciate knowing that if the specification on a piece in some dimension is +/- 0.002", that it actually WILL BE that, but how this turns into the centerpiece I do not understand. Fact is, from my point of view if you can't source and verify components to be what they should be, you shouldn't be in business. At all.

Second, people buy value. To truly be a market leader you must offer that. Value is not just price, but to ignore price is to ignore reality. Certainly the Maybach is an extraordinary vehicle, but most of its "panache" likely comes from its rarity - and the statement it makes about the size of your checkbook. Is it really any better at getting you to the store than a Civic? Hmmmmm..... do I want to brag or go get some beer for the game today?

Third, many people see a "training and sales philosophy" as a negative, not a positive. I'm solidly in that camp.

What I want from a true market leading product in this space is:

1. Ability to ship on the day ordered, proving that sufficient inventory of every piece or subassembly in the unit is on hand, all the time. I should be able to call with an order at 10:00 AM and have it on a UPS truck the same day. This also proves that the device is built from a set of subassemblies that make sense and can be put together reasonably quickly, which might be important to me on some remote place where I have travelled to go diving.

2. The unit has published a written warranty and statement regarding parts availability no worse than (1) - that is, if I have something break in East-Tim-Buk-Tu, I can get on the phone (or internet), order part #x at a published, rational price (said price list can be seen BEFORE I buy!) and have it put on a global FedEX plane the same day. Every time. My vacation may depend on this some day, so this is important to me. This sounds like #1, but its not - after-sales support and service is just as important as what you do before you have my money.

3. Sufficient quantity is being produced that production quantity pricing shows up. What's really in a rebreather anyway? A can of some material to hold the scrubber material, a couple of hoses to breathe through, some bags that hold gas for counterlungs, a few valves (DSV, O2/Dil adds, OPVs, etc) and some form of electronics (in some units) to read sensors and fire a solenoid. The electronics are no more complicated than the controller in your microwave, and THAT cost the manufacturer $10.00 - maybe. Certainly there must be room for profit and amortization of engineering cost - but $10,000 for the above? For what? There's nothing particularly complicated in there. Look at the DSVs out there on the market - $500+? Huh? Its really nothing more than a glorified plastic ball valve guys, and those are $15 at Home Depot! Yes, I understand that the plastics guys run 10,000 ball valves at once and you run ONE DSV at a time, but who's fault is that? If you're too-thinly-capitalized to build these things in volume, or have decided to price like the Maybach "just 'cause", you open a market opportunity for someone else. Do you really expect that you can price something at 20x cost in production quantities and not have someone else come along and see the opportunity to eat your lunch? If you get copied 'en-banc' it means someone thinks your pricing is WAY above cost and that there's a shot for them to clean your clock. Its your right to price however you'd like, but complaining about the forseeable consequences of your pricing and product strategy sounds like bad sportsmanship to me.

4. A commodity perspective. I do not need to show anything other than money to buy a 50,000lb boat. This does not necessarily mean its smart for me to buy and operate said boat with nothing other than money, but neither Hatteras nor any of the sellers of used Hatteri care if I have anything else. How do I know I can do this? I did it - more than once - and so have hundreds if not thousands of others. In addition and perhaps most importantly, the factory will sell me any part that I need at any time no matter how I acquired the boat (so long as I don't steal it!); they will not refuse to sell me a Frobozz Fridgit unless I've had an approved Hatteras training course on operating the vessel, nor will they try to confiscate it if it has to go back to them for some kind of major repair or problem unless I'm "certified" to operate it. Let's face it guys and gals - said boat is a LOT more complicated than a rebreather, and is just as capable of killing you as a gasbag. It also is quite capable of killing innocent bystanders and doing a hell of a lot of damage to people's property and the environment - something a rebreather can't do.

In short I don't see why a rebreather, complete, should cost more than a couple of grand in production quantity, it should be available off the rack on the day ordered, it should come with a reasonable warranty and a complete user manual including all information necessary to set up and operate it, and I should need nothing more than money to buy one. Have me sign whatever waivers you'd like and make whatever strength of statement you like about what I should do from your perspective - that doesn't bother me a bit - but in the end, support your product well, take my money and leave me alone.

A big part of why I'm building is that the above unit doesn't exist in the market today. That is, I'm determined to PROVE that the above perspective is correct (and perhaps profitable as well!) If I can build a one-off for three times that cost ($6kish) or less than I've proven that I can build thousands at that pricepoint and sell them at a profit.

I may well go out and do exactly that.

When I ran my Internet company I figured out how, through clever engineering and bare-knuckle negotiating with suppliers, to sell dedicated T1 connectivity for half of the "going rate" - and maintain a 40% pretax operating margin for the company as a whole. You can still find archives of what I did out there in '96 - look up "Cheapernet T1" sometime on Google. I was called every name in the book for that, but we owned that segment of the business market from its introduction until I sold the company - it was all about customer value, and finding ways to innovate so that you could undercut your competitors and literally steal their customer base right out from under them. When it was announced at Comdex in Chicago we were mobbed with sales, while our competition - who was caught flat-footed by our announcement and couldn't figure out how we managed to price it like that resorted to trying to argue that we'd be out of business in a month for selling below cost. In truth it was they who had the problem... with sales...

That's bizness, and complaining when it happens to you is kinda like peeing in your beer and then complaining that it tastes bad. If you were looking where you pointed that thing, you wouldn't have had the problem

As an alternative, you could have just written, "I know more than most everyone. Most everyone includes Rebreather manufacturers. Therefore, I don't think I should have to pay more than the parts cost for any RB."

Maybe not an exact translation, but I'm summarizing style too.

Just a reminder Genesis ... there's no award for "Greatest Number of Words Per Post".

As an alternative, you could have just written, "I THINK know more than most everyone. Most everyone includes Rebreather manufacturers. Therefore, I don't think I should have to pay more than the parts cost for any RB."

Maybe not an exact translation, but I'm summarizing style too.