Don’t get me wrong, we all wear/support the brands that our shop uses, but we don’t try to "convince"/"force"/"excessively encourage" students that they need to buy gear.
Being known as a shop that sells to the customers needs, doesn’t try to upsell/oversell, and is willing to cater classes around difficult schedules has gotten us to have students drive as far an hour, past 2 other shops, to take lessons from us and it has also gotten us as the recommended shop by one of the colleges that offers certification classes. So every semester now we have a whole new crop of college students coming in for masks, fins, snorkels, booties, weights and weight belts. After that first semester if they keep going through advanced certifications we see them back for compasses, wreck reels, and other gear.
Then at some point most of them do end up buying a BC, reg set, etc. and many of them will come back to do business with us because they have built a relationship with them not because we tried to bleed them dry up front.