Dive Center Owners - spend less time administrating and more time diving and making happy customers.

[CoralSwift]

Hello community!
I have noticed all dive center management tools are either:
- Not adapted for diving centers.
or
- Not ergonomic at all.

A good tool has to adapt to our needs and not the opposite!

I have decided to develop a tool that solves those two issues. To do so, I want to absolutely involve other dive center owners all along the development of it.
If you agree with my vision, please check out the waitlist page, and let me know if you want to stay informed of the next steps.

Bubble - Visual Programming

Build stuff without code and launch a startup without a tech-cofounder! Bubble is a visual programing language. Instead of typing code, use a visual editor to build applications.

coral-swift-landing-page.bubbleapps.io

Cheers!

 

[tursiops]

I have noticed all dive center management tools are either:
- Not adapted for diving centers.
or
- Not ergonomic at all.

Every dive center I know uses software developed specifically for dive centers. Perhaps you are talking only about France?

 

[CoralSwift]

Every dive center I know uses software developed specifically for dive centers. Perhaps you are talking only about France?

There are many SW marketed as developed specifically for dive centers, but when you start using them, you quickly notice it is not the case. I have talked to dive centers in France indeed, but also in Malta, Mexico, Indonesia, USA ... Few examples: many SW don't have inventory management, but those which do have it, have not take into account that dive centers take equipement in and out 2 times a day, or even 3 if doing night dives. None of them take into account the time that instructors spend after diving with customers' dive logs .... the list continues
But I would be very interested to know what SW people you know use, and how happy they are with it.
Cheers!

 

[tursiops]

I would be very interested to know what SW people you know use, and how happy they are with it.

Sounds like you need to do a lot of research, or hire a consultant.

 

[Allen-1]

The concept of developing software without writing code, without understanding database design or architecture and without experience designing robust systems is - um - “unlikely to succeed”.

Good luck with your IPO.

 

[mattfish]

Have you analyzed/tested DiveShop360? If so, how does that compare/contrast with what you are developing?

 

[tridacna]

A lot of PADI stores use EVE software. Dedicated diveshop software from the UK. Easily the most comprehensive and user UNfriendly software ever developed. I hated using it.

 

[sod kamus]

Sounds like you need to do a lot of research, or hire a consultant.

Hello community!
I have noticed all dive center management tools are either:
- Not adapted for diving centers.
or
- Not ergonomic at all.

A good tool has to adapt to our needs and not the opposite!

I have decided to develop a tool that solves those two issues. To do so, I want to absolutely involve other dive center owners all along the development of it.
If you agree with my vision, please check out the waitlist page, and let me know if you want to stay informed of the next steps.

Bubble - Visual Programming

Build stuff without code and launch a startup without a tech-cofounder! Bubble is a visual programing language. Instead of typing code, use a visual editor to build applications.

coral-swift-landing-page.bubbleapps.io

Cheers!
View attachment 835971

I feel ya, man.

You wrote your software, now want to do market research?

Programmer since 1998....rarely heard it done that way before.
Sounds bass ackwards.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding your post.

When I was a code junkie right out of college sitting up all night until sunrise going thru code "looking for the comma", if you're familiar with that phrase, I wrote a scuba dive log program. It was very robust. Took me a year to write it. It was an awesome program. Everyone loved it. The dive shop sold it on DVD. My college professor thought it was awesome as he said I was his only student that actually wrote and copyrighted and sold software commercially.

Then I realized most divers were beginning to use computers, and the manufacturers give away "cloud" dive logs for free. I realized there were basically two kinds of divers, those who log dives and are traditionalists and want a paper dive log, and those who are techy and use dive computers and "cloud" dive logs. Even though you could back up my dive log data to a file/disk and print out paper logs, the "hybrid diver" who is in-between is a unicorn.

I shoulda done market research before spending a year writing software nobody was ever going to buy because the dive computer manufacturers give it away for free and the paper-log guys don't want it.

The project was fun and looked awesome on a resume, but I made about $1000 in gross sales for a years work.

 

[dlofting]

I feel ya, man.

You wrote your software, now want to do market research?

Programmer since 1998....rarely heard it done that way before.
Sounds bass ackwards.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding your post.

When I was a code junkie right out of college sitting up all night until sunrise going thru code "looking for the coma", if you're familiar with that phrase, I wrote a scuba dive log program. It was very robust. Took me a year to write it. It was an awesome program. Everyone loved it. The dive shop sold it on DVD. My college professor thought it was awesome as he said I was his only student that actually wrote and copyrighted and sold software commercially.

Then I realized most divers were beginning to use computers, and the manufacturers give away "cloud" dive logs for free. I realized there were basically two kinds of divers, those who log dives and are traditionalists and want a paper dive log, and those who are techy and use dive computers and "cloud" dive logs. Even though you could back up my dive log data to a file/disk and print out paper logs, the "hybrid diver" who is in-between is a unicorn.

I shoulda done market research before spending a year writing software nobody was ever going to buy because the dive computer manufacturers give it away for free and the paper-log guys don't want it.

The project was fun and looked awesome on a resume, but I made about $1000 in gross sales for a years work.

Only a $1000 in revenue but a priceless lesson in business and marketing.

 

[sod kamus]

Few examples: many SW don't have inventory management, ...

I think that's intentional, Coral.

When I was programming I worked for a well known retailer on the east coast USA with stores from NY to FL. Some stores used a POS called "S4" by a company out of Dallas and some used a POS called "OpenFields" by I forget who. See the thing is, their Inventory Control was a seperate software called "VIC" (Vendor Item Control) that the company I worked for wrote, sold, and supported, that was written in C+ and that interfaced with either S4 or OpenFields.

The benefit with that sort of architecture is that when S4 or OpenFields changed their software or went out of business or became legacy, you still had the ability to keep your Inventory control software. You generally don't want to have to throw away your $500 inventory software because your POS software became obsolete or deprecated. VIC would seamlessly interface with S4 or OpenFields, so there was no need for S4 or OpenFields to make it part of the POS software. If a new POS software came out, I simply had to modify VIC to integrate with the new POS software. As it was integrated ("hooked" as we called it) into the POS software, the user didn't know the difference. The store manager didn't now what was going on on the master file server, he just knew when the receiving dept received a pallet of merchandise off the truck and scanned the barcodes, it was added somehow to the POS software and became inventory. When the cashier sold an item and scanned it, it was removed from inventory.

Think of software as similar to a car. When your engine blows, you don't want to throw away your car and buy a whole new car; you just buy a new engine and put in your car.

Most dive shop software probably doesn't have inventory control because it's just not the way it's normally done. There's no need to hard-code an inventory system into a scheduling or customer database. It should be a plug-in. Just like Crystal Reports is a plug-in for Visual Basic language. That way as Crystal Reports and Visual Basic evolve, the two aren't dependent on each other.

Good luck with your project.