NO support for diving in my area

[sr_ryan1]

I got my open water back in FEB of 05 and since than i have not been diving. becuase we dont have a local dive shop i would have to dive over an hour away.

SO iv been contacting manufacturers, i would like to start out renting gear and filling tanks, and slowly add inventory. my questions are......

how many dives before i have to replace the rental gear? and how many dives to service regs and tanks? and what should be my terms of service, and insurance?

thanks

Ryan

 

[matt_unique]

The very first thing you should research is the insurance cost for opening a dive business.

The things you are asking about are step 200 and you are on step 1 if I read your note correctly.

Shop owners will probably chime in.

 

[Paco]

I´ve been driving over an hour for dives, fills or anything else dive related for 8 years. I just accept it as part of the expense and inconvenience to dive. Good luck with your enterprise, though, and let us know how it works out.

I would think that if you keep your rental gear serviced and out of chlorine pools, it should last quite a long time.

 

[tstormdiver]

I agree with Matt. There's a lot more to opening a dive shop than just acquiring rental equipment & tanks. There's the issue of liability insurance as Matt has pointed out, servicing of equipment (or personnel to do it), how to fill the tanks- if compressor, how will it be kept maintained to keep the air clean & healthy? If from another source,... still how do you know it's usable? You must have enough people (staff/ employees) knowledgeable about the equipment to help divers that come in that are unfamiliar with it. How will you verify they are divers? Will the shop offer courses? Where will you get quality instructors? What dive training agency(ies) would be represented? If there's no immediate interest in diving in your area,... how will it support the overhead for operations, let alone clear any profits? Seems like that would be taking a huge personal risk. If it pans out, it could pay off handsomely; if not you could stand to loose a lot. What the others & I've brought up is only the tip of the iceberg, as I only work in a dive shop, the owners can give you much more detailed information.

I also drive about 45 min. to my dive shop, even though there is one about 5 min. away. I am a professional for the long distance store & my loyalty is to them. I have & hold nothing against the closer shop, just I am not a professional for them.

 

[wedivebc]

The big question is how you are oing to make money when all your customers are buying everything on line and you are selling air fills at just above cost?

 

[Ann Marie]

Hi sr ryan,

Welcome to ScubaBoard. It would probably help out if you were to let us know where you are located. Perhaps one of our members lives near you and can offer some local advice. (Just click on "User CP" on the blue bar across the top of the screen and then look for "Update Profile" at the top right.

Take care!

 

[Sas]

You're only an hour away?? Lucky! There are a couple of very shallow shore dives where I live within half an hour but if I want to get on a boat it is over 1.5 hours (or if there is a long weekend and traffic can be well over 2). Fair enough there is a local store to me, but even if there wasn't I still have to drive hours to even get to the dive site so wouldn't make a difference to my diving anyway.

I have never run a dive shop or anything diving related (a noob to the sport actually) but I do run my own business and so does my partner so I have a fair idea of what it takes to run a business. You haven't put much in your profile but I am basing my next comments on your OP (apologies if they aren't good assumptions but there is not much to go on) - if you were OW certified in 2005 and have not dived since, chances are you are not a very experienced diver at all and very out of practice. Therefore I doubt you will have much knowledge about gear, diving sites, and other general diving info and I know personally I would not take advice from stores where the sales people didn't know about the above. If you go into business, you have to know the industry if you want to be successful. And that is no guarantee of success either.

Also, if you want to own the store so you can dive more often, you can't stop diving for years because of an hour long trip... I mean you are wanting to set up your own store versus driving an hour! If it were me I would take the hour trip as the effort of running your own business is monumental at times, especially the diving industry I would imagine. I am guessing a lot of stores would not be doing great at the moment due to a poor economy in a lot of places and also internet stores that can sell gear a lot cheaper than many LDSs.

Also, I used to be an accountant, where one of my roles was setting up businesses for people and looking into insurance and the like. An internet forum is the last place I would be going to get advice like that. Fair enough many people are knowledgeable here but you are going to have a spend a fair bit working out stuff like that with insurers, accountants, lawyers, etc.

 

[Web Monkey]

I got my open water back in FEB of 05 and since than i have not been diving. becuase we dont have a local dive shop i would have to dive over an hour away.

SO iv been contacting manufacturers, i would like to start out renting gear and filling tanks, and slowly add inventory. my questions are......

how many dives before i have to replace the rental gear? and how many dives to service regs and tanks? and what should be my terms of service, and insurance?

If you want to dive and you have no local shops, I'd recommend that you buy your stuff wherever you want, and if you need gas, buy a compressor. A really nice compressor will set you back $3K-$6K.

If you have enough money to open a shop, I'd suggest contacting a financial advisor for a safe place to put it.

Terry

 

[jimdiverman]

I got my open water back in FEB of 05 and since than i have not been diving. becuase we dont have a local dive shop i would have to dive over an hour away.

thanks

Ryan

I have to drive 3-1/2 hours to get to gulf diving, and 4-1/2 hours to get to the first spring, and 5-1/2 hours to get to the first really nice spring to dive in a cave. There are no dive sites closer. There is a 15 foot pool 45 minutes away, but I don't have a membership.

There are several LDS within 30 minutes of here, but none of them are "tech" shops.
The closest tech LDS and fill shops are mostly in proximity to the springs.

The biggest cost of my diving now is fill gas... the liquid kind.

 

[BabyDuck]

dude, just drive the hour and go diving. every weekend. when you've done that a few years, you can just lend people the extra stuff in your garage - it tends to accumulate!

you don't really want to open a shop if you can't even be bothered to drive an hour to dive.