Customers.
Running a dive shop?
- Thread starter emttim
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Customers.
dogenia
Contributor
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Well if I may chime in. I have a business degree and all that jazz but as a customer if I had to choose between a small personalised approach or a commercially run, big group charter operation I would definitely choose the business where I feel most appreciated as a customer instead of being just a number on a peg board.
Commercially though I have my doubts if it would be feasible to maintain this level of service and dedication if you plan on seriously growing the business over lets say 5 to 10 years, without a large investment in your personnel and being able to guarantee their loyalty for the duration of your plan. I honestly dont have the slightest idea what the norm is for dive instructors versus divers in the industry at the moment but 1 on 1 seems unnatural to me.
Keep in mind that your customers also need to be comfortable with the ability and training level of those guiding them. So if you plan on getting a bunch of local cowboys to help you out just with the basic stuff and something goes haywire (Murphys Law) you may end up loosing more than you bargained for in the first place. Also keep in mind that running the place on your own might be a bit tasking at times in a one man operation, hence the reference earlier about the wahoos.
Good luck and God speed
Commercially though I have my doubts if it would be feasible to maintain this level of service and dedication if you plan on seriously growing the business over lets say 5 to 10 years, without a large investment in your personnel and being able to guarantee their loyalty for the duration of your plan. I honestly dont have the slightest idea what the norm is for dive instructors versus divers in the industry at the moment but 1 on 1 seems unnatural to me.
Keep in mind that your customers also need to be comfortable with the ability and training level of those guiding them. So if you plan on getting a bunch of local cowboys to help you out just with the basic stuff and something goes haywire (Murphys Law) you may end up loosing more than you bargained for in the first place. Also keep in mind that running the place on your own might be a bit tasking at times in a one man operation, hence the reference earlier about the wahoos.
Good luck and God speed
emttim,
You dont have to have a gazillion dollars to loose to open a dive shop. You just have to want to work hard and have thick skin. If you like, I'll second Joels offer, pm me you name and number and I'll call you and we can chat.
Schott
You dont have to have a gazillion dollars to loose to open a dive shop. You just have to want to work hard and have thick skin. If you like, I'll second Joels offer, pm me you name and number and I'll call you and we can chat.
Schott
That's where the people with the disposable income live and they are the ones that my business serves. I had a lot of disposable income before I started diving.
Where I live there are not that many tech divers, so I believe that one would just about have to target the wealthy, entry level divers, and the once a year go to cozumel crowd. You'd need a high visibility location, on site pool, tons of recreational dive inventory, rental equipment, some technical gear inventory, air & nitrox, equipment and tank servicing, all in a clean, well lit, and uncluttered store. Online sales would be a big plus. WHEW!!! I'll bet that kind of overhead would be BIG nut to crack every month.
If I lived on the coast or Great Lakes I would most likely include targeting the wreckers, down towards Florida I'd target the cave community and vacationing recreational divers.
I own and run a very profitable swimming pool company and I can definately see how running a LDS could be a feast or famine sort of thing. One could lose some serious dough on a failed dive shop. I'll hang with the pools for now.
Hey MBH, do you have those fiberglass pools that can be transformed into an ARK if more storms come ashore?
Gary D.
Gary D.
Hank49
Contributor
You start a business to make money...normally, but there are two kinds of dive shops. The ones in the US that sell courses and equipment to people that go to the OTHER type of dive shops. The ones on the white beaches in the tropics. A lot of people invest in those, not with a 20% minimum return in the business plan...but just to survive and live there for the life style. They don't carry a lot of inventory and sell much gear. They do teach some courses and take people diving. But even at that, say in the Philippines or Indonesia, I would say $3-400 K would be a good amount to start with, depending on the type of boat (s) you need.
Richesb
Contributor
I'm educated and predujiced.
First a dive shop is a bussiness, not a hobby. It's about making money! Want to give up a sport, make it a livelyhood (did it by teaching skiing).
A degree in bussiness.
Second, i'm predujiced. Live and work in Florida Keys. I'm here because I think it's the best. Competitive yes. Why because anything less than 30ft. viz and 72F water is TOTALLY unacceptable. It's how you market yourself (lessons, equiptment - low markup, excellent service). Large investment. Inventory (everybody wants it now, Boat??)
First a dive shop is a bussiness, not a hobby. It's about making money! Want to give up a sport, make it a livelyhood (did it by teaching skiing).
A degree in bussiness.
Second, i'm predujiced. Live and work in Florida Keys. I'm here because I think it's the best. Competitive yes. Why because anything less than 30ft. viz and 72F water is TOTALLY unacceptable. It's how you market yourself (lessons, equiptment - low markup, excellent service). Large investment. Inventory (everybody wants it now, Boat??)
Air On
Guest
My LDS was started by a couple people that won the lottery.
They developed a retail strip mall as a proprty investment and put the Dive shop with indoor heated pool as a tennant. Then when the lost interest in it, so they sold it to some realestate people who were thier customers looking for an investment (the property). They ran the shop for a while (Though personality was lacking) So they sold the place to the current owners (much better personality) who have now expaned the shop into one of the adjacent spaces and much improved the over all store. The current owners have taken on partners and Baught the dive shop from the guy who was retiring in San Carlos, Mexico where they do frequent dive trips and enhanced their services by doing so... Now they have a shop in Tempe and Payson as well via other investors opening as either franchise or partners? Not sure... But they have been expanding pretty rapidly.
Also you might consider doing PADI as your certification entity. They have the best support and marketing methods of all the dive certification groups.
If you read and think about this... it gives you some options to explore...
Investors/partners
Owning the property as the primary investment ( I know a number of buisnesses that do this)
Franchise from existing local shops as they are willing to expand
Buy an existing shop when the owner wants to retire or quit (if its been successful)
Tie in with an agency that can offer added support and value.
The shop I'm talking about is located in the middle of Phoenix, Arizona... so its not like they are in a prime divers mecca.
Oh one other idea... Find a place the has a very active and growing dive community where the existing shops can't keep up with the demand... look at how busy the shops are in China... Over 500 (or was it 5000) students taught a DAY! and a number of shops.
Good luck...
They developed a retail strip mall as a proprty investment and put the Dive shop with indoor heated pool as a tennant. Then when the lost interest in it, so they sold it to some realestate people who were thier customers looking for an investment (the property). They ran the shop for a while (Though personality was lacking) So they sold the place to the current owners (much better personality) who have now expaned the shop into one of the adjacent spaces and much improved the over all store. The current owners have taken on partners and Baught the dive shop from the guy who was retiring in San Carlos, Mexico where they do frequent dive trips and enhanced their services by doing so... Now they have a shop in Tempe and Payson as well via other investors opening as either franchise or partners? Not sure... But they have been expanding pretty rapidly.
Also you might consider doing PADI as your certification entity. They have the best support and marketing methods of all the dive certification groups.
If you read and think about this... it gives you some options to explore...
Investors/partners
Owning the property as the primary investment ( I know a number of buisnesses that do this)
Franchise from existing local shops as they are willing to expand
Buy an existing shop when the owner wants to retire or quit (if its been successful)
Tie in with an agency that can offer added support and value.
The shop I'm talking about is located in the middle of Phoenix, Arizona... so its not like they are in a prime divers mecca.
Oh one other idea... Find a place the has a very active and growing dive community where the existing shops can't keep up with the demand... look at how busy the shops are in China... Over 500 (or was it 5000) students taught a DAY! and a number of shops.
Good luck...
OP
emttim
Contributor
Thanks for all the input guys. I can't make this too long because I need to focus on the now and go study for my calculus exam tomorrow, although I will touch on a few points.
Firstly, I'm definitely going to take everyone's advice into account, and I've taken up both Joel and Scott on their offers for info. I want to be as informed as possible, and most likely, I'm going to work in something totally non-scuba related such as business or corporate as an economist after I graduate. I'll probably work as an economist for a few years while I completely wipe out (I'm talking everything, car loan, student loans, everything) my existing debt by getting a well-paying econ job (they typically start out at 50-60K for a bachelor, 65-75K for a master's, and I'm getting a master's in applied economics since it's only one year extra and will have many courses directly applicable to running a business) so that when I do take out business loans, I will not have a crushing amount of debt to my name.
I'm extremely computer savvy and I grew up with my dad running a business so I am well versed in marketing, management, etc. that is required to be successful. I plan to not only run the dive shop but have a separate web site devoted to internet sales of dive gear...it makes no sense to just have a product catalog on the web site for a dive shop when you can instead have a link to a internet sales site. The customers who go to that dive shop will still have the security of ordering from someone they know since the sales site is ran by the dive shop, and it can also be operated as a separate business strictly dealing in internet sales. A dive shop that stocks a full line of scuba equipment is already set up to run an internet venture like that so the only real additional cost from it will be the cost to maintain the web site, which I know from personal experience, will be a very small fee. I can actually maintain the web site myself since I happen to know HTML, so the only cost for the internet sales site will be the $50/month to for the server hosting and the shopping cart.
Ok, as far as the dive shop itself goes. I won't have commission-based sales because, and I'll stress to the customer, I want what's best in the interest of them and not have people selling gear to them simply to make their own paycheck fatter. I'll do this through offering a reasonable base salary to the employees. Repeat customers will be something I'll adamantly try to get for obvious reasons. Very few companies survive without a lot of repeat business. To start, I probably will only have maybe one or two employees anyway so it won't be a big issue on payroll. I plan to be trained as a maintenance tech in all the scuba gear I handle, as well as be an instructor in all the classes I teach, so I need the minimal amount of employees possible for starting out. I'm aware that the goal of a business owner is to make a good return on his/her investment while he/she is far away from said business, however, I'm ok with putting in 8-12 hours a day to get it going since it will obviously be far cheaper for me to do stuff myself than pay a bunch of people to do it. And before I get my customer base built up, obviously saving money will be key.
I plan to market intelligently, as far as that goes. E-bay is an excellent source of virtually free marketing; many businesses sell products at discounted rates on there which not only makes people want to buy from them repeatedly but they have links to their store in the product description of the auction so they get "hits" on their web site from the auction as well. Obviously, even the discounted rate yields a profit or there'd be no point to doing it so the firm is still making some profit /and/ getting high-yield marketing out of it. I'll be doing other stuff too but that's one example.
Lastly, I plan to do a lot of research on the numbers and open a dive shop in the place that makes the most sense. IE not a ridiculous amount of competition which will encourage price wars, good (and growing) customer base, sufficient demand, etc.
Ironically, even though it's not a business degree, using calculus techniques from an economics perspective I can even find out the price to set for each product that yields the maximum amount of profit.
Anyway, speaking of calculus, I'm off to study so I destroy this exam tomorrow. Thanks for all the input guys!
P.S. if anyone's wondering, since I'll have 3 years inbetween graduation and starting the shop anyway, I do plan to get a good amount of dives and skill proficiency under my belt before doing DM and beyond.
Firstly, I'm definitely going to take everyone's advice into account, and I've taken up both Joel and Scott on their offers for info. I want to be as informed as possible, and most likely, I'm going to work in something totally non-scuba related such as business or corporate as an economist after I graduate. I'll probably work as an economist for a few years while I completely wipe out (I'm talking everything, car loan, student loans, everything) my existing debt by getting a well-paying econ job (they typically start out at 50-60K for a bachelor, 65-75K for a master's, and I'm getting a master's in applied economics since it's only one year extra and will have many courses directly applicable to running a business) so that when I do take out business loans, I will not have a crushing amount of debt to my name.
I'm extremely computer savvy and I grew up with my dad running a business so I am well versed in marketing, management, etc. that is required to be successful. I plan to not only run the dive shop but have a separate web site devoted to internet sales of dive gear...it makes no sense to just have a product catalog on the web site for a dive shop when you can instead have a link to a internet sales site. The customers who go to that dive shop will still have the security of ordering from someone they know since the sales site is ran by the dive shop, and it can also be operated as a separate business strictly dealing in internet sales. A dive shop that stocks a full line of scuba equipment is already set up to run an internet venture like that so the only real additional cost from it will be the cost to maintain the web site, which I know from personal experience, will be a very small fee. I can actually maintain the web site myself since I happen to know HTML, so the only cost for the internet sales site will be the $50/month to for the server hosting and the shopping cart.
Ok, as far as the dive shop itself goes. I won't have commission-based sales because, and I'll stress to the customer, I want what's best in the interest of them and not have people selling gear to them simply to make their own paycheck fatter. I'll do this through offering a reasonable base salary to the employees. Repeat customers will be something I'll adamantly try to get for obvious reasons. Very few companies survive without a lot of repeat business. To start, I probably will only have maybe one or two employees anyway so it won't be a big issue on payroll. I plan to be trained as a maintenance tech in all the scuba gear I handle, as well as be an instructor in all the classes I teach, so I need the minimal amount of employees possible for starting out. I'm aware that the goal of a business owner is to make a good return on his/her investment while he/she is far away from said business, however, I'm ok with putting in 8-12 hours a day to get it going since it will obviously be far cheaper for me to do stuff myself than pay a bunch of people to do it. And before I get my customer base built up, obviously saving money will be key.
I plan to market intelligently, as far as that goes. E-bay is an excellent source of virtually free marketing; many businesses sell products at discounted rates on there which not only makes people want to buy from them repeatedly but they have links to their store in the product description of the auction so they get "hits" on their web site from the auction as well. Obviously, even the discounted rate yields a profit or there'd be no point to doing it so the firm is still making some profit /and/ getting high-yield marketing out of it. I'll be doing other stuff too but that's one example.
Lastly, I plan to do a lot of research on the numbers and open a dive shop in the place that makes the most sense. IE not a ridiculous amount of competition which will encourage price wars, good (and growing) customer base, sufficient demand, etc.
Ironically, even though it's not a business degree, using calculus techniques from an economics perspective I can even find out the price to set for each product that yields the maximum amount of profit.
Anyway, speaking of calculus, I'm off to study so I destroy this exam tomorrow. Thanks for all the input guys!
P.S. if anyone's wondering, since I'll have 3 years inbetween graduation and starting the shop anyway, I do plan to get a good amount of dives and skill proficiency under my belt before doing DM and beyond.
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