Starting a Dive Shop

[TwoBitTxn]

Write a business plan. Take your time writing it. Try to imagine every possible contingency. Make it high level and long term. Be willing to change and adapt it. Businesses either change and adapt or die.

Serve your customers. Earn their loyalty. Give them a reason to come to you and not your competition.

Find something that makes you special. Market it.

Don't expect to turn a profit in the first three years.

Have someone who can give you honest feedback. Listen to that person.

Good luck,

TwoBit

 

[yknot]

Yep you guys can always beat the price.

But the heartbeat of the industry lays in the LDS. When they're gone, good luck. Where are you going to try on your gear before you save 100 bucks buying it over the internet?

Need your reg fixed before next weekend?

Good luck

I have heard that some dive shops are currently refusing to fill tanks when a customers gear was purchased online. As far as I'm concerned I'd like to see more shops doing this including the shop I work for.

Al, while I understand your frustrations, history is full of examples of business, both large and small, that failed because they couldn't adapt to a changing market. The saving grace for the LDS's will be their willingness to provide fast cheap classes. Diving isn't a sport that most come to because they saw a billboard on their way home from work. By the time most new divers become aware of cheap online gear or info sites like Scubaboard they have already begun to be brainwashed by their LDS. A lot of divers I talk to are afraid to buy online. I have no doubt that there will be a handful of survivors in my area that I can get air from simply because they are making money on the backs of these new divers. Go ahead and deny me from buying air. I can scream pretty loud thru forums like this. Incidently, the one LDS I bought most of my gear from doesn't treat me with any more consideration as they treat anyone else. Every time I walk in it's still just a business transaction. Incidently, your post suggests that LDS's must have invented the sport of scuba diving, otherwise how can you suggest that dive consumers will be out of luck when the LDS's all fail? Are you aware that divers found a way to dive before you were in business? Do you think ScubaPro is going to follow you into bankruptsy?

 

[MikeFerrara]

Write a business plan. Take your time writing it. Try to imagine every possible contingency. Make it high level and long term. Be willing to change and adapt it. Businesses either change and adapt or die.

Serve your customers. Earn their loyalty. Give them a reason to come to you and not your competition.

Find something that makes you special. Market it.

Don't expect to turn a profit in the first three years.

Have someone who can give you honest feedback. Listen to that person.

Good luck,

TwoBit

Sound advice for most businesses. However, the scuba equipment manufacturers leave little room for the dive shop owner to decide what kind of business they want. You do it their way or you don't have anything to sell.

Foe instance...maybe you decide that since you're inland and all the local dive sites sell gas and in volume that it isn't cost effective to sell fills. Sorry but unless you're a full service shop, which includes filles, you won't be able to buy product to sell.

Another...maybe you decide that you just want to sell equipment and not mess with teaching because of the cost of insurance...oops sorry...you need to teach to be a full service shop and get equipment to sell.

Mayube you decide that you need to carry a few scubapro regs because they're popular in the area but you don't think you can sell the rest of their line...ooops sorry...scubaqpro wants about an $18,000 opening irder these days and they want you to stock their whole line whether you want to or not.

Oh lets not even get into the crap you take when some of the sales reps come in and see too much of another manufacturers stuff on the shelf. Believe me they don't hold back when it comes to threatening to pull your dealership.

Shoot...they'll even be happy to send some one over to tutor you on how to teach to sell more of their junk...even if that person hasen't ever taught a class in their life.

If you want to open a dive shop there is little sense in writting a business plan because you'll either do like LP or you'll do what the manufacturers and the agencies tell you to do. Period.

 

[mempilot]

Of course our shop wouldn't be involved with such things as it's just shooting ourselves in our own foot. But I know this happens.

Ya, I know. It kills the bricks and morter operation in the long run for quick volume profit in the short run. Problem is, it floods the market with low profit product that doesn't get replaced very often. You end up losing in the long run.

 

[mempilot]

How much longer do you think this is going to last? Sooner or later one of the major dive manufacturers will break down the wall and start selling exclusively via the internet with the sevices through well equiped and "certified" shops.

Just curious - have any dive shops successfully changed into a chain? The key to business these days is buy buy buy other companies, suck all the money out build a house in the islands, and then get out before the business goes bankrupt.

Closest thing I can think of is Diver's Direct down here in SE FL with many locations and a web presense.

 

[mempilot]

Mayube you decide that you need to carry a few scubapro regs because they're popular in the area but you don't think you can sell the rest of their line...ooops sorry...scubaqpro wants about an $18,000 opening irder these days and they want you to stock their whole line whether you want to or not.

Yep, this is killing the local shop. They went from carrying a nice diverse inventory with selection to 90% SP. Sales are obviously down, even though margin is up. Margin don't mean didly if people don't pay the big bucks locally.

 

[415Gem]

Valid points all. In the past few years in our area 3 dive shops have closed with no new ones opening.

We have had good customers bring their gray market gear to us for service and warranty work. oops. We will do what we can for them but when the call is made to the manufacturer we want them listening in when we read off the serial numbers.

I'll have to be honest. There are a couple of divers who love to hang out at the shop but if we can't meet or beat an internet price (which we seldom can) they don't buy from us. Yesterday, with a smile on my face, I asked one of these guys if he planned to hang out at Leisurepro if we ever had to shut down because of all the online shopping that goes on. He says lower your prices and I'll buy here. I told him, again with a smile, that if we did that we'd shut down very quickly. He doesn't get it.

Those who do shop at the shop I instruct for get other deals, such as minor repairs for free, we'll sneak them a little air every so often and of course we'll discount activities and specialties.

Good on you. Service is hard to find. We have to have community to all survive. Just like the reefs need our involvement. Not to be poisoned or dynamite..etc... Don`t let `em get you down Kevin

 

[O2Addict]

For those of you out there with dive shops, how much stock do you have that you cannot sell, and basically give it away at cost? Do the manufacturers buy back product that does not sell? Do you just auction it on Ebay?

I would be interested to know how it works,

Thanks

 

[CRESSIDVR9]

ummmmm never mind.

 

[dave the diver]

Thanks for the responses - not a bad crop of answers!

By "dive shop" I didn't just mean sales and service. I realise that margins, overheads etc etc are tough, and I don't just want to be a retailer. Using the internet I would have thought was a given these days. Besides, the fact that these posts are on the net shows how computer savvy divers have become.

My preference would be to run a couple of shops, and also do local dive trips. Training I see as a necessary evil - it's not something I particularly want to do, but have no justifiable reason not to. I think that would be the stage where my business really starts to become governed by someone else's rules. I'm also reluctant to join the 'must-get OW divers' conveyor belt.

So I think the question remains - whether to open a new shop, or wait for an old one to come on the market?