Posted by CalAbDiver on June 19, 2001 at 13:36:17:
In Reply to: Re: i did my 400 yd swim in 4 and 1/2 minutes posted by Ken Kurtis on June 19, 2001 at 12:29:45:
the best thing for a scuba store is to find a loyal new customer, tell him/her the truth at all times, and shepherd him/her through the rescue or divemaster or tech diver level. then you have created a very safe diver, and it has reaped benefits for the store too.
sometimes the scuba store can haul in a bundle, $10K to $15K in a year, from one great customer alone. thats where the big bucks are on equipment sales. for a store to find a new diver and make him/her a tech customer is like striking gold in the motherlode.
i dive because i enjoy scuba and i enjoy being around other scuba divers. i enjoy watching over them, and i have assisted and rescued a few. the adrenaline rush from that beats anything else. its thrilling to see the enjoyment in others that comes from them learning to do something right. i think there is also a mild O2 rush in it for them as well.
[the only other time i get a major adrenaline rush is when freediving and i find a huge monster ab, and pop it off a rock. the harder it fights me, the more the rush.]
i try to caution the divers who have inadvertently discovered the N2 rush ... too dangerous to be worth it.
the OWSIs in California that i know all have other day jobs, from engineering to bus driver, so the prices for scuba instruction here on the West Coast have been equilibriated down to something that would be the equivalent of $40K per year full time job for an instructor, if he/she did it full time. you cant live on that here in California. and even though its low, people still complain about shelling out a mere $250 for OW1!
the D/Ms here in California fare even less. the best thing they can hope to do is show some kind of revenue stream at all from scuba, to try to justify their tax write offs if any, from all the gear they have purchased which is related to assisting an OWSI or leading groups of certified divers. hence my comment about the drawbacks of shifting current scuba review topics up into the proposed recertification area.
if a person owns a dive shop, they can make a living at it, as long as they are doing everything right, and they have a good location. they would maximize by making loyal customer relationships with their divers. they need to understand their customer base and their new walk-ins. their satisfied customers must be sending other potential divers their way.
some dive shop owners that i have met are unscupulously focused on the short time. i have noticed that their dive stores dont experience growth. and not a lot of the divers come back, or even scuba much. other dive shop owners have found the rosetta stone for truly understanding their customer base, and they grow fairly well. seems like all stores fall into one category or the other.
the worst thing on this earth for a scuba store is to have a rag tag minimum wage employee who pisses off customers on a regular basis. it would be better for a store owner to be a sole proprietor than that. best is to hire some really pretty athletic female and pay her a living wage so she will be happy and treat all the customers equally well too.
speaking of new cars, two out of the three store owners whom i know fairly well have bought brand new large SUVs this year. one SUV is scuba-red and the other is brite white. all of them work quite hard, just that two of the three are better at it than the third guy is.
well, thats probably more scuba economics than anyone wanted to read. those are the observations that have led me to my conclusions in my last post.
scuba continuing education is a sticky subject, and i dont see any easy answers. but if your neighborhood has a good scuba store, some good OWSIs, some good D/Ms and DMCs, all with other day jobs, and a lot of great customers who enjoy doing it right and enjoy having fun together, then there is great potential there for solving the continuing education issue, and for the store to be a financial success.
theres one more thing, too. when people see "NAUI" on a store, they expect more out of it. (i hope nobody from PADI or SSI or YMCA saw that!) it might take longer to get your stuff in the mail from Tampa Florida, but one on one, the people expect more if they see that.
scuba continuing education in an environment like that would take care of itself. its the laid back never-dive-much OW1s who never take another class like AOW or rescue or fish I/D that are the cause of the concern and the cause of the problem of lack of skills.