In the last week or so, I've had occasion to visit a couple of dive shops I don't normally go into, and I've also been following the marketing thread.
Many of the dive shops I've been in in the last eight years are somewhere in the range of drab to outright grubby. Some of them look like somebody's garage, and many have had little or no thought given to making the space light, attractive, or well laid out.
One of the things I like about the shop for which Peter teaches is that it's just plain attractive -- used to be more so, when there was more inventory to make it look more prosperous, but the space is well lit, the carpet isn't gray, there's a stained glass window of divers . . . it's just kind of cheerful. I like going in there -- still do, after eight years. I also love going to the Zero Gravity dive shop in Mexico, which is also bright, cheerful, well laid out, and immaculately clean.
But I wonder how much that kind of thing matters to anyone else? Since it's still true that over two thirds of divers are men, perhaps it doesn't MATTER all that much if a place looks like a garage where some teenager is tinkering with a hot rod?
I'd love to hear what other folks think on this.
Many of the dive shops I've been in in the last eight years are somewhere in the range of drab to outright grubby. Some of them look like somebody's garage, and many have had little or no thought given to making the space light, attractive, or well laid out.
One of the things I like about the shop for which Peter teaches is that it's just plain attractive -- used to be more so, when there was more inventory to make it look more prosperous, but the space is well lit, the carpet isn't gray, there's a stained glass window of divers . . . it's just kind of cheerful. I like going in there -- still do, after eight years. I also love going to the Zero Gravity dive shop in Mexico, which is also bright, cheerful, well laid out, and immaculately clean.
But I wonder how much that kind of thing matters to anyone else? Since it's still true that over two thirds of divers are men, perhaps it doesn't MATTER all that much if a place looks like a garage where some teenager is tinkering with a hot rod?
I'd love to hear what other folks think on this.