OK,
So last weekend (October 21 and 22) I take my girls for certification dives at Lake Rawlings, Virginia - a stone quarry several acres in size with depths down to 60' (see my other thread for a description of the dives). Lake Rawlings is obviously a small dive operation, kind of out-of-the-way, with primitive facilities and camping. It's located off I-85 about 30 miles south of Richmond.
Now on this same weekend, DUI had it's DOG day demos scheduled for trying a dry suit.
We got up there on Friday night, about 8 PM, made camp, set up, etc. Did a fire and hit the bags at 10 PM. Aside from us, there were only a few other people there.
By 9:00 AM on Saturday morning, there were enough divers in this campground to make it a small city! We hit the water at about 9:00 AM and - I'm not exaggerating here - about 200 other divers joined us. It looked like a diving assault force on an enemy beach!
I saw people wearing sport gear, tech gear, singles, doubles, even re-breathers! One diver I saw had to have more than $20,000 in equipment on her back at one time. They just kept coming! My youngest girl said "Wow, Uncle Andy, there sure are a LOT of people who dive!" WTH? Dozens of people were suiting up with the DUI folks and the poor "Dive Shack" compressors (the LDS at the lake) just kept running ALL day and into the next night.
So, here's my observation. This was a quarry, with maybe 20 to 50 FT of viz, 50 to 70 degree water, primitive conditions and out in the middle of nowhere. And STILL they came. I gotta tell ya, if I had this much interest in the sport - and I count interest as participation and equipment buying - when I ran a dive shop, we could have done MUCH better than what we did.
So what's up with LDSs talking about "going out of business" and "slow times" these days? I'm not trying to be argumentive here or put anybody down but GEEZ, if your dive shop business can't do well with this kind of participation, what's going on?
Just some thoughts...
So last weekend (October 21 and 22) I take my girls for certification dives at Lake Rawlings, Virginia - a stone quarry several acres in size with depths down to 60' (see my other thread for a description of the dives). Lake Rawlings is obviously a small dive operation, kind of out-of-the-way, with primitive facilities and camping. It's located off I-85 about 30 miles south of Richmond.
Now on this same weekend, DUI had it's DOG day demos scheduled for trying a dry suit.
We got up there on Friday night, about 8 PM, made camp, set up, etc. Did a fire and hit the bags at 10 PM. Aside from us, there were only a few other people there.
By 9:00 AM on Saturday morning, there were enough divers in this campground to make it a small city! We hit the water at about 9:00 AM and - I'm not exaggerating here - about 200 other divers joined us. It looked like a diving assault force on an enemy beach!
I saw people wearing sport gear, tech gear, singles, doubles, even re-breathers! One diver I saw had to have more than $20,000 in equipment on her back at one time. They just kept coming! My youngest girl said "Wow, Uncle Andy, there sure are a LOT of people who dive!" WTH? Dozens of people were suiting up with the DUI folks and the poor "Dive Shack" compressors (the LDS at the lake) just kept running ALL day and into the next night.
So, here's my observation. This was a quarry, with maybe 20 to 50 FT of viz, 50 to 70 degree water, primitive conditions and out in the middle of nowhere. And STILL they came. I gotta tell ya, if I had this much interest in the sport - and I count interest as participation and equipment buying - when I ran a dive shop, we could have done MUCH better than what we did.
So what's up with LDSs talking about "going out of business" and "slow times" these days? I'm not trying to be argumentive here or put anybody down but GEEZ, if your dive shop business can't do well with this kind of participation, what's going on?
Just some thoughts...