Lighthouse Diving Center in Tacoma is "refreshed"

Ladies and Gentlemen,

You may have been to the Lighthouse Diving Center in Tacoma, WA in the past. You may have heard things about us "in the past". I'm here to tell you that it has changed. My name is Tim, and I am the new manager of the store. I have spent the last year cleaning, repairing, and rebuilding this place. I have gotten a new compressor, built a new classroom, and almost have our nitrox up and running. The store itself is much better. The downtown Tacoma area has been cleaned up, but our store wasn't keeping up with the times. I have gotten windows fixed, new signs, and a nice coat of paint. No more cold drafts in the store, no more graffiti, and no more missing the building as you drive by. The inside of the store has gotten a facelift as well. It's now bright and open with products placed in a logical order where they can be seen. The wet dog smell is also gone.

If you haven't been in here in the past 6 months or so then you will be amazed at the transformation. I have also put the focus of the store on Customer Service, not just selling stuff. We will still sell you all the dive gear that you want, but before we do we want to make sure it is the RIGHT gear for you. I would rather send you to a competitor who has what you need than put you in something that won't work for you. That being said, we can usually get you what you need fairly quickly if it's not already in stock. And we do have lots of STOCK. The company policy is to keep the store full. We are not one of the shops that just have place holders on the shelves and order things for customers. We try to keep standard sizes and colors on our shelves, and only need to do orders under special circumstances.

I hope you will stop in and see the "refreshed" Lighthouse Tacoma

Sincerely,

Tim
Manager/Instructor

Kudos for the transformation -- sounds like a LOT of work went into it!

Tacoma Lighthouse:

I would rather send you to a competitor who has what you need than put you in something that won't work for you ...

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... that right there gets a LOT of respect from me. I'm an independent instructor, and have loose affiliations with a couple of shops and a preference for good relations with all of them. You have another thread in here asking what we'd like to see in a dive shop. My #1 answer is a staff that recognizes that the dive shop down the road isn't your competitor ... the shop that sells bicycles, skis, and other recreational equipment that people can spend their discretionary dollars on is your competitor. The guy in the dive shop up the road can be ... if you allow it ... a cooperator who can help you grow the local dive community.

People who spend a lot of money on the wrong gear will generally stop diving ... either because they come to believe they got screwed, or simply because the wrong gear sucks the fun out of diving and so they go find something else to do that's more fun. This hurts the industry, and while the shop that sold them that gear makes a short-term profit, it kills their opportunity to grow their potential market. Some shop managers are better at understanding this than others.

Back when I got certified as an instructor, the manager of the dive shop where I was taking my class had all the local dive shops on speed dial. If he couldn't sell a customer a product that was right for their needs, he'd call around and find out which of the other dive shops had it, and send the customer over there. It didn't really hurt him to do that ... those customers tended to come back when they needed something else, because they trusted that he was going to take care of them. The guy who subsequently bought that shop had a different approach, and tended to get mad at customers who occasionally bought things elsewhere ... he ultimately lost so many customers he went out of business.

Building good relationships matters. People get turned off by the shop politics that's so prevalent in our business. We do this for fun ... when it becomes not-fun, people tend to avoid the source of that not-fun ... or they just go find something else to spend their recreational dollars on. The successful dive shop is the one that is run by people who understand that concept ... because people will tend to visit those shops more often ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Thanks for the words of encouragement. While I'm here I'll keep it running well, and hopefully get a good reputation back. I have even enlisted the help of Arly to bring things back. He ran this place for a long time and trained thousands of divers out of here. I guess retirement was just a little too boring for him.

He may even post under this screen name when he is here at the shop since it's the store account.

Hope to see ya'll soon.

Tim