What can or does your LDS need to do to EARN your business?

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If no one has mentioned it yet, think about your shops appearance, does a person who is thinking about learning to dive want to walk in the door and stay for a half our or is does the place look, smell, and feel like a dump? – It should be:

Warm in the winter – In the North most shops I have seen save money on heat, does a customer want to try on a wet/dry suit when the shop is 50 degrees and you are in a sweatshirt?

Brightly lit – If I can’t see it, I can’t buy it

Have a changing room which is not the bathroom – A changing room is a changing room, No one wants to smell what you just did or see its smear in the bowl when trying on anything.

Have a bath room which has been cleaned this decade – Your wash room should not be used as the regulator cleaning area or look like the garages down the street.

Be dry – Keep the smell and wetness of your rental gear out of the show room

Have a good selection and be ready to order and work price vs. volume as best you can, You are competing with the internet, get used to it. What you have going for you is they have to come to you for air, but nothing else, even service can be done easily and sometimes cheaper using flat rate shipping to a shop across the country.

Do air fills quickly and at a reasonable price – These are your loss leaders, don’t loose money but it is not a profit center. Fills bring in the customers and allow time for them to look over all the small (and high markup) and big stuff – you do have a good selection of such, don’t you? This is where you have a captured customer for 10-15 minutes, use it.

Your service area should be clean, neat, and visible to the customer ( a window works well) – If it looks like my 7 year old runs it, why should I trust your work on my gear?

Make sure that the compressor is quiet so you don’t have the shout and the customer wants to stay and hear your pitch.

A coffee table on Saturday morning can go a long way to keeping people in your store.

Learn how to pitch your goods and services without it being a hard pitch. Do you like going into a car dealer or furniture store and have a sales person chasing you like a vulture after a sick animal?

Many dive shops are run by people with no training in retail and it shows. The above list is only a beginning, take a basic retail course at a college or university.

Looks like you should do your shopping exclusively at dive shops located in the Waldorf-Astoria.:rofl3::rofl3::rofl3:
 
Another thing I would like to see more LDS do is offer a used gear sales maybe even a consignment type set up to where people can actualy buy used gear in a price range they can afford.

QUOTE]

I brought this up as well in another thread. I don't understand why dive shops don't take advantage of this opportunity. Give me the option of buying quality used gear that has been looked over by the shop.

..as a consumer, this sounds appealing, but unfortunately I only know of ONE LDS in the entire Dallas/Ft. Worth TX metroplex that EVER runs something like an annual garage sale where divers with surplus/unneeded scuba gear can display/sell their unneeded items and the LDS gets a cut (%) of each sale. I'm thinking most LDS feel it would set a dangerous precedent, reminding shoppers of how drastically new scuba gear loses $ value (depreciation) and would highlight how overpriced most new scuba gear really is. That being said, given the ongoing decline in this sport for economic/dempgraphic reasons, I doubt the inflated new gear prices can be sustained, and there are many divers that won't EVER be buying spendy new gear, so might as well figure out ways to make a few bucks via the consignment/used gear route.
 
If you don't already know ask your suppliers certification agencies or find something else to occupy your time.

Be thankful when a person with some knowlege walks in that has found love elsewhere and has left the requirement to obtain everything they have ever heard of yesterday for nothing outside the door of your charity organisation.

...this is one of the minority of posts where I understand exactly what you're saying.....:)
 
When I come in to your shop with something I recently purchased from you that is broken or is defective, don't tell me about the problems you are having with the manufacturer, or how little you made on the sale, etc etc. Tell me how you are going to fix it or exchange it for a new one. Then you deal with the manufacturer.

Do that and like a puppy being feed treats I will follow you until they take away my dive gear and shove me into a home.
 
the yard sale idea is intriquing

I have found this a wonderful post.

As experienced divers what items are you looking for to be instock at yoru shop?

As a new diver what ware you looking for?
 
I have some difficulties getting 100%/boosted/hyper-filtered fills.

I don't know how it is in your area, and I know it's a small percentage of the diving populous, but finding tech gear in a store is moderately difficult around here. Now, having said that, people moving into tech spend a BOATLOAD of money as it is a HUGE initial investment. So, in essence you could potentially make as much money off one new tech diver as you could from several rec divers.
 
the yard sale idea is intriquing

I have found this a wonderful post.

As experienced divers what items are you looking for to be instock at yoru shop?

As a new diver what ware you looking for?

Wow your going to open a can of worms on this one. LOL the answers will be endless. but here is what I look for in a shop. I love variety but since I am almost completely outfitted in gear I look for nastalgic Items. T-shirts decorations for home, Dive related items made for daily use. You know brief cases with the dive logos. Believe it or not I have purchased most of my gear while window shopping for trinkets
 
I understand the boatload of eels or worms, and I know that no dive shop willbe perfect, but in order to grow and prosper I ask. Being in Western Colorado in the middle of no where I do wonder about the tec gear and if maybe having some of the smaller items might not be a good thing and what would they be?
 
If selling equipment is the only way for a dive shop to stay alive, then I think they are in trouble.

The majority of people will always go for the cheaper price, especially if it's for the exact same item.

Dive shops in Australia are 200% more expensive than purchasing online. Why would I pay $1400 for that nice regulator when I can get it online for $500? I'm sorry but Im just not that rich to let $1000 go to waste!!

Eventually dive shops will die. I'm not sure that I really care about it though because when people can't rely on others to help them, they help themselves. Dive clubs are the future. When all the dive shops die you will still have people with an interest in the sport. You will still be able to purchase gear online and people will get together and create a private club, purchase compressors, send willing club members to courses for discounted prices to learn how to service gear. Clubs can order in and sell odd bits n pieces however with little or no markup. The only people that will benifit are the members and the online retailers. And I am looking forward to this day as knowlege should be shared and training through a club will be cheap. Sure membership prices will be a little more expensive than now. But the diving and mateship I belive will be better. :) sorry if you don't like my outlook but as it stands the only people that seem to winning right now are the divers. I think that is the way it should be.
 
Looks like you should do your shopping exclusively at dive shops located in the Waldorf-Astoria.:rofl3::rofl3::rofl3:

Waldorf-Astoria, no what I described is what you expect at the avg McDonalds.

If the store front and wash rooms are clean and don't smell, do you worry about what the kitchen area is like?
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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