Biggest thing killing dive shops?

[Katie L]

Freediving is booming. I taught that 20 years too early. I also think freediving is affordable for the struggling millennials.

Excellent point. It’s minimalist and seemingly hard-core. Bungee jumping meets yoga. Plus you can bring your GoPro. I can see freediving continuing to grow in popularity.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

I currently work (seasonally) at St. Lawrence Scuba Co. in Watertown, NY. Our customers come in and hang out, occupy every available seat, and eat the dive shop owner out of house, home, shop, and boat. He's not very good about keeping the boundaries on hours so folks hang out until midnight ... or later. The staff has to organize like a union and say, "We're out," leaving the owner with the groupies. The atmosphere is completely unprofessional and frat-like out of the water and very professional on the boat and in the water. The customers love it. Our demographic is military, former military contractors, blue collar, and such around Ft. Drum. Not too many white-collar.

I experienced the same growing up at PDIC's retail store. Customers hung out. But, like you said, social networking has replaced the bar so I'm not sure how that would be today with our customer base which was evenly split between the blue and white collar professions and spanned kids to retirees.

 

[BDSC]

The main real world example I see is when there's a dive club, which may be run by a LDS, that may have monthly meetings, dues, benefits, etc... That seems fairly popular with one in my region, and a private instructor I know also does this.

Do LDS need to form, or affiliate with, dive clubs?

Or do they attempt to somehow create an atmosphere where people drive over at random times hoping to talk with shop staff or hit it off with a fellow customer?

Richard.

We have a really active dive club in my area. As a matter of fact, the president last year is a member and part of the staff here at SB. The club was affiliated with a LDS until the owner passed away but the club kept going and if anything, has grown even bigger. We have monthly meetings, pay dues, and at one time the LDS would give you an additional 10% discount at the stores. Not sure if that's still the case. The club is successful because there are some very dedicated folks running it and they work hard at it. The guy who serves as VP has mastered the art of remote speakers and we have had some outstanding speakers who didn't need to travel a long distance to present to our club. We have two big screen TV's in the restaurant we meet at and it works out great.

At one time we had as many as three dive clubs here and all were associated with a LDS. One was not really active at all and two were but I think even two was one too many for the area. What we have now seems to really work great. While we are not part of a particular dive shop, all the shops in the area are invited to advertise their trips at our meetings and I think all the shops usually have some sort of representation at the meetings.

A lot of us didn't know what to expect when the shop we were affiliated with closed down. Would we be able to sustain a club with no shop affiliation? But it has worked out great so far and I think having an active club in the area helps out all the shops in some form or another.

 

[Kharon]

... has made it accessible to a broad audience, including chunky late-40's white collar workers (cough-cough-like-me-cough-cough)....

Hey - I'm a chunky 71 year old and I still want it to be fun and not strenuous enough to lock me out.

 

[dmaziuk]

Do LDS need to form, or affiliate with, dive clubs?

Ours seem to survive independently: Mission Statement – Hoofer Scuba Club

 

[drrich2]

Ours seem to survive independently: Mission Statement – Hoofer Scuba Club

So the club doesn't need the shop, but does the shop need the club?

Richard.

 

[dmaziuk]

I don't know if they have their own fill station, they may be getting the fills from a shop in town. Other than that it's a university, one of its kinks is member turnover. They graduate and leave. Also they're poor students. So I wouldn't expect them to be much of customer base for a shop.

Edit: keep in mind that although the club may not need the shop to survive, it does need the hoofer clubs mothership under the university umbrella. It's not like a bunch of guys chipping in for the next keg in the pub, like some posts here make BSAC look.

 

[JamesBon92007]

Excellent point. It’s minimalist and seemingly hard-core. Bungee jumping meets yoga. Plus you can bring your GoPro. I can see freediving continuing to grow in popularity.

By "free-diving" do you guys mean riding an elevator down just to see how deep you can go, or swimming around underwater looking at stuff, taking pictures, and spearing fish?

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

By "free-diving" do you guys mean riding an elevator down just to see how deep you can go, or swimming around underwater looking at stuff, taking pictures, and spearing fish?

Probably mostly hunting I suspect. Not so much record setting.
Looking around and taking pictures seems kind of like a scuba thing?

 

[Umuntu]

Probably mostly hunting I suspect. Not so much record setting.
Looking around and taking pictures seems kind of like a scuba thing?

There is a "trendy" fascination with free diving as a fun alternative (or addition) to scuba.

I've noticed it especially among the young, predominantly female, diving friends. It's a new challenge. On a recent trip in Maldives the boat was about one-third split between, scuba, free-divers and snorkelers. And the Dive Shop taught free diving as well as scuba. PADI has tried to jump onto that bandwagon too recently.

Although it's not that healthy to mix scuba and free diving activity too close together as a diver.