What do you want or wish you had from your LDS? All good, all bad...

[lowviz]

...//... What if they're really, reaaalllly dumb?

Then you either piss them off or educate them. Your choice.

As for the recalls, remind me to never do business with you.

You seem to want it fast and easy in a dog eat dog industry.

 

[kelemvor]

If you ran the perfect dive shop, in your opinion, what's important to you? What would make you loyal to a specific shop in the age of the internet and a near over-saturation of dive shops?

I don't run or work in a dive shop. I am a customer of several. Hopefully you'll find my input valuable as a diveshop customer rather than a proprietor.

What's my perfect dive shop? Easy, they would sell every brand of products (or reasonably close). Does the shop sell regulators? If so, they should have scubapro, apeks, aqualung, posiedon, deep6, and the other 20 brands that I didn't type out. Do they sell BCD's? Same thing.

They wouldn't be pushy and would have good customer service.

Also, I'd like them NOT to sell training. It would be fine if they were affiliated with instructors or other training specific businesses. I don't want the guy who sells training to also push gear (and vice versa). I think it's a conflict of interest.

As I said, I'm a customer of several. That's because shops don't meet the above criteria. There's a shop in my town that has instructors I like. They also sell some gear I like. I wanted scubapro regulators, and that shop is in bed with aqualung instead of scubapro so I went down the road for a regulator. I wanted a shearwater dive computer. Neither of the two shops I just mentioned sells shearwater. I went way down the road to yet another shop and bought a shearwater dive computer. etc etc...

Some shops do offer two or three brands, but most don't make more than a token effort here. It's almost as if they want you to go down the road and spend money with the other guy. Or just "trust them" that the stuff they sell really is the best .

 

[WantSomeScuba?]

Then you either piss them off or educate them. Your choice.

As for the recalls, remind me to never do business with you.

You seem to want it fast and easy in a dog eat dog industry.

Holy smokes, that went sideways fast.

I thought both of those statements were blatantly dumb enough that they would be taken as jokes and I wouldn't need to add a caveat that they were, indeed, jokes.

We treat everybody who walks through the door with respect. As for the recalls, Suunto issued a total recall on their transmitters last year. For anybody who works in a Suunto shop and sells enough computers, it was a nightmare. Again, just a joke.

Anybody who works in diving is well aware there's no fast and easy.

 

[Marie13]

My LDS is fab (DRIS). My only wish is that their online store reflected inventory in stock.

I drive 35 miles from work, 50 miles from home, one way to get to the shop. I love that they’re open until 9 pm. Means I can drop in after work often. The drive from work can take 90 minutes due to traffic.

 

[runsongas]

Good fills, quality training so people actually dive locally, and a selection of gear chosen for value to the customer rather than profitability to the shop.

My biggest gripes with the LDS closest to me are they don't bank ean32 and still PP blend, they carry no mid-range value gear (eg dive rite) such that it either is expensive atomic/scubapro/halcyon gear or the entry level packages, service turnaround is a lot longer than it should be (took a week to vis 2 tanks last year), and their group trips don't have enough dives/day included (vision trips excluded) and also aren't competitive against booking online. they need to put some motherloving batteries in their computer display too. how the hell are people supposed to see how good a perdix looks if you can't turn it on?

 

[Cert1967]

SB folks seem to have lots of ideas. No doubt most are good and might work for your shop. But you need a foundation first.

Your online presence - web and FB - is terrible.

Four suggestions.

1. Review our liability exposure with an experienced local attorney. Continue to do this on a regular basis, as the attorney will no doubt suggest. The review should compose the full range of your activities - business structure, AK limits on liability waivers, and individual liability. I would discuss splitting the business into different corporate entities to segregate and minimize liability exposure. You are in business to have fun, make money and not go broke.
2. Accounting - spend your money on advice and not solely on number crunching. As a small business, you should be focused on generating gross margin dollars and not gross margin percent.
3. Travel - AK diving, sounds great. You have no warm water travel on your menu. Why not partner with established players and capture your client's warm water travel dollars? Easy dollars with minimal investment.
4. WEB/FB - turn both off until you can present a message consistent with your marketing goals. You admit your current offerings are bad, stop the damage today. And hire a pro to assist you - Duck Diver Marketing?

ScubaBoard.com Website designed by Duck Diver Marketing

Home - Duck Diver Marketing

"We specialize in creating WordPress sites because it's easy for us to pass the ball to you to maintain your own website (if you want to). We also have continued maintenance available, including web hosting, e-mail, cPanel, daily backups, and other web services. We can also do custom php coding, mysql databases, straight HTML, and more. All of our work is done in the USA, we don't farm out our projects overseas."​

WordPress is the key. Pay for marketing knowledge - the setup - and do basic maintenace yourself. Don't forget to return for regular consultations with a pro.​

I excerpted a few highlights from your Web and FB presence. Brutal.

***************************************

"We also are very proud to be a Scubapro Platinum Dealer, which means that we enjoy some pretty neat dealer benefits."

Well, good for you, your shop gets great 'dealer benefits', but you don't say how this benefits your customers? The big SP catalog?

Scubapro Product Catalog | Dive Alaska​

The SB crowd will surely find your training photo interesting. While this is likely PADI open water training, it is interesting from a shop promoting GUE training. Will the students still be on their knees when they finish OW?

"All SCUBA training is NOT created equal! and a higher level of proficiency required for successful scuba certification."

Training with Dive Alaska | Dive Alaska
​

PADI Training

PADI Open Water Course | Dive Alaska

"Tuition is $699 for the full open water diver certification, or $399 for the referral portion." The dry suit add-on is a good value. You should be able to deliver a superior course for the price you are charging? Your students can do all skills perfectly, while on their knees?​

Personal Gear - gotta make a buck somewhere - nice snorkels.

"... you’ll come in to the shop and select your personal gear. ...we estimate these items to cost approximately $300"​

Facebook

Your trained-up open water divers posing at graduation? Fine looking group - on their knees. Are those the $70 'dry' snorkels? This is your finished OW product?

Dive Alaska Inc.

"Congratulations to our open water students"​

Quite the online shop you have

Products « Dive Alaska
Two hats, a hoodie, and a tee-shirt, along with one reg package - SP mk21+S560 - that's it? Same on your FB page.​

Customer Appreciation Day? Sounds like fun. Oops, all three posts are dated. Anything new coming up?

http://divealaska.net/customer-appreciation-day/​

Your link below is blocked, "This video contains content from WMG, who has blocked it on copyright grounds."

"For an example of some of the COOL STUFF GUE does:

[CLICK HERE]"
​

 

[WantSomeScuba?]

Yeesh. You're not wrong, but that's not really what I was looking for. It was more of an open-ended question--believe me, the shop is covered, we have liability insurance, a corporate attorney, and an accountant, and we do quarterly audits. Warm water trips are on hold because nobody wants to leave Alaska in the summer.

The question was more: "What do you like or dislike in a shop, and in a perfect world, what does that look like?" and less "Anybody want to shill for their marketing agency specifically at me and the trainwreck of a website we're working on fixing?"

We have a foundation, and this shop specifically has been around and profitable for 14 years, regardless of the nightmare of a website.

 

[Johnoly]

Ditto what others already said,,,
1) Monster fills with txt msg when completed.
2) Banked Nitrox with 100 fill cards for sale (some of us dive a bit)
3) Monthly club social meetings
4) Accurate updated online calendar
5) Have a shop dog and/or cat

 

[rongoodman]

Banked standard gases.

 

[kelemvor]

My LDS is fab (DRIS). My only wish is that their online store reflected inventory in stock.

I drive 35 miles from work, 50 miles from home, one way to get to the shop. I love that they’re open until 9 pm. Means I can drop in after work often. The drive from work can take 90 minutes due to traffic.

I'll second that. They're about half a country away from me but I've shopped on their website repeatedly. I've also talked to them on the phone several times. If you need an example of how to run a scuba website, point your browser over to diverightinscuba.com. It's not perfect by any means but it is very good. Something else DRIS does that is smart is they list their products on amazon.com and at competitive prices. Many people such as myself use amazon because we have prime shipping which means no charge for 2 day shipping or $4usd for overnight.