The Roots of Dive Retail

Most people would agree that dive retailing really got its start in the early 1950s. Until that point, diving had not been a recreational activity. Throughout that decade, though, sport diving began to grow, aided by the publication of books such as Rachel Carson's "The Sea Around Us" which ignited the curiosity of people about the ocean while the television series, "Sea Hunt," started in 1957, popularized the activity of diving. When dive retail began more than 50 years ago, though, it was a tough game. Products were scarce, and difficult to find. So were customers, since hardly anyone had even considered diving, and only a few were adventurous enough to give it a go. Even "Sea Hunt's" Mike Nelson didn't get that involved in sport diving. If you look at the synopses of the "Sea Hunt" episodes available on the "Unofficial Sea Hunt Web Site," you'll see that just a handful of episodes were about recreational diving. Mike was far more involved in fighting the Cold War and catching bad guys than in diving for fun.

Living in a location that offered access to clear, enticing waters helped to grow divers, but that wasn't the complete answer either. Still, sport diving took off. And it took off in the strangest places. People learned about the sport, and they learned to dive. And when they discovered the underwater world, they fell in love with it.

Among the earliest dive retailers is Bill Jackson of Bill Jackson Inc. in Pinellas Park, Florida. According to Bill, known around the store as Mr. J, he sold his first diving tank -- an Aqualung -- in 1949 and taught his first dive class in 1952. He recalls that the early training consisted of four classes of two hours each. The cost? Ten dollars. He used a public swimming pool for the class and had 30-40 people. "Equipment was scarce," he says. "We had one tank for every four people."

Like many early dive stores, Mr. J's business began as something else. He started his business in 1946 as a military surplus store and it has evolved into an outdoor recreation store where dive equipment is one element of the store's inventory. "Over the years, we gradually moved away from military surplus and went into specialized outdoor sports, especially those we, ourselves, were interested in -- like diving," says Mr. J. He believes he had one of the first Cressi masks in this country. "I got it in Miami from a fishing wholesaler," he said. "A boat captain had come in and had brought a load of merchandise from Italy. We had to buy a handful of them to try them out." When you look back into the roots of dive retail, it's interesting to see the different places where it sprang up and the illogical reasons why some dive stores began. It seems reasonable that an early dive store such as Bill Jackson's would be found on the Florida coast, or certainly in Southern California, but when it comes to dive retail's history, logic doesn't always rule. When Richard Stovall opened the doors of his dive store in Midland, Texas, 43 years ago, he never expected to make a dime. "In fact, I never really intended to be in the dive business at all," Stovall said. "I was just conning my wife so I could get a compressor to fill my tanks." He had been bitten by a bug -- the diving bug -- and if there's one thing a diver needed, it was compressed air. Once Richard had that, he was half way to having a dive store.

A compressor figures into the history of Hatt's Diving Headquarters in Melbourne, Florida, too. Store founder Jerry Hatt was a self-taught diver in 1952 (and still diving today) when he bought an air compressor from a military surplus store in Orlando to fill tanks for himself and his dive friends. At that time, Jerry's father owned a bait and tackle store, and Jerry soon took over a corner of that store filling tanks and eventually selling some dive equipment.

"As Dad got older," Jerry's son Mike said, "he got married and built another bait and tackle, marina and dive store in Melbourne that operated from 1960 to 1974 at which time the operation moved to a brand-new building, complete with dive pool." Mike can boast that he grew up in the business -- literally. He was brought home from the hospital as a newborn straight to the store -- since the store was on the first floor and the family lived upstairs. And now the fourth generation of Hatts -- Mike's 12-year-old son Joshua, one of his four children -- has developed an interest in the business.

Eugene Skin Divers Supply in Eugene, Oregon, is another store built around an air compressor. It first opened its doors in 1956 when Donald Hollingshead and a partner purchased the air compressor and some equipment from a store that was closing down, and moved it into the back of the partner's appliance store. In 1961, they moved out of the back room of the appliance store to the side of the building with its own storefront and a separate entrance. In 1965, Don bought out his partner and moved the store into its own building, and in 1968 they bought an old house and turned it into a store. That's where the store is now. It has been gutted and expanded to about three times its original size.

Don had learned to dive in the early 1950s from someone in the military. Until the mid-1960s, they trained people with their own course and issued paper certificates from "The Eugene School of Skin Diving." It was a hobby that grew into a business. Don kept a full-time job and taught at night, while his wife ran the store. It wasn't until the late '60s that the business could support the family. When Don passed away in 1991, his son Mike took over the business since he had grown up in the store. In fact, his first open-water dive occurred at age 6.

One early dive retailer got into the business strictly by accident. Diver Jim's in Belmont, Massachusetts, was originally a radio and television store with a different name. The original Diver Jim passed away in 1998, but his wife Pauline cites a Boston Globe newspaper article about the store's origin.

According to Diver Jim, two men entered his radio/TV store one day at closing time in 1953 saying they were interested in the store's location for a "scuba shop." At the time, Diver Jim had never heard the word scuba and said he didn't even know how to swim. As it turns out, the conversation piqued his interest, Diver Jim learned how to dive and then took some dive equipment on consignment, while continuing with his radio and television line. Today, Diver Jim's continues with Pauline carrying on her husband's tradition of service.

Finding dive gear was no easy task in the '40s, but after Word War II, stockpiles of military surplus equipment quickly found its way into the hands of intrepid underwater adventurers. From oxygen tanks to pressure regulators, face masks and compressors, an assortment of hardware was available that proved highly adaptable to the underwater environment.

Names like U.S. Divers, Healthways, Voit, Dacor, Sportsways and Swim Master dominated the scene, but not all of them would survive the changes to come. Swim Master was sold to Voit, and by 1962, Healthways was on the rocks, and soon went bust. Manufacturers saw that dive stores were the real backbone of the industry, and they were creating the demand for diving. Manufacturers wanted to give them the products they needed to compete in the market place, and that became a turning point for the industry.

-- Edward Reidel

Richard Stovall had started diving in 1954 -- just 11 years after Cousteau took his first breath -- and he built himself a rebreather. "I picked up an old military high-altitude breathing apparatus -- one of the ones they flew with in the B-17s -- and converted it for diving. I'd seen an article in Popular Mechanics that explained how to do it. The whole thing only cost me $65."

As the supply of military surplus dwindled, manufacturers began filling the void, and soon dive gear could be found in sporting goods stores around the country, and through a host of mail-order suppliers. A handful of manufacturers led the industry in the early days of dive retail.

Jim Steele's father, Howard Steele, had a golf shop in Oakland, California, that began selling dive gear around 1953. Jim recalls that as a youngster growing up in the dive business, "The mentality of the public was different in the early days. People looked at diving with their eyes wide with excitement. It was adventurous, and the underwater world was surrounded in myth. The gear was simple, but the training was thorough." Howell's Dive Shop in Redding, California, is one more dive center with an interesting beginning and a long history. In fact, when contacted by Dive Center Business to talk about the store's history, the call was mistaken for that of a salesman selling anniversary merchandise for the store's 50th anniversary. Rich Gregory has managed the store for half of its 50-year life -- he's been at the helm for 25 years.

Back in 1952, Howell's began as a paint store. Located in gold country, the store also sold mining equipment. Because people mined underwater, Howell's started selling scuba gear to miners, and that was the genesis of its scuba business. Today Howell's still houses a paint store, frame shop and art supplies, but dive equipment takes up about half of its 5,000 square feet.

As diving grew, so did the need to improve safety. In fact, the survival of the industry relied upon filling the need for standardized training and procedures. "In those days," says Richard Stovall, "if somebody could drag a tank in the door, you filled it. Period. That's just the way it was." But change was afoot, and soon diver certification programs were growing like barnacles on a wave-washed piling.

Richard was an eyewitness to how training developed in this country. "Because I had a store, I got involved with YMCA in 1960," he says. "And those old training programs were tough. Everything we knew, we learned from Navy frogmen, and the way we learned from them was the way we taught in those days."

Richard's longevity also shows that location may not be everything. Located in Midland, Texas, Stovall's Scuba & Travel isn't exactly in prime diving territory. "It's about the most adverse territory you can imagine," he says. "There's no clear water -- and by clear, I mean 6- to 8-foot visibility -- within 300 miles of here. For folks around here, diving is a destination activity, and dive shops who don't promote travel are missing the boat."

Dive retail had its pitfalls in the early 1950s, and it still does today. Although business has rebounded since 9/11, more change is assuredly on the way. That's why it's so important for retailers to be sensitive to the needs of their customers, and mindful of events and trends that affect both their desires and budgets.

When asked for the biggest problems facing the dive retail business today, Jim Steele responds, "Problems? You mean opportunities?" And without a doubt he's right, and it's always been that way. Part of the fun is tackling the problems, the challenges, and finding innovative solutions. If Cousteau and Gagnan hadn't looked at it that way, where would we be today?

It's clear that the stores who survived for 40 or 50 years have a strong foundation in customer service. These stores began in order to serve a small group of customers and have continued to make customer service their priority. It's the first thing they all mention when you ask how they've done it. For stores that have been in existence for half a century, the only way they could have survived, despite all the roadblocks of location, lack of products and lack of customers, is by growing their customer base.

That's as true today. Retail survival depends on attracting new customers and keeping the ones you have active in diving -- and the best way to do that is through continuing education and a variety of travel options: both local dives and longer trips. These early pioneering dive stores succeeded despite nearly every aspect of retail business success absent -- including customers.

It's interesting to hear it in their voices -- listening to history. When you think of what these retail pioneers overcame to grow and thrive, their longtime commitment to customers and service and turning people on to diving should inspire today's retailers to emulate their success.

Just a handful of early dive retailers are represented in this article. If your dive center has an intriguing history, tell us about it at dcb@dtmag.com and we may feature you in an upcoming issue.

In dive retail's sixth decade, we find ourselves again in challenging times. As those who helped forge the framework of this industry reflect on the early days of the business, some lessons emerge that are perhaps as important in these times as they were in decades past.
There are no secrets to success, and the basics stay the same. Typically, success involves hard work, attention to detail and the right attitude. Here people from some of the older dive stores share a particular part of their strategy that has given them the opportunity to serve divers for 50 or more years.
Howell's Dive Shop: From the very beginning the store has always kept its customers involved by diving in the local lakes and with trips to the ocean. One of its sales strategies is to buy brand-new gear for the rental department (wet suits, regulators and BCs), put it into service for six months to a year and then sell it when it is still in good condition. Rich Gregory said that having new gear in rental helps new gear sales, and after the store makes money on the rental gear, it can also make a good profit on the sale because of the equipment's good condition. Rich says this strategy has really helped the store's bottom line.
Diver Jim's: Diver Jim had an interesting philosophy about customers. He said, "The customer is always wrong." That goes against conventional wisdom, admits his wife, Pauline, but it worked for him. Diver Jim felt he knew better than his customers what they needed and how to fit a piece of equipment. She says, "He wouldn't sell a customer what they wanted; he'd sell you what you needed. He didn't want people to throw their money away." Diver Jim was almost obsessed with getting a perfect fit for his customers, and that's a tradition that Pauline continues today. "I don't care how long it takes. I don't care if it takes all day. We'll get the right fit. Our job is to help the customer," she says.
Eugene Skin Divers Supply: Mike credits the longevity of the business to the homey, friendly ambience of the business; a coffee pot going all the time and people dropping in to talk, and a sharp focus on service. "That's what Dad was adamant about -- lots of friends and good word of mouth became the foundation of our business," he says.
Stovall's Scuba & Travel: One component necessary for survival is flexibility. For example, in the early days, very few women were in the sport. Richard Stovall says, "When I started out, we had maybe 1 percent women. Now about 40-45 percent of my customers are female, and that's been a tremendous boon. We try to make it so our trips appeal to everyone from the 3-year-old daughter to a 93-year-old grandmother." As Richard says, it's important to give yourself time to take care of things in the rest of your life. If you start to feel burned out, it's time to take a step back, and do something to recharge your batteries.
Hatt's Diving Headquarters: Mike Hatt is the third generation of Hatts in the retail business. He says, "Our philosophy is the same as with any business: We are service-oriented. Everything we do -- from an introduction to dive course on through -- we do with one goal in mind, and that goal is to make the customer want to come back. Our goal is to make lifetime customers. Since we've been in business so long, we now have second- and third-generation customers from the same family. Melbourne has grown tremendously over the years, but we try to keep the same small-town attitude and treat people right."
Bill Jackson Inc.: This store has seven different departments, and one of them is for dive. "We have specialists in each one -- whether it's experienced divers, knowledgeable hunters or expert kayakers," says Bill Jackson, also known as Mr. J. "Having staff who are experts is absolutely necessary." Mr. J says his store is located a few blocks from a Wal-Mart, with a Sports Authority and Target nearby. "We are not going to compete with their low prices," he says. "We sell only high-quality products." Mr. J also said, "We know that every person who comes in the front door is important and we respect them as important. We do not hurry people or force them to make a decision to buy anything immediately. We give them the best possible information on what they want."

It's not just early dive stores that have had to stay flexible to survive. Diver's Depot in Nacogdoches is a good example of a dive store that has continued to evolve -- to thrive -- throughout its 25-year history.
Survival in the changing world of dive retail requires a constant assessment of the realities of the industry. Diver's Depot is a good model of success through flexibility. When E. K. and Sally Sowell started their business in Nacogdoches, Texas, in 1978, they started small and learned the ropes. "We were working out of our trunk and the garage," says E. K. "It took about four or five years to get us to the point where we felt confident enough to open Diver's Depot and commit ourselves full time."
The Sowells' philosophy from day one has been that the customer is always right. "Even when they're wrong!" says E.K. "We always put the customer first." But beyond that philosophy, the one thing that has kept them navigating around the pitfalls of the business world is their ability to change course.
"I firmly believe a dive store has to have a one-year, three-year and five-year plan," says E.K., "but you've got to be ready to redirect at any time. Our first redirection came in 1981 when we began teaching scuba programs at local colleges and universities. We now teach beginning, advanced and rescue diving, and that program has been ongoing for 22 years now."
The Sowells redirected again in 1984, when they decided to start training instructors. More changes came in 1991 when Diver's Depot began selling compressors and performing hydrostatic tests. That added another piece to the puzzle that has helped keep them at the leading edge of the dive retail business. But nobody could have predicted the changes that would come following the events of September 11, 2001. "The way we saw things, there was going to be zero travel, and that meant little or no training, and that translated to very few sales," says E.K., "so we changed course again and went right into crisis management mode. We started selling off the shelves, and drastically reduced our inventory while we waited to see what would happen."
Along with their wait-and-see attitude came a change in their dive travel strategy. "We tried to be sensitive to the needs of our customers," says E.K. "People didn't feel comfortable traveling far from home, so we shifted our focus to local diving, and began organizing weekend trips. But we didn't want to make them killer trips. We left at a civilized hour on Saturday morning, and got to the dive site early enough in the afternoon to make two to four dives. Then we'd dive again in the morning, and get back early enough to catch the Sunday evening news at home."
The Sowells had enough cushion to weather the stormy waters, and combined with their analysis of customer needs and a rapid course change, they survived one of the worst periods in dive retail history.