It’s Time for Spring Cleaning
 by Gene Muchanski, Editor
The Dive Industry Professional

I know that we are not even halfway through winter yet, but the spring season starts in March, and it will be here before you know it.  No surprise.  It happens at the same time every year, and yet, are we ever ready for it?  Just look at your last two months.  We finished up at DEMA, celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, and then exhibited at the Surf Expo in January.  At the same time, we were conducting our post show follow-ups from one show, conducting our pre-show campaign for another show, and trying to close out our books for the year.  If there are things you didn’t get done, don’t feel bad, you are not alone.  Today is a new day.  We all start off with a clean slate every morning.

It’s in our nature for Industry Planners to be 3-6 months ahead of schedule so our people will be ready to do what they do when the time comes.  I hope you can appreciate how complicated the process can get if you don’t have a slew of people working for you, and your job is to plan, execute, and follow-up on many of your company programs and campaigns.  If that is true in your case, there are a few things you can do to be more efficient, effective, and productive in your duties.

Understanding your local seasonal curve will help you keep track of busy times and down times.  Spending a little time planning your annual business activities before the season begins may prepare you better for opportunities that normally present themselves during your peak sales times.  For me, that’s why spring cleaning is so important to accomplish before spring arrives.  We don’t do our spring cleaning in the spring, we do it during our winter down-time to prepare for the spring. In that way, when Spring arrives, we will be ready for it.  I like to look at spring cleaning as the process of closing out the old year and beginning fresh with the new.   It’s time to tie up all your loose ends in the office, on the sales floor, and in the warehouse.  Spring cleaning is an all-hands event.  Your company can’t move into the new year while dealing with last year’s issues.  When you close out your files for last year, any unfished business goes to the top of list for new year issues.  This may seem like double-speak but when you go through the process of closing your files for the year, you may discover items you didn’t deal with last year or you put off for whatever reason.  I look at these files as The Lost Files of a Way-too Busy Company.  Spring cleaning recaptures those hidden files and puts them back on the front burner.

Now that you have a clean desk and a functioning office it’s time to move onto the sales floor.  Move everything out, room by room, and clean it from head to toe.  There is no better way to start the year off right than to dust, vacuum, and scrub your sales area.  It’s time to find all those little things that were lost and see what you still have.  With the sales floor clean, this is the best time to conduct your annual inventory.  You may want to categorize your inventory as sellable, donatable, or trash.  A good friend of mine that used to work for Sherwood once gave me some good advice about my inventory.  He said that if your merchandise is this year’s model, make sure it is clean, presentable, and displayed well.  If it’s 6 months old, put it on sale at a discount.  If it’s more than 12 months old, trade it in for a pocketknife but get rid of it.  So how many dive stores still have Go Sport or Fathom Wetsuits on their sales floor?  One Dealer I knew (not me) discovered that all the regulator boxes he had on display in his store were empty!  Maybe he should have done spring cleaning more often?

With a clean sales floor filled with this year’s inventory and displayed in an attractive manner, we are ready to tackle our warehouse or back storage space.  This may take a little time, but I guarantee the results will be worth the effort.  Over time, warehouses in the diving industry eventually become storage spaces, which in time become trash bins, which become rat traps and fire hazards.  Make it your new year’s resolution to tackle this area and make it a clean, functioning, working area again.  My advice is to clean and organize the things you need, want, and use, and either sell, donate, or pitch the things you don’t.  If anything is old, worn-out, or damaged, and not reflective of your current business image, get rid of it.

If you follow the three steps we just laid out, you should have a clean, presentable, and functioning environment.  But guess what?  That’s only half the battle.  In the business environment of the 21^st Century, our workspace has to be more than clean, presentable, and functionable.  It has to be professional, efficient, effective, and capable of handling an accelerated workload, in a timely manner.  The only way we can hope to accomplish that is to use modern business tools and technologies to get our work done and achieve our planned outcomes.  It goes without saying that Dive Industry Business Professionals need to be using current, state of the art tools to do their work.  An annual thorough spring cleaning and review will ensure that your business hardware and software are current and operating at peak efficiency.  Make sure your computer software is the latest vision (or close to it).  If you haven’t done it already, schedule a service call with the people who maintain and upgrade your computers.   We have a standing contract with Staples for our company computers.  We rotate our desktops and laptops every six months to reduce the chance of system failure catastrophes.

If your company uses special software such as Microsoft 365, Adobe Suite, or QuickBooks, for on-going projects, you may want to consider leasing these programs to ensure you are always using the latest software version.  You should reevaluate your need and usage of professional marketing programs like WordPress, Constant Contact, Flipsnack, and Square to make sure you are using them to your full advantage.  I realize that Dive Industry Business Professionals may do many of these things on a continual basis throughout the year, but it is still a good idea to schedule a review of the programs you use or subscribe to, on an annual basis.  In this way, nothing “falls through the cracks” from over-use or under-use.

Since we are now on a roll with a clean and functioning dive business using peak performing hardware and software, let’s do a deep dive on your Scuba Instructional Staff, their uniforms, and the dive equipment they use.  On second thought, let’s not go there now.  Maybe The Dive Industry Professional can address that topic at a later date.  What do you think?

This is an exciting time to become part of the Global Diving Business Network.  For more information about strategic marketing, contact Gene Muchanski, Executive Director of the Dive Industry Association, 2294 Botanica Circle, West Melbourne, FL 32904.  Phone: 321-914-3778.  Email: gene@diveindustry.net  Web: www.diveindustry.net

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