Dive Industry Association, Inc.

The Seasonality of Diving
by Gene Muchanski
Editor, The Dive Industry Professional

The seasonality of an industry is mainly determined by the customer (The Buyers).  We Industry Professionals (The Sellers) take our recreation’s seasonality curve into consideration when planning our inventory purchases, training schedules, activities calendar, our marketing and advertising expenditures and even our personnel vacations.  The variables that go into determining your “Season” are Time of Year, Holidays, School Schedules, Work Schedules, Weather, the Traditional Four Seasons and of course, Tourism Capacity, Prices, Occupancy Rates and Availability. Depending on your location and the type of diving you represent, your “Season” may vary from others in the industry.   The greatest variable factor in the seasonality mix is the weather.  We cannot control the weather but we can prepare for it and make any necessary contingency plans when it affects us negatively.

The basic season for the average recreational diver, with children, is from Memorial Day through Labor Day.  In the United States, that’s May 31 – September 4th.  Kids are out of school and the family plans its vacation accordingly. This standard season affects parents with school aged children and Teachers.  An important demographic in the diving industry may be Grandparents and Great-Grandparents with school aged children too.  Check with your customer base and see if this season applies to them.

The changing weather patterns in the traditional Four Seasons (Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall) has dictated the type of diving and the location for the average recreational diver.  If it’s too cold in Chicago in January, then maybe a diving vacation in the Caribbean is a tempting alternative.  But bad weather can easily be combated by properly outfitting your local divers and thereby extending the diving season or creating a “new season.”  I remember looking forward to December diving in Southern California.  The water was usually very calm and very clear.  I’ve seen many 100+ ft visibility days on my December Catalina Dives off of Ship’s Rock.  You just had to prepare for the weather.

Dealing with different seasonality curves can be interesting, challenging, or FUN.  It all depends on you and your imagination.   Heck, in Florida we have Four Season too. Love Bug Season, Tourist Season, Hurricane Season and Summer!  You can either fight it or make it work for you.  Your choice.

Well, I have to go and make plans for my new season – Dive Season.  We just finished Trade Show Season in April and Hurricane Season and Planning Season are next in line.  Might as well go diving.

See you in Long Beach.

It Takes The Whole Community
by Gene Muchanski
Editor, The Dive Industry Professional

I’ve had three months of exhibiting at dive shows this year and am getting ready to head off to Tacoma in two two weeks for the Scuba & Watersports Expo.  Working non-stop with Show Producers, Exhibitors, Speakers and Attendees for the past twelve months was not only exhausting, but very educational and enlightening.  One thing I can say for certain;  Divers are very passionate about their recreation and their profession.  Exhibitors want to meet as many attendees as they can during the entire length of the show.  I don’t care if it’s one, two or three days long.  They want high quality – high volume traffic.  Preferably traffic that spends money on diving.  Attendees want to see new dive gear, new training courses, exciting adventure dive travels, and a multitude of diving related goods and services.  And that includes non-profit, environmental  programs and events.

We know the pieces, or components, of a dive show.  They are the Venue, Show Management & Staff, Volunteers, Exhibitors, Speakers, Sponsors, Local Promoters and Attendees.  The most important of these is, of course, the Attendees.  They are the “WHY” we are having a show to begin with.

What I have come to realize in the past year of attending trade and consumer dive and travel shows is that I look at shows as having three overall components;  National Industry Professionals, Local Industry Professionals and Local Divers (and people who want to be divers).  To have a successful dive show, you need all three components to actively participate or you don’t have a show.

The National Industry Professionals are the Dive Equipment Manufacturers, Training Agencies, Travel Companies, Non-Profits, and Services Companies.  They usually make up the Exhibitors, Sponsors and Speakers.  Without their involvement, the show is not going to happen.  Notice I did not use the word, “Support”.  Let’s stop asking dive companies to “support” us.  They make money selling stuff to us.  We want their involvement.  It’s good for them, it’s good for us and it’s good for the local diving community.

The Local Industry Professionals have the most to gain from their local diving show, hopefully their largest annual event.  They are the Local Dive Stores, Dive Boats, Dive Clubs and Dive Instructors.  They are the local professionals who make a living from diving, albeit part-time or full-time.  They may also be a very large part of the third component, the Local Diver.  Show Producers conduct these dive shows to benefit the Local Industry Professionals and to give them an opportunity to share they local diving community with the rest of the world.  The shows need their involvement to promote the show and communicate it with the entire local diving community.  I would think twice about doing a show in an area that didn’t have the involvement of its Local Industry Professionals.

(There is one group that belongs to both the National and Local Industry Professionals, that I have chosen not to talk about now.  They are the Seminar Speakers.  These Industry Professionals are our Story Tellers.  They are people we put on a pedestal and have well deservedly given awards, medals and recognition to.  They are a large group that plays a big part in the past, present and future of dive shows.  Let’s address that issue in another article at another time.)

Local Divers are the lucky individuals who still think of scuba diving as a hobby or as their main recreation.  I envy them so much.  Have you forgotten what it was like when diving was your Hobby?  You talked about it all the time.  You introduced your friends to it.  You went diving every weekend.  You had FUN.   The success or failure of a local dive show is in the hands of the Local Divers and people who want to become divers.  Having a great show keeps Divers active in the recreation and bringing in new Divers helps the industry grow.  Your local dive show should be the great annual diving revival.  It should be fun and the social event of the year.  Maybe we should make diving a Hobby again?  Or at least our family’s favorite recreation again.

If you have read this far, you know that our industry faces big changes next year.  As the number of Divers gets smaller and smaller, the number of marketing options to promote our businesses and industry continues to grow.  There is only so much money in the pot for face-to-face marketing.  We all face some hard choices next year.  Some of our dive shows on “the circuit” are growing and getting more successful;  some are getting old & stale and shrinking;  some are dying on the vine as we speak; or some are going through changes that may end in closure.  In the mean time, the Travel & Adventure Show just added their 9th show (Boston), the Outdoor Show is growing in numbers and popularity and a small dive show with a new owner just opened his second location.  At Beneath the Sea last month countless Members and Exhibitors bent my ear talking about their future options for advertising and promotion.  Many of them ask for stats on all the dive shows going back 18 years.  They want to see past performances and possible future trends.  If you look at some of my charts, your future marketing choices may be obvious.  I don’t have a crystal ball, but I do have one recommendation:

My recommendation is to get involved with the local diving community that is working together to make their show the one we all want to be a part of.

Let’s talk in Tacoma.

The Industry Awakens in March
by Gene Muchanski
Editor, The Dive Industry Professional

March is here and Scuba Divers are thinking about diving again.  For many of us in the United States, it has been a long, cold, hard winter.  In fact, some of you are still dealing with the cold, the rain and the snow.  That’s OK.  It’s sunny and warm somewhere.  Spring Breakers will appreciate that.  So will our traveling diving friends.

The Industry Planners have been getting ready for the 2018 season during January and February and are in the middle of their pre-season marketing push for the month of March.  We saw surprisingly good turn-outs at the January Dallas Show and February’s Our World Underwater.  We haven’t got a report from the Boston Sea Rovers yet and the industry is getting ready to invade Secaucus, New Jersey for Beneath the Sea.  Shortly after BTS, we’ll all be in Tacoma for the Scuba & H2O Adventure Show.  Then it’s DIVE, DIVE, DIVE until Scuba Show in June.

Managing the Tacoma Show has really made me think a lot about the power of proper planning, targeted communication, community involvement and follow-up.  Putting on a successful show or running a successful company takes the same skills and attention to details.  You have to plan well and implement your plans in a timely manner.  You have to communicate your plans to everyone involved in the project/company.  One central person has to get everyone on-board and keep them in the loop.  Too many things can fall through the cracks if you don’t.  And the last thing is proper and continuous follow-up.  Sending out a message is only one part of the process.  Did your attended audience receive it?  Did they read it and understand it?  Did your “Call to Action” make them commit to your offer?  Are you all ready to go on Day 1?

If you are an experienced planner you know that success can only happen if you perform the proper inputs and nurture the process until it produces the desired outcome.  Plant the seed – water the field – harvest the crop.    Business is no different.  Neither is an Industry.  The recreational diving industry is only going to improve if we continue to run our businesses professionally, proficiently, productively and profitably.  The New 4 P’s of Marketing.  The Business of Diving makes the Hobby of Diving possible.  

That idea brings us to a great realization.  Dive Industry Professionals should do what they enjoy doing and are good at.  Do you enjoy teaching more than anything?  Did you get in the business so you could go diving more often? Do you like to tinker with equipment and fix things?  Think about what you really like to do and figure out a way that you can specialize in that.  All of the other stuff can be delegated or sourced out.  The thing is that as Dive Industry Professionals, we need to do the things we like to do and are good at and hire people to do the things we don’t know how to do or don’t like to do.  If you spend all of your time doing everything that has to be done, you’ll never have the time or the money to do the things you want to do. “I do the things I have to do, when I have to do them.  That allows me to do the things I want to do, when I want to do them.”

I hope to see you at Beneath the Sea.  I’ll be at Booth 412 if you want to talk to someone who loves to do Sales & Marketing, and is good at it!  Safe Travels.

It’s February Already – Whaaaaatttt?
by Gene Muchanski
Editor, The Dive Industry Professional

Holy Smokes!  It’s February. How did that happen so quickly?  I was prepared. I was ready. I made my plans and executed them in a timely manner.  But still, the month of January zoomed by.

How was it for you?  Did you do your business planning during the Holidays and hit the ground running in January?  We did and had a great month because of it.  We’re up 35% over this time last year.  And it’s not just us.  All of the dive show organizers were delighted with their attendance in January; Boot, Baltimore Dive Show, Lone Star State Dive & Travel, and two Adventure Travel Shows.  We are getting ready for Our World-Underwater in Chicago, followed by BTS and then the Scuba & H2O Adventure Show in Tacoma. And we have plans to do more diving and resort site visits.  It’s time to get some new pictures, videos, and stories about our diving businesses so we can take their story to the public.  This is going to be the year of the “BIG Dive Promotion.”  Divers will have more money to spend on equipment, training and travel this year and we owe it to them to help them spend their money wisely.

I don’t have a crystal ball or anything like that but after working in the Business of Diving for over 45 years, I do have a strong “gut” feeling.  Especially about this year.  Diving businesses are going to be listening to Dive Industry Mavens (Knowledgeable & Experienced Opinion Leaders) more seriously this year.  Mavens who have years of hands-on experience combined with a strong background in diving products, diving company history, marketing techniques, consumer behavior and countless hours of water time.  Successful businesses will want to know who will be buying this year, what they will be buying and why they are buying.  Companies that want to succeed will need to know the best ways to be in front of consumers when they are ready to make a buying decision.  This year will not be a time for rookies.  Only Mavens need apply.

Here are a few things we need to know to help businesses that want to succeed;  Product Knowledge.  What’s HOT, What’s NOT.  What’s NOW, What’s NEW, What’s NEXT.  Customer Knowledge.  Wholesalers need to know who the better Retailers are.  We don’t need many.  We only need good ones. Retailers need to focus on Active Divers – Current Customers, Former Customers & Future Customers.  Again, we don’t need many, just good ones.  Marketing Knowledge.  We have to have a message that resonates with our Divers and we have to reach them the way they liked to be reached, not the ways we like.  So is that all we need to do?  We just have to become Mavens at three things.  What we sell – Who we sell it to – How we reach our customers.  Easy?  No.  Manageable?  Yes.

Throughout the year, we will be discussing these three segments of Marketing Success; Product Management; Customer Acquision, Maintenance, & Retention; and Marketing Strategy.  Each topic opens up a whole new field of study, but we can organize it and break it down into easy-to-understand topics.  I’m looking forward to speaking with our industry leaders this year to learn and share some of our industry best practices in marketing.

Stay in touch.  Have a great season.  We’ll see you in Chicago.