DIVE LOCAL

Shows & Events Are Important
 by Gene Muchanski, Editor
The Dive Industry Professional

Building a Global Diving Community takes a lot of strategic thinking, organized planning, business knowledge, and a love for diving.  Putting a plan together that organizes the recreational diving industry takes a fair amount of insight into consumer behavior and an understanding of how goods and services in our supply and demand chains flow from conception to consumption.   That is what Dive Industry Planners are for.  We focus on the best ways to grow the recreational diving industry for the sake of the Global Diving Community.  Diving is fun.  For most it is a recreation.  Pure and simple.  Of course, for many others across the globe it could be an experience, a hobby, a profession, or even a working tool that is used in the collateral duties of another profession.  We realize that scuba diving and other aspects of diving are used in the military, public safety, law enforcement, educational institutions, marine sciences, and the health professions, to name just a few.   Our job as industry planners is not to split hairs on what defines a diver but to make sure that our Global Diving Business Network is run professionally and ethically to ensures that our recreation is safe and enjoyable for the millions of people who participate in diving and diving related activities.  While we cannot be everything to everybody that participates in diving, we should strive to address the specific needs and wants of the millions of divers in the world to the best of our ability.

To help maintain and grow the recreational diving industry, our message to the general public is:

• • • • • Learn to Dive
        • Buy Your Gear
        • Go Diving
        • Stay Active

Attending diving and diving related shows and events is an exceptional way for divers to stay active in our recreation.  There is nothing better than a world-class, face-to-face event where attendees can participate in seminars and workshops, see the latest diving equipment and technology, get updated on dive training techniques, learn about diving in new exotic dive destinations, meet Dive Industry Leaders, and socialize with peers and colleagues.   The recreational diving industry has been conducting trade and consumer dive shows for over 60 years.  As an industry planner and dive historian who specializes in shows & events, I have access to at least 50 years’ worth of materials, brochures, and data from some of the most popular dive, surf, travel, and outdoor shows.  I have seen and experienced numerous trade and consumer shows that start, grow, succeed, and fail.

Trade, Consumer, or Hybrid Shows & Events:  In the recreational diving industry we have trade shows, consumer shows, and professional development conferences.  Trade shows are designed to bring buyers and sellers together.  The attendees are wholesale buyers, group buyers, and decision makers in the trade and are there to purchase programs, products, and services at wholesale prices from their vendors, to resell at the retail level.  Consumer dive shows and trade shows are created to inform, educate, entertain, or sell to end users of diving programs, products, and services.  Professional Development Conferences are for anyone in the industry who is interested in continuing education for a recreation, hobby, or profession.  Hybrid shows in the diving industry attract wholesale and retail exhibitors who are looking to do business with wholesale, retail, or final consumer attendees.  To quote Rhonda Abrams, author of Trade Show in a Day. “At a trade show or expo, the primary action takes place on the exhibit hall floor.  Attendees are there to visit booths, and all non-exhibit activities are secondary.  At a conference, the opposite is true.  Attendees are there to go to seminars and educational sessions, visiting the exhibition hall only during breaks in their daily schedules.” 

The Dive Industry Association realizes how important Shows & Events are to the Dive Industry Professionals.  We maintain a Shows & Events page on our website.  In our Weekly News press release service to have a Shows & Events Countdown column.  We also publish a Shows & Events section in our monthly trade magazine, The Dive Industry Professional, and in our Industry Trade Directory that is updated monthly.  Our website, marketing, and social media analytics show us that our Shows & Events columns are the most popular features in all of our publications.

Trade and Consumer Show Components:  The major components of shows and events are exhibitors, presenters, sponsors, advertisers, and attendees.  That is not counting the venue staff and the show management and staff.  Putting a trade show or event together takes a team or teams of people to pull it off.  The composition of the show staff normally includes a major organizer, their paid staff for key roles, and an all-important volunteer staff.  We could write a book on the various show staffs we have known in the past 40 years.  Some good and some great.  When you have a few years and more than a few shows behind you, you get to know many of the trade show venues in the country.    It is best to make yourself knowledgeable about dealing with the shipping and receiving people, setup contractors, labor unions, furniture and fixture suppliers, local security, and venue services personnel.  A good source of information about suitable venues across the country is Smart Meetings, published by Bright Business Media, LLC.  Subscriptions are available at www.smartmeetings.com   

Exhibit Hall Layouts:  The are three common floor plan layouts for exhibit halls.  A Trade Show floor plan layout is normally designed for wholesale and group order writing at the show.  Exhibitor booths are designed to accommodate a limited number of products on display, adjacent to tables and chairs for small groups of buyers and their company salespeople.  Apparel companies typically have a small stage or runway for live models and a back wall with displayed products for order.  Vendors who have these types of booths prefer to schedule appointments with their dealers before or during the show but sometimes can accommodate walk-in buyers.  Exhibiting vendors at the Surf Expos in Orlando utilize this type of buyer / seller format and are very successful in writing orders at the show.  Having a booth setup for sales actually reduces the number of booths that are required for a successful order writing show.  Learn more about Surf Expo Exhibitors by going to www.SurfExpo.com

A common exhibit hall floor plan design in the diving industry is what I like to call a Show & Tell type of booth layout.  Because we are dealing with Dive Industry Trade Professionals (Qualified Retail Buyers) as well as Dive Industry Educational Professionals (Opinion Leaders) at dive trade shows, our exhibitors usually take out more exhibit booths to show their entire line of products.  We have seen over the years that the majority of booth man-hours is centered around talking about the features and benefits of products and answering questions from attendees.  Hence, Show & Tell instead of order writing.

Exhibitors:  Exhibitors are an important part of the trade and consumer show makeup.  Albeit they are not always the most important part.   As a general rule of thumb, the revenue received from the sale of exhibit booths pay for the venue.  At Film Shows, Educational Shows, and Professional Development Conferences, exhibitors contribute to the payment of the venue and help to reduce the price that show management charge the attendees for admission.  Learn more about being an exhibitor by subscribing to Exhibitor Magazine at www.ExhibitorOnline.com

Sponsors & Advertisers:  Sponsors and advertisers can play a significant role at shows and events.  At Professional Business Conferences, major exhibitors often spend great sums of money as show sponsors in order to gain access to seminar attendees.  With major show sponsors like Microsoft, Adobe, Meta, Google, Intuit, and Palo Alto software, show management can reduce the size of the exhibit hall and still be able to significantly reduce the price of admission for attendees.  Sponsorship opportunities can include advertising in print, digital, and in-person formats.  It can include a plethora of marketing and promotion opportunities in addition to valuable access to exhibitors, speakers, and attendees.

Speakers:  Do attendees come to dive shows because of the exhibitors or the speakers?  I think both, but if you have a wide range of exhibitors, speakers, seminars, workshops, and social activities, I think you can just about cover all bases.  And a good show should do just that.  I have been to many seminars at countless dive shows.  I have been delighted and dismayed by many.  I am sure that many of us have suffered Death by Slide Show and Death by PowerPoint at one time or another.  And most likely we may suffer Death by Zoom Meetings in the near future.  With all that said, speakers are precious.  They are our storytellers.  They bring their world to us, and we live vicariously through their adventures and explorations.  It’s tough to be a speaker because you constantly have to come up with new material.  Of course, to get new material, a speaker has to invest in recording equipment and pay for all that adventure travel.  I don’t know for sure, but I would imagine that Shows & Events Speakers have to pay their own way to the shows, along with their airfare, hotel, and food.  That all has to change.

The industry needs story tellers.  I recommend we all put our industry money where our mouth is.  Let’s stop giving titles like Ambassador and Sea Hero to our explorers and adventurers if we are not willing to pay for their travel, equipment, and efforts to represent our companies and our industry.  If you want a ambassador or spokesperson to represent your company to the public or you want to acknowledge an environmental leader, then prove it financially.  I know that a number of equipment companies in the surfing industry are getting away from contracting with sponsored athletes, but maybe the diving equipment manufacturers can pick up where they left off?  Hey, let’s be better than the Surfing Industry.

If our industry wants to increase its ranks of story tellers, we will need to give speakers more opportunities to make presentations.  The decline of regional consumer dive shows in the past few years has taken away many speaking platforms for our story tellers.  Until the regional shows make a come-back, I believe we need to think about creating digital platforms for speakers.  Maybe Industry Planners can resurrect Dive Clubs and recreate their role in the Global Diving Community?  Just a thought.

Attendees:  The majority of Dive Industry Professionals believe that the best Shows & Events are put together for the Attendees.   Take it from someone who has exhibited or attended hundreds of dive, surf, boat, travel, outdoor, and business shows & events over a fifty year period.  Being a show person for so many years, you get an opportunity to speak with tens of thousands of Divers and Dive Industry Professionals.  Over time, you get to see what works and what does not.  When show producers put their prospective attendees first, the show gets built around the things that attract divers.  A well-designed show picks a popular venue, schedules interesting speakers, contracts with industry-driven workshops, works to fill the exhibit hall with a wide selection of dive equipment, training, travel, non-profit, and lifestyle vendors, sponsors social events for the local diving community, and maybe even highlights the weekend with a Film Festival that features a well-known industry icon and a few local artists.  A well-planned event like that is meant to attract a large number of attendees.

The Future for Diving Shows & Events:  Based on what we have learned in the past 60 years from attending and exhibiting at diving and diving related shows and events, I honestly believe that our industry should continue to invest in diving trade and consumer shows.  As an industry, we have the collective experience and resources to create meaningful meetings and events that fulfill the needs of the Global Diving Community and the Global Diving Business Network.  We know the components that go into creating a trade or consumer focused event.  We have access to the marketing tools and technologies that we need to design, create, and conduct meetings, shows, and events that help us achieve our planned outcomes.  Our biggest challenge in creating future shows and events will be in defining the major focus of the event and what our planned outcomes should be.  Once a major focus and planned outcome agenda has been established by the show producer, it is much easier to put the necessary components together to make it happen.

This is an exciting time to become part of the Global Diving Business Network.  For more information about Shows & Events 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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DIVE LOCAL – A Dive Industry Community Effort
Problem Solving in the Diving Industry
By Gene Muchanski, Executive Director,
Dive Industry Association, Inc.

CHAPTER 11 – Taking Action

Taking action to solve problems might seem like the toughest thing to do, but quite honestly, it can be the most rewarding experience one can imagine.  Now that we have identified a problem, considered more appropriate outcomes, identified possible solutions, and chosen the best course of action to follow, starting to work on the problem is the next logical thing to do.  It’s not that working on a problem is daunting, it’s taking that first step which is the hardest thing to do.  Maybe it’s because you never worked on that particular problem before or maybe it’s just fear of the unknown.  Whatever it is will be forgotten the minute you roll up your sleeves and start.

Taking action requires you to plan out your strategy before you begin, just like you had to plan out your strategy to get to this point.  Maybe that’s why so many industry problems go unresolved after problem solving sessions and regional summit meetings.  Maybe the group doesn’t realize how much time, money, or manpower it is going to take to solve the problem at hand.  Unless you assign responsibility for the project, maybe the members will think that someone else is going to do all the work.  The biggest roadblock to solving industry problems that I have seen in the past is that people without a vested interest in a changed outcome will usually do nothing to make it happen.  They will complain about it of course, but if they have nothing to gain or lose in the problem correction, they will just sit on the sidelines and wait for the next industry bitch session to voice their opinion, worthless as it may be.

Once a group has decided to take action on an industry problem, it behooves them to set up a committee of volunteers to work on the project.  Everyone with a desire to work on the project should be allowed to use their time and talents as needed by the group.  One person and maybe one alternate should be assigned as the group leader, to organize the project and keep it on schedule.  As with any project, there should be a start date and an estimated completion date.  There should be regular milestone points that signify work completion or success levels.  If the project appears to be showing no or low signs of success or progress, there should be someone that notices it and reconvenes additional meetings or communications.  The biggest thing about a project is that the group needs to keep their eye on the ball and not let things fall through the cracks.   I always say that the things you pay attention to will grow.

Solving industry problems on a regional level brings dive communities together.  It gives their Regional Diving Community purpose and a reason to meet and work together.  If dive industry professionals and certified divers can work together to solve problems, challenges, and roadblocks to having a successfully active local diving community, could you imagine the possibilities to what this community can accomplish?  First of all, it would unite the local diving community because different groups could work on different problems throughout the year and come together on an annual or semi-annual basis to review their progress.  As we will talk about in the final chapter of this series, working on regional industry problems can lead to working on future activities that help the regional diving community to grow and prosper.

For more information contact Gene Muchanski, Executive Director, Dive Industry Association, Inc., 2294 Botanica Circle, West Melbourne, FL.  Phone 321-914-3778. Email: gene@diveindustry.net  web: www.diveindustry.net

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DIVE LOCAL – A Dive Industry Community Effort
Problem Solving in the Diving Industry
By Gene Muchanski, Executive Director,
Dive Industry Foundation

CHAPTER 10 – Potential Solutions to Industry Problems

During three Regional Summit Meetings in Dallas, Chicago, and Secaucus, 15 speakers and 83 attendees discussed local, regional, and national problems that were troubling our industry.  I use the word “problems” but would like to acknowledge the words challenges, obstacles, and roadblocks.  For me they all describe things that are not right with a situation which can be identified, dealt with, and corrected.  For the sake of simplicity in this article, let’s use the word “problems” as a catch-all term.  The original agendas of the summit meetings were set up to define the problems, brainstorm possible solutions, and create actionable items based on the best possible solutions.  I believe we missed one important step in the process.  After we identify a problem, we need to know how to reverse the problem to a more acceptable outcome before we can offer possible solutions to solve that problem.  As an example, suppose someone said that scuba classes were too expensive.  Before we can brainstorm possible solutions, I think we need to define what a more acceptable outcome for expensive scuba classes would be.  Maybe we should be thinking about how to correctly price our classes? Now we have a better idea of the problem we are trying to solve. Sometimes we don’t get the right answers because we are asking the wrong questions.

Problem solving is a challenging concept to perform correctly, especially in a mixed audience.  Remembering that we all see problems according to our own situation and perspective.  Therefore, it is quite understandable that industry problems can be regional, seasonal, generational, and unique to a specific stakeholder group.  It may behoove us to first discuss general problems that pertain to all or most of us, then move on to specific and more uniquely individual problems.  The same thing applies to recommending possible solutions.  Some solutions may be general in nature and apply to a number of problems whereas some solutions focus on a specific problem.  To keep our problem solving on track, here is a recommended sequence to finding workable solutions.

1. Identify problems.
2. Suggest alternate outcomes.
3. Brainstorm possible solutions.
4. Choose the best possible solution.
5. Create actionable items to solve problems.
6. Assign responsibility to oversee actionable item implementation.
7. Report and follow-up.

Potential Solutions for Diving:  As a trade association, our perspective of the diving community ranges from a global perspective down to the local diving community level.   We look at possible solutions to problems that affect the diving industry on a global, national, regional, and local level.  Our solution recommendations are fine tuned to address the needs of individual stakeholder groups.   When we look at problems and solutions for a healthier diving community, we use four priorities as a basis for our recommendations.  This is our message to the diving public and prospective divers.

1. Learn to dive.
2. Purchase your equipment.
3. Go diving.
4. Stay active in scuba diving.

From a global perspective, creating solutions for the underperformance of these four guideline steps increases the number of people getting certified, increases the sale of diving equipment, increases diving activity on a local and international level, and keeps divers active in the recreation.  When we discover problems, challenges, roadblocks, and bottlenecks in the four priorities, it’s easier to think of possible solutions to get them back on track.  Improvements in these four priorities help the Global Diving Community expand.  This community is all about divers and what they do.  To have a vibrant diving community, people need to learn to dive, purchase their gear, go diving and stay active.  How we go about that is the business side of diving. Let me explain.

Potential Solutions for Business:  Hypothetically, let’s think of the Global Diving Business Network as a single business.  We will call them Global Diving Business Network, Inc.  The business they are in is the recreational scuba diving business.  The products and services they sell are scuba and scuba related training, diving and diving related equipment, and travel services like local diving trips and adventure travel trips on liveaboards and at resort destinations.  When we look at the entire global network of dive businesses as one company, we see a common fault with many other dive businesses.  They are focusing too much time and energy on the diving aspect of their business (what they do) and not enough time and energy on the business aspects (how they do it).  Consequently, we see their certifications, sales, travel, and activities declining as they take the focus off of running their business.   If we lecture our diving businesses to spend half of their time running their business and half of their time doing what the business does, why would our advice to the diving industry be any different?

So, what kind of issues or problems would the business side of our industry have?  Since the Global Diving Business Network is a collaboration of many businesses, its problems are probably very similar individual businesses.   Let’s create a priority list of issues that pertain to a collection of businesses.

1. Collective industry vision and growth plan.
2. Industry fragmentation issues.
3. Channel friction between stakeholder groups.
4. Differences in channels of distribution.
5. Career advancement opportunities.
6. Co-op Marketing Campaigns.
7. Industry Data Collection.
8. Industry Advisory Panel.
9. Trade and Consumer Shows & Events.
10. Market Development.
11. Professional Development Programs.
12. Business Development Programs.

When we look at the distinction between diving related problems and business-related problems, we have a clearer picture of the problems, alternate outcomes, possible solutions, and actionable items that can correct, change, or modify the current state of the industry.  We see the similarity between a diving business and a diving industry.  Both have to split their attention between running their business and doing what their business does.  If the balance is not correct, both sides of the business will fail.  That’s how businesses fail and that’s how industries fail.

So how do we find out what the problems and solutions of the industry are?  Where do we find the people who will create actionable items that we can work on to solve the problems of the industry?  Let me put out a few suggestions.

1. Industry Surveys – by stakeholder groups.
2. Zoom meetings with regional and stakeholder volunteers.
3. Industry Advisor Meetings.
4. Round table discussions at Dive Shows & Events.
5. Regional Summit Meetings. (Digital and in-person).

For more information contact Gene Muchanski, Executive Director, Dive Industry Association, Inc., 2294 Botanica Circle, West Melbourne, FL.  Phone 321-914-3778. Email: gene@diveindustry.net  web: www.diveindustry.net

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DIVE LOCAL – A Community Effort
Regional Problems and Challenges
By Gene Muchanski, Executive Director,
Dive Industry Foundation

CHAPTER 9 – Regional Problems and Challenges

Every Local Diving Community has their own unique strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.  The people who know them best are the Local Dive Industry Professionals.  They deal with their industry on a local basis, day in and day out.  It’s not up to a know-it-all company, association, or organization to tell them what their problems are.  Nor is it their place to offer potential solutions to their problems based on their own limited knowledge of the industry sectors they are dealing with.

Dive Industry Planners and Business Consultants have learned a lot about the recreational diving industry in the past fifty years.  We have learned that the global diving community can be broken down into National, Regional, and Local Diving Communities.  Each community has its own unique strengths and weaknesses.  Each community has its own demographic makeup of different types of diving businesses.  Each community has its own geographical and environmental plusses and minuses.  Therefore, it seems logical that each local diving community has its own challenges and opportunities.

The DIVE LOCAL Group has taken a new approach to helping Local Diving Communities grow and prosper.  First of all, with the help of the Dive Industry Foundation, a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization, we conduct surveys of various dive industry stakeholder groups to determine what is important to them in running their own businesses.  We ask all the groups we work with what their five biggest challenges are in doing business as a diving or diving related company.  We believe that different stakeholder groups have different agendas and different ways of doing business.  It is important for us to know what is working for them right now, and what isn’t.

The second thing we do, as described in other articles we have written, is that we ask the Local Diving Community Dive Professionals what is working for them and what their major obstacles and roadblocks to success are.  Sometimes, the problems become so clear, it’s a wonder that no one has seen it before.  When it comes to buyer–seller relations, it could be as simple as a lack of communication or more seriously, a conflict of company agendas.  We usually discover these differences when we conduct Regional Summit Meetings to discuss Local Diving Community challenges and opportunities.

The third thing our Foundation is publicly addressing is behaviors that are bottle-necks in our own industry.  Call them political, call them predatory business practices, call them short-sighted ways of doing business, but let’s talk about them so that we can put a stop to ways of doing business that slows growth and limits industry productiveness.  These negative business practices that we have in the diving industry may or may not be unique to our own industry, but they are negative business practices that we have self-imposed on our industry.

The last thing we are starting to do, which hasn’t been done enough, is bring in outside-the-industry experts on problems and challenges that are caused by circumstances beyond the industry’s control.  In the past four years our industry has been dealing with environmental challenges, economic uncertainty, transportation challenges, increased political regulation, and pandemic restrictions and mandates.  And yet, our industry has done little or nothing to address these issues or deal with them in a constructive manner.

Let’s now discuss a few of our industry problems, challenges, setbacks, and roadblocks that our industry is dealing with.  Our next article, Chapter 10, will cover potential solutions to these problems, that were suggested at our last three Regional Summit Meetings.  But for now, let’s look at some of the diving industry’s problems, challenges, setbacks, bottlenecks, and roadblocks.

Having worked in the diving industry for over fifty years now, serving in different stakeholder groups, I feel very qualified to speak on problems in our industry that have caused bottlenecks to growth for Dive Industry Professionals.  I have seen way too much channel friction, caused by conflicting agendas of the various stakeholder groups.  It is obvious that dive equipment companies, certification agencies, travel resort destinations, dive operators, retail stores, independent scuba instructors, university scuba instructors, and dive clubs all have different reasons for being in the dive business, different business models to operate under, and different political and business agendas, but that is no reason to not get along with all the various stakeholder groups, and try to understand their problems from their perspective.

A second major concern of mine is the lack of promotion that suppliers of equipment, training, and travel give their customers, the industry’s resellers.  When the recreational diving industry first went mainstream, dive equipment manufacturers, training agencies and travel businesses published directories of their customers (the wholesalers) so that the consuming public would know where to buy dive equipment, training, and travel products.  They got out of the practice because I think they were afraid of losing their customers to their competition. While that may be true to some extent, a company only loses their customers if they don’t create loyalty by building good business relationships.  It doesn’t make sense for a buyer to pay to do business with a supplier, only to have their business kept secret so that the supplier doesn’t lose them as a customer.  Think about that for a second.  With today’s internet, it seems that every supplier has some type of Dealer Locator.  Some are good – many are not.  Some have full contact information, but many have selected contact fields missing, like zip code or email address.  Maybe there should be an industry standard?

In the past surveys we conducted, we asked Retail Dive Store Professionals and Manufacturing Sales Reps to share with us their five most important needs.   The Sales Reps were mainly concerned about marketing communications, professional benefits such as health insurance, auto and travel related discounts, retirement, and better Rep benefits from their employers.  All of these needs could be dealt with in a collective bargaining meeting if the Sales Reps ever decided to work together as a group instead of individually.  The Retailers, on the other hand, identified their major problems as lack of students, customers, sales, and store traffic.  Many comments were about the lack of industry support from manufacturers and training agencies, a proliferation of independent instructors, and the increase in internet sales.  There were a number of comments about the lack of industry press releases and national advertising campaigns.  There were a few comments about the lack of sales training but none about the lack of advertising and marketing business tools.

When we conducted problem solving sessions at our Regional Summit Meetings, the focus on current industry problems, roadblocks and setbacks was very encouraging.  Our groups discussed the aging population of divers and potential divers and yet millennials in the groups said they were not given respect or encouraged to take an active role in their local diving communities.  Although there was conversation about the lack of modern marketing in the industry, our groups said the industry was resistant to using marketing experts and that instructors were more interested in taking more diving courses but not marketing training.  In our summery review sessions, we talked about the decline of dive clubs and the lack of people taking leadership roles in diving shows and events.  The topic of diver dropout is still high on everyone’s list of problems.  An interesting note on the price of diving classes.  Instructors were commenting that the price of diving classes has not kept pace with the times and yet there was much discussion about the high prices of diving classes.  Which is it?

In summary, I believe the industry needs to conduct focus groups on the problems, challenges, bottlenecks, and roadblocks to the diving industry’s advancement and growth.  Our suggestion is to break it down into these groups & methods:

1. Individual Stakeholder Surveys.
2. Non-Industry Business Consultant Studies (Environmental, Business, Economic).
3. Diving Industry Opinion Leaders & Influencers Perspective.
4. Regional Summit Meeting Group Discussions.
5. DIVE LOCAL Volunteers to work on Actionable Items to improve industry.

For more information contact Gene Muchanski, Executive Director, Dive Industry Foundation, 2294 Botanica Circle, West Melbourne, FL.  Phone 321-914-3778. Email: gene@diveindustry.org  web: www.diveindustry.net

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DIVE LOCAL – A Dive Industry Community Effort
Regional Summit Conferences
By Gene Muchanski, Executive Director,
Dive Industry Foundation

CHAPTER 8 – Regional Summit Conferences

Once you have set geographical boundaries for diving and diving related businesses in a given area and have identified the key people within those companies, your Local Diving Community or Regional Diving Community can begin to hold meetings, seminars, workshops, diving events, and dive shows as a unified community.  The best way to begin to organize local, coordinated events is to hold a Regional Summit Meeting.  This could be done in person or on-line.

In the past twenty or more years, I am sure that many of us have attended and participated in industry meetings that discussed the lack of growth and participation in our recreation.  Year after year we attended these meetings, complained about the diving industry and then went home and did nothing about it, only to return the following year and have another meeting.  The entire industry is tired of industry meetings that do nothing except waste our time.

Most of these industry meetings were held at the DEMA Show and Regional Dive Shows.  Even though they may have been well attended for the most part, they basically amounted to an annual bitch session.  Looking back on these early meetings, we see they were not well organized, there was no stated “Call to Action” in the agenda, and there was no follow-up.  We need more than just an annual industry get-together.  We need Regional Summit Meetings with a specific agenda to accomplish something.

In 2016 I took part in three Regional Summit Meetings in Dallas, Chicago, and Secaucus.  All three were held in conjunction with regional dive shows and each lasted between 1 and 3 hours.  Dallas drew 21 attendees and 5 speakers.  Chicago had 19 attendees and 6 speakers.  We had a full house in Secaucus with 43 attendees and 4 speakers.  These summit meetings were better organized, with a common agenda; Speaker Presentations, a Break-out Session for focus group discussions, and a combined discussion and summary period.  The groups were looking to address regional problems, potential solutions, and actionable items that could solve problems and bring about positive change.  All three Regional Summit Meetings were videotaped for future reference.

We learned a lot about conducting regional summit meetings but there was still a major flaw in the programing.  There were no individual assignments given out and no follow-up to our possible actionable items.  Since 2016, Regional Dive Shows have declined, attendance at the remaining shows has dwindled, and the COVID pandemic has changed the way we conduct regional meetings.  On the bright side, we have our video recordings and reports from the last three Regional Summit Conferences, the industry still has four dive shows we can work with, and our digital capability to conduct on-line conferences has improved tremendously.  I believe it is time we give another look at conducting Regional Summit Conferences.

Rather than rehash the way industry meetings were conducted in the past, let’s start fresh.  After all, this is the new millennium and post-pandemic economic recovery era.  Since most of us are actively involved in running our own businesses, we should really think about the reasons we are meeting and what we can collectively expect to get out of these meetings.  When I think of industry meetings, a few questions immediately come to mind.  Why are we meeting?  Who should be attending the meetings?  How and where should we be meeting?  Is there an organized agenda to the meeting with a specific purpose?  And finally, what positive outcomes can we expect to achieve by conducting these meetings?

The purpose of conducting a Regional Summit Conference is to bring Dive Industry Professionals from different stakeholder groups together to discuss economic development issues that affect their region and their industry.    An organized conference should address the industry’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.  It’s a way for leaders from local diving communities and various stakeholder groups to report on how they are doing in their current market.  In an economic downturn, participants of Regional Summit Conferences identify problems in their industry, brainstorm possible solutions to their problems, and recommend actionable items that will overcome their challenges.

To prepare for a Regional Summit Conference that addresses regional or national industry issues, it is best to prepare ahead of time for the conference.  I would recommend that stakeholder groups get together with their peers and discuss issues that are relevant to their stakeholder group.  Dive Retailers should begin to meet with other Dive Retailers in their local diving communities.  Same thing for manufacturers, training professionals, clubs, non-profit organizations, and travel companies.  All stakeholder groups have a vested interest in the success of their local diving community, their regional territory, and in their industry on a national and international basis.  There is even common ground that all industry stakeholder groups share.  That’s the purpose of bringing the entire global diving community together to make the industry more popular, successful, and meaningful.

When we think of venues that will support a successful conference, we should think about the way dive industry professionals currently prefer to meet and participate.  I believe we should use an integrated, hybrid meeting format.  Using present-day marketing tools, we can promote an initial regional meeting or stakeholder meeting digitally.    The initial meeting can be promoted via social media, electronic correspondence, telephone calls, and word of mouth.  The idea is to get the ball rolling and gain support for meeting locally, which hopefully will lead to regional and national meetings.  Digital face-to-face meetings will create a core group of working dive industry professionals that are active in the market and have a vested interest in the industry’s growth and eventual success.

If conducting digital meetings is successful at creating a core group of like-minded industry leaders, the next logical step would be to host a regional summit conference in conjunction with a regional dive show.  I am sure that Scuba Show and Beneath the Sea would see that it is in their best interest to sponsor a Regional Summit Conference at their annual event.  Especially if we can convince the region’s key people to participate.  For territories in the United States that do not have long-standing shows and events planned, we can ask the smaller, less publicized regional events to step up to the plate.  Depending on the success of the Regional Summit Conferences, a National Industry Summit Conference could be in the works, sponsored and held at a national event.

There should be a common agenda at these local summit meetings so that discussions at a regional or national level follow an established format.  A suggested schedule of topics could include:

1. Identify current dive businesses or stakeholder groups in a local dive community.
2. Identify current economic activity in the community. Sales, Certifications, Travel, Local Events.
3. Identify current problems, challenges, obstacles, and roadblocks to growth.
4. Identify possible solutions to challenges.
5. Identify actionable items in a Plan of Action.
6. Assign responsibility for achievable outcomes.
7. Monitor to see if action plan is achieving planned outcomes.
8. Report and follow-up.

When Regional Summit Conferences are held, local dive communities can compare notes to see where they have common ground in activity, problems, solutions, and positive change, with other local dive communities.  Collaboration can lead to a better understanding of a region’s economic development and result in better industry norms and best practices.

For more information contact Gene Muchanski, Executive Director, Dive Industry Association, Inc., 2294 Botanica Circle, West Melbourne, FL.  Phone 321-914-3778. Email: gene@diveindustry.net  web: www.diveindustry.net

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DIVE LOCAL – A Dive Industry Community Effort
Key People of DIVE LOCAL
By Gene Muchanski, Executive Director,
Dive Industry Foundation

CHAPTER 7 – The Industry’s Key People

What do you think about when you hear the words “Key People in the Diving Industry?”  A number of years ago we ran a survey and asked select Dive Industry Professionals who they thought were our industry key people.  Not surprisingly, a few training agency CEO’s names were mentioned, along with some  top executives of the large diving equipment companies.  Jean Michel Cousteau’s name was mentioned a few times and so were a few scattered individuals in different industry sectors.  It seams that our respondents were a little confused about the difference between the titles of  “Key People” and “Industry Heroes.”

I can understand that.  Sometimes we think about key people as industry heroes, Hall of Fame nominees, popular dive industry professionals, environmental volunteer workers,  gifted underwater photographers, or even accomplished underwater explorers.   But as we began the DIVE LOCAL series of articles, the words Key People took on a whole different meaning.  To us, a key person in the diving industry is a person who is making a significant contribution to their own business and the entire diving industry as a whole.  A Key Person in the diving industry is also the lead person in an organization that is responsible for leading their company forward, regardless of their total industry significance.

Last month we added this chapter to our DIVE LOCAL series because we wanted to add faces to the names of the companies that are actively involved in creating, maintaining, and growing our local diving communities.  It’s important to remember that businesses don’t make a local diving community successful, people do.  It’s the people we celebrate in this article and it’s the Key People we maintain contact with to follow and promote their progress.  Defining the diving industry’s key people is easy when we are talking about Local Dive Industry Professionals.  We see these people face-to-face on a daily basis.  It gets more important to define who are key people when they are infrequent visitors to our local diving community and especially more important when they are located outside of our community, state, or territory.  Let’s start with the top four sectors of our local diving community that are usually local residents.

The 4 Pillars of Market Growth

1. Diving Instructors
2. Dive Stores
3. Dive Boats
4. Dive Clubs

Diving Instructors:  Every diving instructor is a Key Person in our books.  Of course, we are talking about the active diving instructor who is currently engaged in teaching diving classes.  Diving Instructors are helping to grow the market every time they teach and certify a new student.  As we have said before, if it weren’t for diving instructors, there would not be a diving industry or a market for diving equipment and dive travel.

Retail Dive Stores:  Every local dive store should have a Key Person in charge.  It doesn’t matter if that person is the owner, the store manager or the lead Instructor.  A successful dive store that is operating on all cylinders is the center of a successful local diving community.  Most dive stores teach classes, sell equipment, service equipment, and have some type of dive travel program, be it local diving or dive travel.  That means they are doing their part to grow the market.  Having a Key Person at the store that can take the time to communicate with the diving industry outside of their local diving community is extremely important and advantageous to the dive store.  The store key person should be forming business relationships with the stores equipment vendors, training agency, travel wholesaler and trade association.   The farther away that you are from your vendors, the more likely it is that you can miss out on business opportunities.  In our case, we give free website advertising to Local Dive Stores and often conduct email campaigns to divers in their local diving community.  All we ask is they mail us one of their business cards and keep in touch with us from time to time.  If the local store key person doesn’t know who we are, there is a very good chance that we don’t know who they are.

Dive Boats:  We’ve said before that Local Dive Boat Operators are the champions of local diving.  Usually, a dive store or dive instructor owns a boat that takes out students or local divers.  Since most dive boats are six-pack licensed, they mostly rely on their inner circle of students, friends, or customers.  Only when a dive boat decides to increase their capacity to run charters do they look into the possibility of advertising outside of their inner circle.  That’s where working with a trade association can help.  We would gladly list the local dive boats in a local diving community web page if the Dive Operator would send us one of their business cards and designate a Key Person from their Dive Boat to keep in touch with us from time to time.  All that is needed for a Dive Boat to stay in the public eye is to make that a responsibility of one key person.

Dive Clubs:  Dive Clubs were very popular in the 1960’s.  Maybe because scuba diving was new, maybe it was because there were a lot of baby boomers interested in an outdoor, physical activity or maybe it was because there were fewer recreational options available at the time.  I also think we were more social back then.  It was fun to get together with other divers and go diving, and talk about diving, and go to Film Festivals as a group.  Today is a much different story for dive clubs, although I do see some great activity from some dive clubs across the country.  I see press releases from Indian Valley Scuba Club (PA) all the time and I wish I still lived in Houston when I see Gigglin’ Marlin Dive & Swim write about their great club dives.  So good Dive Clubs are still out there.  What would help Dive Clubs grow would be to appoint a Key Person to represent the club and have a permanent mailing address that did not change with the election of every new president.  If they created a free WordPress website and free Facebook page, that would go a long way in creating the stability that dive clubs need.   Again, it all boils down to appointing one Key Person to be the face of the Dive Club to the Local Diving Community.

Now we get to the point of people who live outside of the Local Diving Community but are considered to be Key People in their Regional Diving Territory.  That would be the Sales Representatives working for the equipment manufacturers, training agencies, and travel tourism bureaus.  Because of the fact that Regional Sales Managers spend so much time on the road in their territory and are probably the best paid professionals in our industry, they are considered to be the most knowledgeable about the state of business activity in their territory.  According to DIVE LOCAL’s geographic breakdown, a territory may consist of multiple states and multiple local diving communities.  That’s the reason Regional Dive Shows like Beneath the Sea, Our World-Underwater, Sea Space, and Scuba Show were so well attended for many years. They created and grew a regional diving event that drew attendees  from multiple territories.

Dive Industry Professionals Actively Engaged in the Local Community

1. Equipment Manufacturing Sale Reps
2. Training Agency Reps
3. Visiting Travel Advisors

Dive Equipment Sales Reps:  Each Sales Rep is considered a Key Person in their territory because of the amount of time they spend with clients and the amount of influence they have in the success of the local diving communities they work in.  We like to think of Regional Sales Managers as our boots on the ground regional influencers.  Regional Sales Managers can play a greater role in the Local diving communities they service. There are a great deal of benefits available to them by joining the Dive Industry Association.

Training Agency Reps:  Similar to Equipment Sales Reps, Regional Training Reps are Key People in their Territory.  There has been quite a bit of change in the past ten years with Training Reps.  Some Reps are now also working as Dive Equipment Reginal Sales Managers as in the case of Mares and SSI, while others  represent their National Training Agencies as Training Instructors, Sales Managers or Service Managers.  Training Agency market share was at its highest levels when training agencies used local Regional Sales Managers.  The strongest market share years for NAUI Worldwide was when they had Regional Branch Managers.  Having a local person responsible for sales and activity is the most competitive asset a company can have.

Travel Advisors:  The dive travel industry is a little different when it comes to local and regional representation.  Most Tourism Bureaus and Boards have regional offices in the major cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, and Miami.  Sales Representatives from their regional offices are the ones who participate in local dive shows and trade shows.  The regional offices also get extra help from time to time when Senior Tourism Managers from the Country’s Tourism Bureau happen to be in town for a local event.  It is our intention to work with National Tourism Boards to help them understand and sell to local diving communities and at Regional Diving Shows & Events.

The most difficult key people to account for and manage are the ones who live outside of the Regional Diving Community and are considered to be key people on a National or International basis.  There are a number of companies in a limited number of stakeholder groups that do not want their key people identified or even contacted by other members of the trade.  Whatever their reasons are, we have to respect that.  It’s their company after all.  Since our Mission is to bring Buyers and Sellers together for the benefit of the Global Diving Business Network and the Global Diving Community, we have chosen to focus on identifying and working with the Key People who are involved in the sale of diving equipment, dive training, dive travel, and lifestyle products.  We also have the social responsibility to work with the non-profit organizations in our industry.

Our approach to working with the Key People in the industry will be to follow the marketing channels of distribution that these companies use to move their products from conception through consumption.  We are more interested in working with diving companies that want to increase their sales, market share and marketability.  We view this as a life-long project rather than a short-term research project to build a list of Industry Key People.  This is our first pass at the Other Stakeholder Groups.  More detail and more stakeholder groups will follow.

Other Stakeholder Groups

1. Diving Equipment Manufacturer
2. Service Provider
3. Training Association / Certification Agency
4. Non-Profit Service Organization
5. Travel Business (various)

Dive Equipment Manufacturers:  As a Trade Association, it is our responsibility to identify and work with original equipment manufacturers, equipment component manufacturers and suppliers, brand marketers, and distributors.  Since our mission is to help bring buyers and sellers together, we use a basic Channel of Distribution:  Manufacturer – Sales Rep – Retail Store – Consumer.  The Key People we are looking to identify are: General Manager – Marketing Director – Sale Manager.  The categories of manufacturing that we will start organizing are:  Full Line – Multiple Line – Single Line – Tech – Photography – Specialty – Apparel.

Service Providers:  A very important stakeholder group, but often underrepresented, is the Service Provider sector.  Mostly because the grand majority of service providers are small owner-operator businesses with a limited marketing and advertising budget.  The Service Provider companies we are following deal with:  Repair & Maintenance – Software – Professional Services.

Training Agencies:  There are over 50 Training Agencies in the United States.  Not all agencies have Training Managers or Sales Managers in all territories.  As a Trade Association, the Key People we look to identify are the General Manager (Executive Director), Training Director, Marketing Director, and Sales Director.  If the agency is looking for new customers, having one external key person to contact streamlines the acquisition process.  Having one internal key person that focuses on competitive strategy keeps the agency moving forward.  Having regional representatives engaged in local diving communities or territories, with their local contact information, is important to local diving businesses who want to have a working relationship with the national agency.

Non-Profit Organizations:  There are many non-profit organizations in the Global Diving Community.  We have identified non-profits that focus on environment and conservation issues, veteran health and rehabilitation issues, marine life programs, scholarship programs, and educational foundations.  There is a greater need in the industry to define, organize and promote non-profits for a number of reasons.  First of all, there are many people involved in non-profits.  They include the founders, board of directors, paid executive staff, non-paid staff members, and volunteers.  Secondly, there seems to be a higher turnover rate for people who work in non-profit organizations, and consequently there is a high turnover of the contact people who represent non-profits.  Finally, there is a disturbing trend in non-profits that are moving out of their national headquarters and no longer publishing a contact person or mailing address for their organization.  We are seeing an increase in online fund raising but a decrease in physical presence and personal accountability.  It’s important for non-profits to put a face and a name to all of their regional representatives and have a contact person (face & name) at their national headquarters.

Travel Businesses:  The Travel Industry is a very important aspect of our recreation.  Water covers over ¾ of the earth’s surface which means there are unlimited places to dive.  What is limited in the Global Diving Business Network are the number of Airlines, Dive Resorts, Liveaboards, Dive Operators, Dive Stores, and Dive Travel Wholesalers across the globe.  The Dive Industry Association keeps track of over 1,000 dive businesses that are involved in dive travel.  Based on the Channels of Distribution we work with in the travel industry, it is important that we maintain contact with two Key People at each company.   We’ve already stated why it is important to maintain contact with the Internal Key Person at the company.   But what about the External Key Person?  A travel company that specializes in adventure dive travel normally hires a number of external sales, marketing, and reservation specialists, in many geographical locations across the globe.  While it is important to hire these specialists, a company can lose its connection to a market overnight, if and when their market specialist stops working for them.  Why?  When an independent contractor leaves your employment, they take their contacts with them, and you are left to reinvent the wheel.  That’s where our association comes in handy.  We can help the Internal Key Person find a new local sales, marketing or reservation specialist.  That is one reason we work so hard to acquire and maintain our industry database.  We didn’t build a professional database just to have a list of the people who work in the diving industry.  We built our database to be able to bring buyers and sellers of diving equipment, training, travel, and lifestyle products together.  That is the true purpose of a Professional Trade Association.

Steps to be included in our Global Diving Business Network:  We encourage Key People at companies that specialize in diving to register with us at the Dive Industry Foundation.  1) Send us your business card and any sales and marketing brochures you use to promote your company.  It doesn’t cost anything to register with us.  2) Subscribe to our Industry Blog, Weekly Dive News, Monthly Trade Magazine (The Dive Industry Professional), and our annual Trade Directory.  Subscription is FREE and you can change your subscription preferences or unsubscribe fully at any time.  Subscribe to our Blog at www.diveindustrynews.net   Subscribe to our other publications through Constant Contact’s Safe Subscribe Service at https://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/email.jsp?m=1101436852044

To be listed in our Annual Trade Directory & Buyers Guide and be eligible for benefits from our Buyers & Sellers Referral Program, we invite you to join the Dive Industry Association.  Annual membership is $125.  We look forward to working with you in the months to come.

For more information contact Gene Muchanski, Executive Director, Dive Industry Association, Inc., 2294 Botanica Circle, West Melbourne, FL.  Phone 321-914-3778. Email: gene@diveindustry.net  web: www.diveindustry.net

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