Starting a Business in Watersports - 6 Point Plan

* The starting of a business is a serious undertaking and degres of success vary from business to business and person to person. There are no guarentees in business and there is always the chance you will lose your initial investment. Dive Industry Association does not give legal or financial advice. We stronly suggest you seek consel from a Business Attorney, a Financial Advisor and a Marketing Professional. A good start will be your local SBDC.

Assemble your Team of Advisors (Business Attorney, Accountant or CPA, Business Consultant specializing in Diving and your Spouce!). Meet on a regular basis during the process.

Business Start-Up 6 Point Plan

1. Personal Assessment - Do you have what it takes to start a business?
2. Feasibility Study - Is there a market for your products?  Ca you sell enough profitable products to enough profitable customers?
3. Business Plan - Have you thought out all the details and written them down?
4. Financing Your Business - Can you raise sufficient capital to fund the start-up properly?
5. Action Plan - Ready, Set, Grow!
6. Exit Strategy - At what point do you call it quits?

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by Gene Muchanski

Dive Industry Association, Inc. was founded in the Fall of 2000, in Carlsbad, California.  Many Industry Professionals encouraged us to form a Trade Association that would be responsive to the needs of its Members. After a six month feasibility study to determine if the industry wanted, needed and would support a second trade association, it was decided to start Dive Industry Association. The Association was incorporated in the state of California on April 3, 2001. During the first year 15 Charter Members joined us and we started "Building a Better Industry, One Member at a Time."

From the very beginning, DIA was set up as an association that was Member centric. The Goals of the Association were established to: 1) Unite the industry to a common purpose and foster the spirit of cooperation. 2) Provide our Members with Business Tools that will help them be more professional, productive and profitable. 3) Generate maximum marketing exposure to help our Members reach their customers. 4) Increase business opportunities in the industry for our members.

During 2002, Dive industry Association added 45 more Charter Members and 12 of the original 15 Charter Members renewed for the year. DIA exhibited at the DEMA Show. DIA started publication of The Dive Industry Professional, our Association's monthly printed Newsletter. In November 2002, DIA's Office was moved to League City, Texas, SE of downtown Houston.

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Professional Development - Marketing: Surveys are Important to Us 

by Gene Muchanski

When was the last time you surveyed your customers? Do you know why they purchase from you? Do you know why the ones who don't buy from you, buy from your competitor? Do you know what is important to your customers? If you don't, the solution is simple. Ask them. 

Many times we, as an industry, seem to operate in a vacuum. Maybe it is because there are many qualified and talented people in our business with a lot of diving experience. When we create products, sell products, recommend products or teach people how to use them, there is a tendency to inject our personal bias. Sometimes a little too much! Giving our customers the benefit of our opinion and experience is a good thing but failing to find out what is important to them is a sure sign of arrogance, ignorance and an over inflated ego. It also leads, in most cases, to a lost sale and a non-returning customer.

Since the early 1980's pressure selling gave way to the age of modern marketing. In the old days, we created products we thought were fantastic, filled our warehouse with inventory and sent our sales "force" out to sell the products to an unsuspecting public. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it resulted in a warehouse full of unsalable stuff that the public didn't need, didn't want, and wouldn't buy.

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Professional Development -  Marketing Communication: Communication With A Purpose
by Gene Muchanski

Marketing communication is very important to the success of our businesses. So much, in fact, it may well be the core function of marketing itself.

The purpose of any business is to create products and services that help people. The kind of help we provide depends on our core competencies to create products and how the customer uses them. So our business begins with the customer and not with our Engineer! To understand how our products are going to sell in the market place, we need to know how the customer is going to use them and why. Focus groups are a big part of what marketing can do to help you understand how the product will be used by the customer and what features and benefits will be needed to make the product useful to the consumer. The skill set here is "listening" which is the most important part of the communication process.

We've seen too many times, what happens to products that are created by designers in the privacy of their labs without giving thought to the marketing process. They build products they think are great and wonder why they just sit in the warehouse. Well, it might have been a great idea to them, but not to their customers. Then they get mad at the sales people because sales are flat. The better way to create products is to introduce the marketing concept before the products are designed. Building products based on consumer input is a much better way to go. You communicate with your customers and they tell you what they would buy. They will tell you if the product has value to them. You can then build prototypes and ask them for their comments again. After a few changes, ask again. Keep doing that until you get it right. Now you can go into a small production run to see if the new product will sell. If it does, you have a winner and can go into full scale production. If not, there's a problem somewhere.

Pre-production communication is important to our business but only if we ask the right questions and get the right answers. Before you design your pre-production campaign, ask yourself what it is you want from the customer and make sure the customer knows what you are looking for. That's communication with a purpose.

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