Seeing What the Other Guys Are Up To

Among the most important relationships your business has is with the other dive stores in your community. That’s right: We said the other dive stores — you know, the ones you swear exist solely to put you out of business.

An adversarial relationship with your competitors is based on the assumption there are a fixed number of potential divers in your community, and that the only way one store can grow in size is at the expense of others.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Dive retailer associations throughout the country have proven that, when stores work together, they can grow the pie by increasing consumer awareness of diving throughout their community. And, when the pie gets bigger, it means there’s a bigger slice for everybody.

In this installment of Relationships, we’ll look at some examples of how a retail association can benefit all of its members.

Keith Chesnut writes:

“Working together is critical to the success of the industry. Unfortunately many dive store owners see working together as helping only ‘the other guy’ and miss the big picture. Also, most customers don't want to be involved in the conflict between stores and often seek another recreation. In that case we all lose.”

The Mid-Atlantic Scuba Retailers Association »

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