Southern coastal is definitely by focus. I would love to go international, but I think I may be at least partially dependent on an SBA loan, which would keep me stateside. I definitely agree that you need good employees. I don’t have the ability, or desire to do everything myself. I’ve actually quit training at dive shops because of the lack of professionalism that their instructors portrayed, etc.
I do the majority of my shopping online too (at least the preliminary shopping). Usually, I’ll find what I want online and then ask the local dive shop if they can be competitive with the price. Sometimes they can, sometimes they can’t. But they are usually willing to give it a shot and adjust the price. If they are at all close, I’ll buy local. If I can be competitive at all, I would like to have an ecommerce presence as well. I ran my own web development company for years, so I wouldn’t have the overhead that most businesses would have with this.
@NewtoScubaHB2 - I can only hope that I have to worry about making that much. I’m just hoping I can survive without having to eat sea weed for every meal.
Is there anything that has really turned anybody off from going back to a dive business?