RETAILING continued
shop 44 years before retiring. Ed, the service technician, has been there close to four decades; Ron, the store manager, more than three. Customers vanish for twenty years, walk back in, and ask whether Ed is still doing repairs and whether Ron is still around. He is. Better yet, he’ll likely remember your name. Hollingshead has never paid staff on commission. “Com- mission-based sales are pressured sales, and that's not what built our success.” He pays fair salaries, brings staff into decisions, and runs the shop – as hokey as he admits it sounds – like a family. He also leads from the floor. “If I need to put wrist seals on a dry suit, I do it. If I need to work on a regulator, I do it.” But, he doesn’t stop there. Every day he cleans the toilets, wipes the counters, and vacuums. “That's something my dad did every single morning, whether he was going to be there that day or not. He'd come in, do that, make the coffee, then leave.” Hollingshead believes in leading by example. “I think a lot of owners lose something when they stop being personally involved in running the business.” That ethic extends into the teaching, too. Roughly 95 percent of ESDS courses are team-taught, which helps spread the load and keeps good instructors from burning out. Open Water classes are deliberately stretched over four weekly evenings plus an open-water weekend so students have time to absorb what they’re learning. And, the strongest instructors mentor the next ones. What customers actually buy. Pressed for the one piece of advice he'd give a younger retailer, Hollingshead doesn't hesitate: customer service. The real thing, not the slogan. Plenty of shops say they offer great service, he notes, but fail to deliver it. At ESDS it means fixing a customer's mask or fin in the back room, often for free, and handing it back without a sales pitch. It means staying late. It means learning every customer’s name and using it. “You can't force sales, but if you treat them right, you'll get a sale. Maybe it's next week, maybe it's next month, but you'll get it, and you'll get good vibes.” As for the future, Hollingshead's plan is the one that got him here. Stay lean, stay current on gear and technology, and keep the service better than anyone else's. He has no exit plan, and no real interest in one. He still dives. He still loves it. Hollingshead closes the interview by relaying something he often hears from customers who walk in having been away
for a time. “Oh,” they tell him, breathing in the neoprene and the glue and the rubber, “I miss the smell of the dive shop.” To Hollingshead it’s the smell of another day. To them, he's come to understand, it smells like coming home.
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