RETAILING
Dive Retailing: 50 Years Under Pressure by William Cline , Publisher & President for 35 years of Cline Group, a marketing, research and advertising consultancy specializing the scuba diving industry.
W HAT CHANGED? 1976 – 2026. What Didn’t? And why the dive shop still matters? In 1976, I walked into a dive shop for the first time with my father. It was the long-gone Aqua Lung Center in Fullerton, CA that smelled of neoprene and salt. Regulators hung like trophies behind glass. Dive flags lined the walls. A handwritten flyer advertised a weekend trip to Catalina, and the owner, Don Himes, was the manager and the only employee. Don became an older brother, friend, dive buddy, and business mentor. That shop was more than a store – it was a clubhouse, a travel agency, and a classroom rolled into one. Divers just hung out on a Friday night, telling stories, and someone would ultimately bring a pizza, while jokes and stories were told until the owner kicked us all out and went home. It’s 2026 now, and while much has changed, the best dive shops still feel that way. The gear is smarter, the marketing is digital, and the travel is global – but at the heart of it all is something that no algorithm or e-commerce platform has managed to replace: human connection. This is the story of how dive retailing has transformed over the last 50 years – from beach huts and typewriters to TikTok and text-to-chat AI. And why, despite everything, the local dive shop still matters more than ever. The Analog Era: Dive Shops as Gatekeepers (1976 – 1995) If you wanted to learn to dive in the late 1970s and 1980s, you went to your local dive store. Period. They were the gate- keepers of the underwater world. There was no online training, no big-box scuba sections, and no Amazon reviews. If you were curious about diving, the shop was your oracle. And if they didn’t like you? Well, good luck. Most stores were run by passionate, hands-on owners – often instructors or former military divers – who knew their customers’ names and the serial numbers on their regulators. Certification cards were printed on cardstock. Dive computers were rare and expensive. And gear decisions were based on what the shop stocked, not what someone read in a forum (because there were no forums). Booking a trip meant visiting the shop, reading brochures, and mailing in a deposit. Travel agents or niche wholesalers managed reservations. The idea of booking a trip yourself was almost laughable.
Yet business was booming. Thanks to a true visionary, Dr. Alex Brylske, who wrote the first modular scuba course, training took a global jump start. Now, anyone could start locally and finish their courses on vacation. It was truly revo- lutionary and soon every major training agency followed suit. The sport was growing. The Caribbean was being discovered. And the dive store was the hub for it all. The Growth Years: Standardization and Specialization (1995 – 2005) As the 90s progressed, the dive industry professionalized. Training agencies matured and proliferated. Specialty courses exploded – Nitrox, Rescue, Tech, and DPV. Retailers began to standardize their sales floors, using point-of-sale systems
and membership cards. Multi-location chains started to ap- pear. The big shift was looming: the Internet. It started slow – just brochure websites and basic product listings. A few retailers experimented with online gear sales, but margins were still protected by MAP pricing and the difficulty of nav- igating digital payment systems. Still, whispers of change were everywhere. I remember sitting on a plane in 2005, writing a piece titled “Dive Retailing: A 20-Year Perspective.” I realized then, as I typed on a laptop connected to GPS at 35,000 feet, that the tools we used to sell and serve customers were about to evolve at warp speed. And they did. The Shockwave: E-commerce and the Rise of the Web (2005 – 2015) By the mid-2000s, e-commerce had entered the dive world
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