All Posts By

Mark Young

Operational SurveysSurveys

Dive Retailers and Airfills

The Operational Surveys in the March 2005 and May 2007 editions of Dive Center Business were conducted to determine pricing and attitudes about airfill stations in the business of dive retailers. It's been a while, and we thought it would…
Mark Young
September 25, 2014
Surveys

A Look at the Numbers

The Operational Survey for this edition is our annual report on the number of stores that opened and closed the last five years. It's never good when our industry loses a dive store. Each number represents the loss of someone's…
Mark Young
April 11, 2014
As I See ItOpinion

As I See It: As You See It

We would like to use this opinion page to add commentary to the Operational Survey for this month, Dive Retailers and Discounting. The survey numbers say quite a lot, and so do the retail comments, and since discounting is a…
Mark Young
December 3, 2013
As I See ItOpinion

On Where We Are

While our industry has been keenly focused on the economy of the last few years, in the background is the belief among us that scuba has been in decline for much longer, which leads us to wonder: With diving on…
Mark Young
February 18, 2013
As I See ItOpinion

The Fairness Tax

I am not a fan of higher taxes. I believe that the more of our money we get to keep, the more we spend, so more people work, which keeps the economy working … which then produces more personal and…
Mark Young
December 7, 2009
Operational SurveysSurveys

Location, Location

|image4|To someone outside of our industry, the distribution of dive retailers in the United States would be surprising. They might guess correctly that there are lots of stores in the southern coastal areas but be surprised by the amount of…
Mark Young
March 7, 2009