Kathy Glaser manages the local DiVentures store, which features a 50-foot heated pool. Owners Dean Hollis and Mark Roberts entered the Springfield market through a January 2011 acquisition of Aquasports Inc., for which Glaser was a scuba instructor.
Dell started in a college dormitory and Dropbox on a charter bus. The Knot was created at a classic diner and Under Armour in a dingy basement.
The idea for DiVentures was hatched on a truck bed in the jungles of Nicaragua.
Nebraska natives Dean Hollis and Mark Roberts were on the ground in Central America as board members of Springfield-based charity Rainbow Network. They were hobby scuba divers about to have extra free time on their hands. In the late 2000s, Hollis was retiring after 21 years from ConAgra Foods Inc., where he finished his career as president and chief operating officer of the consumer foods and international division, and Roberts had built and sold two startups.
“In the back of a truck bouncing around the dusty back roads of Nicaragua, we started talking about our passions for diving,” Hollis recalls. “We decided that was something we would pursue in our retired life.”
The two businessmen, both around 50 years old, applied their business acumen to open a DiVentures scuba and swim center in 2010 in Omaha, Neb. The company entered Springfield through a January 2011 acquisition of Aquasports Inc., following a chance meeting with owners Don and Vickie Peterson while Hollis was in town for a Rainbow Network board meeting.
“I just stopped in and met Don. It’s as complicated as that,” Hollis says.
DiVentures offers swim lessons, scuba training, equipment sales and rental, and destination dives.
Making quarterly visits to Springfield, the founders and their executive team share best practices between the two stores and hold conference calls with the aquatics teams.
“We’ve applied what we learned here,” Hollis says from the Nebraska headquarters.
In the Springfield market, the lakes are a key advantage and perk up summer sales, Hollis says. Declining to disclose companywide revenue, Hollis says Springfield store sales exceeded $1 million in 2013 and doubled in the last two years.
Scuba instructors hold open water certification dives and take group trips to area lakes, mainly Table Rock.
For the more adventurous, DiVentures coordinates dive trips off the coasts of Hawaii, Australia and Bonaire, in the Caribbean Sea. The company took 500 people on trips last year.
Though he’s been scuba diving since his youth growing up in Florida, Hollis says he recently discovered his favorite dive spot. Hollis and a team in October dove from Guadalupe Island off western Mexico to observe and research great white sharks.
“We were face to face with them, literally. Touching a great white shark is pretty incredible,” he says, dispelling a myth the sharks have an affinity for hunting humans. “They are very gentle creatures. They have a bad reputation, a very faulty reputation.”
Fifteen destination dives are scheduled this year, he says, noting Cozumel, Mexico, is most popular trip with $1,400 covering four days of diving, airfare, hotels and meals.
The travels only account for 10 percent of business, giving way to scuba training, 40 percent, and swim lessons, 30 percent.
Between both stores last year, Hollis says more than 1,000 divers were certified and 900 kids a week took swimming lessons, starting at the Mommy and Me baby class. Training is through Scuba Schools International and Swim Schools International.
Kathy Glaser, manager of the Springfield store, says 30 full- and part-time employees give 310 kids weekly swim lessons and hold three scuba classes a week.
“We have several who have gone through the program this winter and are waiting for the lakes to warm up,” she says of the requirements for four sessions in open water.
The center also holds two or three specialty classes a month for certified divers.
“They can continue their education by taking a night-diving, or boat-diving or navigation class,” adds Glaser, who learned to dive at Aquasports and worked for the Petersons as a scuba instructor.
She’s remained with the company through DiVenture’s acquisition and the relocation a couple blocks down South Campbell Avenue to new, $3.5 million digs in March 2012. The facility features a 50-foot heated pool ranging from 3.5 feet to 14 feet deep, family locker rooms, classrooms and a patio for summer events.
The open-water certification costs roughly $400, including classroom and pool sessions, Hollis says, and personal diving gear starts at $200. “Trust me, you can spend as much as you want,” Hollis says.
Client Jeff Maune opts to rent his gear. The hobby diver was certified last summer in the open waters in the Florida Keys, and he returned this month from a DiVentures destination dive in Belize.
The high point was an excursion to dive the Great Blue Hole, a cavern full of stalactites and stalagmites as big as tree trunks, he says. The roof collapsed when the sea level rose, creating a submarine sinkhole and a Top 10 dive site.
“You can actually swim in between these stalactites in the ceiling. I don’t think you’ll see that any place else,” says Maune, a real estate owner and developer from Union, who got into the sport through his sister, Linda, a DiVentures instructor.
The Belize trip cost Maune $2,000, and he’s planning to spend $8,400 on an Australian live-aboard dive in October where the group will spend seven days out on the dive boat. “By the time the smoke clears, this is not really an expensive vacation,” Maune says.[[In-content Ad]]
