Dean Hollis : une passion pour l'eau et l'impact sur les vies

DEAN HOLLIS, FONDATEUR DE DIVENTURES, DÉTAILLANT DE PRODUITS DE NATATION ET DE PLONGÉE, grew up in Lakeland, Florida, as a third-generation Floridian. “I spent the first 22 years of my life in Florida, where I pretty much lived in the water,” he said. “My parents and grandparents were in the grocery business and prided themselves on having an exceptional, customer-focused organization, which made it successful. So I grew up with two things in my DNA: water and the customer experience.”

Hollis got scuba certified as soon as his parents permitted it. “They told me I had to wait until I was 16,” he recalled. “On my 16th birthday, my mom picked me up from high school, drove me to get my driver’s license, and then drove to the dive shop.” He did his checkout dives in Crystal River and was immediately hooked on diving.

Après avoir obtenu son diplôme à l'université de Stetson en 1982, il a poursuivi sa carrière dans l'industrie alimentaire et a notamment occupé pendant 21 ans divers postes de direction chez ConAgra Foods. Cette carrière l'a conduit à quitter sa Floride natale pour s'installer dans plusieurs villes des États-Unis. Il s'est arrangé pour trouver un magasin de plongée local partout où sa vie professionnelle l'a mené. Ses expériences dans certains d'entre eux l'ont amené à se demander comment il pourrait réimaginer le modèle commercial des magasins de plongée.

Hollis avec sa femme Lisa, leurs cinq enfants et leur gendre, tous plongeurs certifiés. AVEC L'AIMABLE AUTORISATION DE DEAN HOLLIS

“We’ve all been in those stores where the owners love to dive, but the grind of running a business overtakes the passion,” he said. “They find themselves doing all the things they don’t like or want to do and not what got them into it in the first place: teaching people to dive and taking them on trips.”

Hollis along with his wife, Lisa, and their five kids eventually settled in Omaha, Nebraska. “I had moved my kids all over,” he said, “and I promised them I wasn’t going to move them again.”

L'EAU À OMAHA

En 2008, Hollis a pris sa retraite en tant que président et directeur de l'exploitation de ConAgra Foods, Consumer Foods, et a commencé à envisager la création d'un magasin de plongée à Omaha, ville enclavée.

“I thought I was going to open this little dive shop and just have a great place for divers to hang out, talk diving, and take a couple of dive trips a year,” Hollis said. “The more I got into it, the more I realized there was a real opportunity to transform an industry by focusing entirely on the customer.”

Lorsqu'il a créé Diventures en 2009, M. Hollis savait qu'il voulait créer un magasin de plongée doté de tous les avantages d'une organisation bien gérée. Plus important encore, il voulait que ce soit un endroit où les clients ressentent un sentiment d'appartenance.

“I think our secret sauce is combining my experience in the business world with a team of passionate people and a focus on the customer,” he said. “It took us a while, but we think we’ve found the right vision, mission, and values — and we have a team of people working hard every day to make it happen.”

Diventures s'est étendu au-delà d'Omaha, à Lincoln (Nebraska), Lexington (Kentucky), North Liberty (Iowa), Phoenix (Arizona), Atlanta (Géorgie), Battle Creek (Michigan), Springfield, Columbia et Kansas City (Missouri), ainsi qu'à Fitchburg et Sun Prairie (Wisconsin).

Ville d'origine : Omaha, Nebraska

Âge: 62

Années de plongée: 46

Destination de plongée préférée: Sainte-Lucie

Devenir membre du DAN: 2010

“I think our secret sauce is combining my experience in the business world with a team of passionate people and a focus on the customer …”

AJOUTER L'APPRENTISSAGE DE LA NATATION AU MÉLANGE

Emphasizing water safety and swim instruction has become crucial to the organization’s mission. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every year in the U.S. there are an estimated 3,960 fatal, unintentional drownings, including boating-related drownings, and 8,080 nonfatal drownings.

“There’s an obligation to teach people to swim, especially when you realize there will be double-digit drownings every day in the U.S.,” Hollis said. “If we truly have a passion for the water, how can we accept that?”

Hollis realized that a successful swim instruction program could lead to more people getting their scuba certification. “We had to figure out how to fill the pipeline from swimming to diving,” he said. “In each location where we currently have pools, we have about 1,000 kids a week learning to swim. It could totally change the industry if we could convert just 10 of those swimmers to scuba divers. If we view this as the pipeline for future divers, we have to teach these kids to be safe around the water and to love the water. Then we can keep them for a lifetime, go on trips with them until they are 90, and eventually introduce their kids and grandkids to diving.”

The swim revenue enabled Hollis to hire skilled people committed to preventing drowning, ensuring people are safe around the water, and encouraging them to have fun. “We want to enable them to love the water, and then let’s keep them as a lifetime customer,” he said. “Whenever we see an opportunity, we’ll say to the younger generations, ‘Let’s go diving!’”

Hollis lors d'une expérience Try Scuba avec une journaliste CHRISTINE HUGHEY

LE LIEN ÉMOTIONNEL

Hollis’ personal dive experiences have helped fuel the joy he takes in introducing people to scuba diving. One of his most humbling experiences was tagging great white sharks for research in Guadalupe, Mexico. “Coming face to face with a great white was just magnificent — an unbelievable experience,” he said.

Hollis was recently diving off Guanaja, one of the Bay Islands of Honduras, at a site called Black Rock Canyon. “There are a couple of parts called the Spires and Cathedrals that have huge swim-throughs,” he said, “and I turned around and got one of my favorite underwater pictures of my son. His bubbles are rising, the light is shining down, and I was thinking, ‘This is why I dive.’ It’s almost unfathomable. It’s a spiritual experience.”For Hollis, the emotional connection is equally important to the economic side of the business. “We are a mission-driven organization,” he said. “I love our vision statement. We worked long and hard on it: Utiliser notre passion et le pouvoir de l'eau pour influencer des vies, changer le monde et s'amuser en le faisant !

“Every dive trip I go on, somebody cries because it’s such a powerful experience. As a recent customer said as he pulled me aside, ‘This has changed and saved my life.’” AD