With freezing winter days normal in Iowa and around the country right now, many people are searching for a respite. That’s part of the appeal of Diventures, an organization that offers “a one-stop solution for scuba diving” which has big ambitions to expand throughout the country. “We have very, very aggressive growth plans,” said Dean […]
With freezing winter days normal in Iowa and around the country right now, many people are searching for a respite.
That’s part of the appeal of Diventures, an organization that offers “a one-stop solution for scuba diving” which has big ambitions to expand throughout the country.
“We have very, very aggressive growth plans,” said Dean Hollis, the company’s founder. “We’ve acquired seven businesses in the last 12 or 18 months, and I anticipate doing the same next year at least. So, we’ll continue to grow and basically saturate the country and go wherever the consumer wants us to be. Wherever there is an unmet need for swimming or scuba, that’s a market we intend to be in.”
Right now, the Midwest’s “premier scuba experience” is available at 11 locations in six states, including North Liberty. While the majority of Diventures’ business comes from swim and scuba lessons, as well as equipment sales, they will also offer 100 group trips and 40 private trips this year.
“We take care of everything,” Mr. Hollis said. “We tell people all they have to do is show up with your passport and your luggage.”
Since COVID-19 has added complexity to rules regarding travel, Diventures reduces a lot of stress for the customer, he explained. Attendees can choose to follow the itinerary to a T or do their own thing some days.
In the initial months following COVID-19, Mr. Hollis noticed that the tourism industry was taking a huge hit and that many of the dive shops they utilized on trips were in desperate need of short-term funding. So, Diventures set up a GoFundMe campaign, ultimately raising $20,000 from Diventures customers and donating $50,000 as a company.
“Within six weeks, we had money in their hands so that they could take care of their families,” he said. “When we were back to these locations, whether it was Santa Lucia, Honduras or Grand Turk, the outpouring of what our customers did to impact these people’s lives was incredible. People came up to us and said, ‘Hey, we were literally living on what we could plant in our backyard.’ It was pretty cool to think that we were impacting lives around the world.”
For those just looking to stay local (and possibly escape the cold for a few hours), they can take advantage of an 8,000-square-foot facility featuring a heated pool, a large retail space and classrooms used to teach scuba and host birthday parties and events. It is very uncommon for a scuba business to include all of these offerings in a single location, said Mr. Hollis.
“It’s just so relaxing,” he said of scuba diving. “It allows people to see some pretty amazing, beautiful things and to do it in a relaxing fashion. They get to see a part of our globe that represents over 70% of the world.”
