James Rogers has just celebrated his four-year anniversary with RAID. Hear his story so far and where RAID is headed in the future.
It’s been a rollercoaster of a ride. Sometimes tough and confusing but always energising, inspiring, certainly rewarding. Let me explain more….
After being forced out of the biggest diving agency in the world, I made a tough decision to join one that many hadn’t even heard of.
Initially, RAID UK & Malta was met with a weird sense of disinterest. I can only compare it to how Channel 4 must have felt when they entered the TV market way back in 1982. You can imagine the top executive at the BBC – having already been well established for over 50 years – sitting back, laughing and saying, “I’ll give them six months, tops” or “they’re simply not credible they can’t compete against us”.
This attitude was expected from the dive industry, but frustrating for me as the RAID product had so much to offer, hardly anyone was willing to listen. They just wanted to continue doing the same things over and over again for the same returns.
However, after a few months, things started to change, we picked our first new Instructors and Dive Centres, people had started to talk about us, not everyone politely at first – but at least they had stopped ignoring us! We were energised. Who would be next, who would be willing to listen and be open to change… maybe the best dive inland training facility in the world?
Well, yes, actually! I first met John Vickers, Managing Director of Blue Abyss, a few months after launching RAID UK and Malta. He was experiencing that same “Channel 4 backlash” for his own venture. Everyone thought that his idea was pie in the sky and that it wouldn’t happen. A £120 million facility -the world’s first commercial deep sea to space research, training and test centre? Yeah right!
I believed in John’s vision right from the beginning, there were several reasons for this belief, the main one was a simple one, I could see he wouldn’t ever be stopped.
Now RAID is an official partner of the facility. We’ll soon be hiring a 35 strong team to run the centre that boasts a 50m dive pool. Blue Abyss noted that we’re a “perfect brand fit” because of our progressive approach to diver training. And to top it off, ONLY RAID Dive Centres and Instructors will be able to conduct training courses at Blue Abyss.
The RAID training base is steadily growing. Seeing new instructors and divers harness the power of the DiveRAID system will always be the most rewarding part of the job for me.
In April 2018, RAID was bought. Through RAID’s new partnership with Kalkomey Enterprises, RAID dive centres will be able to take full advantage of electronic systems that will make your job easier, and drive business directly to your doorstep.
I’ve got big plans for RAID UK and Malta in the next four years. Blue Abyss will be opening in 2019, and this will be huge for RAID. We’re committed to growing our family of divers, professionals and dive centres. If we keep growing at our current rate, in two years’ time I’d like to see 75 RAID Dive Centres in the UK, five in Ireland and another 10 in Malta.
We will never be, nor wish to be the next BBC. We’re quite happy doing things the RAID way – the alternative to the status-quo the new way. RAID will never be top of the leaderboard in terms of profit extracted from their members – it’s not one of our goals. But we will be streaks ahead when it comes to supporting our Dive Centres and members, our commitment to modern training and modern diving. We’re building a family, not just collecting numbers, you have a name, so do we.
We are different, we are RAID.
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