'Reversing Evolution' - 50 Million years of evolution; but just 10 years to perfect.

It took over 50 million years of evolution to perfect, but in just 10 years Scuba + Outdoor has grown from its humble beginnings to where it is today; one of the countries leading scuba diver trainers & retailers.

Life as we know it began in 1995...

The Scuba + Outdoor Pursuits Centre, or as we should now say Centre’s, originally started life as Cannock Scuba Centre right back in 1995. It’s original founders John and Ang kept things small on the Retail side for the first few years concentrating on their PADI Training, however in later years they made their biggest mistake ever, they invited Mark to come on board …

With his “Dr Evil – Lets take over the world approach” (even including his soft white pussy …. Ooh Err), Mark soon began to scale up operations as rapidly as possible. With PADI Training at the heart of everything a more professional and well managed approach to all aspects of the business led to almost immediate expansions at Cannock Scuba. In 1999 the bullet was well and truly bitten and the first satellite store was opened, but wow did that pose some problems …

The biggest and most major problem to overcome in the early years was what to do with their name, because how can you have a Cannock Scuba Centre in Newcastle-under-Lyme ! Many hours of deliberation, and planning for the future later and The Scuba + Outdoor Pursuits Centre was born …

As they expanded both their PADI Recreational Diver programmes, their well respected PADI Pro Diver programmes and of course by now huge Retail Stock the business continued to grow. In 2000 Cannock Scuba Centre finally disappeared as the main store evolved into its 1300 sq ft purpose built Scuba + Outdoor Pursuits Centre showroom at Cannock. The classrooms then went even crazier and this meant the Training Team also continued to grow, by now encompassing 3 Full Time Instructors and more Dive Maters and Assistant Instructors you could throw a stick at (although on many occasions this has been tried, but they keep ducking) …

Final stages of expansion, for now at least (Insert evil laugh !), saw their Southern Store open in Solihull providing PADI courses and scuba diving equipment to the Solihull & Birmingham areas. This fully re-fitted store opened its doors in July 2002, after a very fraught self-building exercise. With the empire completed The Scuba + Outdoor Pursuits Centre’s now offer an-unrivalled Training and Retail service throughout The Midlands and Staffordshire, with as they say a “Once visited always remembered” philosophy …

We would like to say a big thank you to all our customers for their support over the past 10 years and look forward to providing you with the highest levels of service for many more years as Scuba + Outdoor continues to grow.