The Business of Throwing People from Planes

I was coerced into going skydiving while I was spending a weekend in Queenstown quite recently, and though the jumping out of a plane thing was a pleasure, the branding of modern skydiving companies is somehow even more impressive.

Consider all the hurdles a company like the one I used needs to jump (no pun intended) in order to reach a potential customer and turn them into a paying, proselytizing, repeat client.

There’s the chance that you might die, for instance. Many people consider skydiving a risk not worth taking. I mean, seriously, if you’re going to die, why not peacefully in your sleep? Or having sex with someone much more attractive than you? Or, I don’t know, doing anything except slamming into the ground at terminal velocity?

This biggy goes along with other stigmas, like the fear of heights and fear of flying, to create one super-fear, capable of scaring most sane people away without even starting the pitch.

There are also many expenses that go along with running a safe and secure skydiving operation that must be accounted for. How do you justify charging a premium on throwing people out of a plane? How do you make a solid enough profit to distinguish yourself from all the other throwing-people-out-of-planes businesses out there (especially in Queenstown, the high-risk activity capital of the world)?

Here’s what they do.

Most skydiving companies embrace the fear. They’ve created an entire industry around being a badass. They’re comfortable saying ‘this isn’t for everyone, it’s for people who aren’t pansies.’

This posturing and reposition of the ‘death problem’ has had a huge impact on the industry, and allowed these companies to make their clients sign any number of forms waving their rights to sue and emerge from the experience in full, working order, all in the name of being hardcore.

So that’s how they got the fear thing under control, but how about the money? Doesn’t it cost a ridiculous amount to hire experienced people, fly them around all day, pack and repack parachutes (good parachutes, hopefully), etc?

Yes it does. And they’ve handled this little quandary by offering up personalized memorabilia from your few hours of being a badass.

You know those photos you can buy after riding a particularly startling roller coaster? You know, the ones they snap right as you’re at the most uncomfortable part of the ride? Yeah, they have those for skydiving, except they’re a bit more intense than that.

Essentially, you can order a set of photos and/or a video DVD of your skydiving experience before you head out to the airstrip to go up and jump out. If you do so, another person will jump with you, and this person will be loaded up with whatever camera/camcorder materials they need to capture your adventure, from your initial briefing, to getting suited up, to landing.

They then take this footage and slap it into some templates they’ve got pre-built, and voila, instant multimedia package.

The packages they sell are the real money makers, because although a premium jump costs upward of $400 and getting a DVD only costs $180, thy skydiving itself comes with a whole lot of overhead that needs to be handled, and I would imagine that their income from that is almost nothing. The $180, on the other hand, is almost pure profit, with a chunk taken out to pay the photographer/videographer for their time, but the rest is automated. The video uploads automatically, the DVD is all set up an ready to go (with a whole lot of stock-footage and advertisement filler), and all they have to do is hand it to you to make their money.

So here’s the question: is there something negative about your industry that you can flip around and turn into a positive? Further, is there any service that you can offer to your clients/customers that would supplement your current offerings, but bring in a whole lot more profit?

Update: December 11, 2016

I totally paid for the DVD. I figured if I was going to do the thing, I might as well have moving pictures of me doing the thing and looking ridiculous while doing it. And I did look ridiculous, but also surprisingly calm.





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