From Innovation to Outreach
During the product's early development, Wayne met with some close friends and associates in the diving business about the potential of the product. They all agreed that Supplied Air Snorkelling is much more than a product to be marketed - it's even more than a new product category. As Wayne relates it, "We all acknowledged in that meeting that the health of the world's oceans will soon become the responsibility of today's children. We all very clearly saw this product as a way to give kids access to and a better understanding of the beauty and importance of the marine environment. So we agreed to do two things with the product. First, we decided to turn the manufacturing and marketing of Supplied Air Snorkelling over to the major manufacturers in the diving industry. The diving industry has been looking for ways to get kids interested at a much younger age, and the major diving manufacturers can give the product maximum exposure and get it into the hands of as many kids as possible."

The diving industry is excited about Supplied Air Snorkelling, and not just because it can stimulate sales of masks, fins and other related products. More importantly, it will make kids more comfortable in the water, create a potentially large market of future scuba divers and provide resorts around the world a product that attracts the growing family travel market. At the retail level, Supplied Air Snorkelling can provide instructors with ways for kids to learn and have fun, for example, while their parents are in dive classes.

"The next thing we all decided was to use the income from sales and licensing agreements of the product to further educate kids about the oceans," says Wayne. With those goals in mind, the partners set up a nonprofit foundation called Oceans For Youth, assigned the patent and trademarks for Supplied Air Snorkelling to the foundation, and agreed that the income from sales and licensing of the product would fund the educational efforts of the foundation.

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