Mikes Dive Store

Mike’s London Dive Store may have been established for more than thirty years but its history goes back much further than that. It’s founder, big Mike Calder, was the super-salesman at a dive store in Fulham Palace Road in West London. A local lad who was larger in life than in so many ways, he was so successful at serving divers with the equipment that suited their needs best that people beat a path to his door from all over the country. Mike was a diver and he believed that if his customers were satisfied they’d return. He took the long view. He was eventually so successful that other dive shop owners even protested he was distorting the market. It was inevitable that he would set up in business for himself and with the help of a local friend started selling dive equipment from a warehouse at Richmond’s waterside. Eventually he moved the business to the more accessible premises it is in today. Mike was a giant of the UK’s diving industry in many more ways than one and all who knew him were shocked when he was suddenly taken from us long before his time, in 2009.