Happy Birthday Mark Laboccetta!

[Mark Laboccetta]

Thanks!

Hey fellow freedivers and hunters, I'm sorry for only seeing this now and thanks for the birthday reminder.

This is one of the first day's in a long time I've gotten to check out Deeper Blue (Thanksgiving). Hope everyone is well.

Will catch you all back up with some beautiful pictures from a few adventures in the last couple months that I haven't had a chance to share with you yet,

Clear waters and blue dreams!

[The Killer's me]

is it true??? Divers Do it deeper

[Mark Laboccetta]

Fellow diving fanatics, after reflecting on the posts and how most of you associate me with Omer naturally, I thought I'd shed share with you a bit of my personal experience working with the company, since as of my 29th birthday, it will be officially 10 years this year.

A lot of you are probably thinking that I'm really lucky to have such a great job as head of North America, Caribbean, and Central American representation of what is today, the world's largest producer of freediving equipment and spearguns. Oh I forgot to mention Bermuda too as part of my clients list Anyway, I am lucky I guess partly, but maybe ten years ago instead of lucky you would have thought of me more as crazy or a risk taker.

I was spearfishing 60ft since I was 13 and was addicted. In 1996-97' no one in the United States was serious about spearfishing and freediving. It is in large part thanks to the net today that the sport has evolved and grown with so much interest over the last decade. I was in college in Charleston, SC, and to make a long story short as far as this portion of the story goes, my sophomore year between swim meets ( I was on scholarship for D1 swimming) I used this wonderful medium of communication to discover that there were other spearfisherman who "didn't use tanks" and thought of spearfishing freediving more along the lines of a sport, rather than just a way to get fish. I encountered the likes of Terry Maas and (even Bill McIntyre from CA), Ron Mullins and other guys from the W coast and started reading about something called "blue water hunting".

Simultanously two guys from Florida and a girl who would later become good friends, and divers who endorse Omer products, Manny Puig the "sharkman" and Mark Rackley (cameraman for MTV's Jackass and Wild Boys Extreme Encounters...) were diving with a 19 year old girl named Mehgan Heaney Grier was one of the first to set a US freediving world record for women. The guys on the other hand, were shooting videos of spearfishing and Mark was filming Manny. Some of their early videos were in poor taste too I might add. Anyhow, I'm digressing too much here but so you know there were just a few factions of fanatics spread out in a few areas of the country, mainly in SE Florida, in Rhode Island and in California.

I was using Omer guns since I was 15 and for you European guys this era coincided with the legendary end of Jose Amengual of Spain and Renzo Mazzari of Italy's careers. Omer was then what a small speargun maker like say Daryl Wong here in America is today basically. C4 has just succesfully made his first carbon fins for Umberto Pelizzari's first succesful record attempts and marketed them to Omer.

Back to college, being trilingual and not seeing any of those specialized brands here and with a father who was and still is a self made entrepreneur I convinced him that we could bring this stuff in and I could sell it and market it and we could build a market for this stuff... I figured this sport would really catch on sooner or later and Americans would like the progress some of the top Italian companies had made in freediving and spearfishing specific equipment. I was in love with their products and they needed US distribution. So in 97' we founded Technosport. Omer was in a transition phase separating from Sporasub which was later bought by Mares (HEAD HTM Sports) and being bought out by a big European hand tool manufacturer named BETA (Snapon Tools #1 competitor) and so we basically thought "what the hell".

The first five years I basically tried to teach people that freediving and spearfishing were great alternatives to scuba hunting and it was rewarding and challenging. You guys don't know how many times I've been asked "why do you need such long fins?". It was basically like pulling teeth as stubborn retail dive shop owners only wanted to sell their bread and butter Scuba lines and weren't really to make a vested interest into "new trends" in the diving industry to quote most of their reactions. There was also a lot of resistance from the average Joe scuba diver who just thought it was "too hard". Especially going into the 9-11 period things sort of stalled many times and it was frustrating trying to figure out if I could ever carve a living from such a small sport. I wondered how much longer I would be spending time/years pulling teeth or if I should just go to grad school to pursue a "real" business career. Banks don't like to lend money to not so perfect balance sheets so you have to offer your house on collateral The growing pains of a small business are incredibly stressful and frustrating at times but I always believed in my sport, Omer's products, and my vision that many of you share from the excitement spearfishing freediving induces. Today I finally feel that after 5 years of strife and adversity, and five years of building a profitable business, Omer and spearfishing products are known in United States among freediving and spearfishing enthusiasts and I am starting to live a little bit of the dream I'd hope to one day see. My vision here in America is shared by the guys in Italy and we know that the only way to keep it alive is by making better products for spearfishing and freediving. C4 is my next big project and I hope to bring this great and specialized carbon fiber fin producer from Italy a nice share of market penetration sooner or later too. We're getting ready to launch a brand new Ecommerce site for C4 fins to help do their fins justice at better prices. Plus the Omer line of Cayman guns in 2007 I think will really get people talking about Omer guns and how they just keep getting better.

Clear waters and blue dreams.

[island_sands]

Mark
Reading your history etc, were you visiting Cayman Islands in 2002/2003? Now I think I met you either at the Skindiver Ball but was extremely ill very quickly that night or at the competition at Diver's Supply on West Bay Road...

[Marwan]

mark
RESPECT!!

[Murat]

happy birthday mate

You took risks but seems at the end you are the winner

[Mark Laboccetta]

Hey guys and gals and thanks for the nice words

Island_Sands I don't remember you because I never went to Grand Cayman unfortunately. I do know about Diver's Supply though as Dennis Mastry who runs it used to be one of our customers. So how's the bikini contest going this year, did you enter again to put on another strong showing ??? Been too busy with the new stuff, catalogs, websites and ordinary tasks to do much else on the net!

Clear waters, Mark

[island_sands]

Originally Posted by Mark Laboccetta

Hey guys and gals and thanks for the nice words

Island_Sands I don't remember you because I never went to Grand Cayman unfortunately. I do know about Diver's Supply though as Dennis Mastry who runs it used to be one of our customers. So how's the bikini contest going this year, did you enter again to put on another strong showing ??? Been too busy with the new stuff, catalogs, websites and ordinary tasks to do much else on the net!

Clear waters, Mark

I have entered a couple and promise not to chicken out this year