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Early sketches of the 35,000-square-foot Oso Climbing Gym coming soon to Dallas, Texas. Photo by Oso founder Chris Whittaker, sketches by architect Nick Dean, courtesy Vertical Solutions.
So, you want to own a climbing gym.
Are you well versed in the industry? Do you know how to formulate a business plan or how to seek investors and funding? Are you familiar with the do’s and don’ts of designing a usable and inviting space? How about finding a decent and sensible location for your facility? Do you know how you’ll protect your assets, or how you’ll defend yourself in potential lawsuits? Are you already thinking of opening day and programming, but forgetting about how you’ll train your route setting team? How will your business mitigate risk in an inherently risky industry? Which type of holds will you screw on your walls? What flooring and padding will you use? What is your plan for onboarding a trustworthy, dependable staff and ensuring your workplace is an attractive environment for new hires?
There are countless aspects to opening, owning and operating a climbing gym. There are even more for starting your own business – two endeavors that are extremely difficult. But, not impossible.
Perhaps you’re reading this while sitting in your cubicle, tired of the monotonous drone of nine-to-five life. Maybe you’re seeking an entrepreneurial adventure and indoor climbing is your journey’s mode of transportation. Or, possibly, you’re already a successful, lifelong businessperson who is wisely paying attention to the sport’s growth, and you want to cash in.
Either way, opening a climbing gym and starting a business always begins here: with an idea. Though, it seems you’ve already discovered it. And thankfully you arrived at the best place for kickstarting your crusade.
Friends and family gather for a wedding reception in 2018 held at The Front Climbing Club in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Understanding the Landscape
According to the SBA’s Office of Advocacy, only “about half of all establishments survive five years or longer,” meaning you have a 50-percent chance at success. But the climbing world is reaching new heights and it will continue to do so thanks to the sport’s upcoming Olympic debut and subsequent mainstream media attention. In the State of Climbing Report by the American Alpine Club, the Climbing Wall Association (CWA) estimates that the climbing gym industry will be worth $1 billion by 2021…$1 billion!
You could be looking at a lucrative and successful future should you be willing to put in the hard work and time necessary to build a business and own a climbing gym that you can call yours. But many challenges await on the road ahead. Funding your endeavor, formulating a business plan, finding a suitable location and surrounding yourself with bright, passionate and kindred spirits are your next steps. None are easy tasks.
It’s never too early to start preparing for these challenges. Go on, the clock is ticking.
A climber takes on one of the bouldering problems at The Front Climbing Club in Ogden, Utah.
Why Listen to Us?
So, why would you trust us at Vertical Solutions? Good question.
We don’t want to brag; we’re simply proud of our roots and our transformation. We have become one of the leading climbing gym builders in the United States since Dustin Buckthal and John Stack first founded our company in 2007. Since then, we have built over 100 gyms/projects.
Operating climbing gyms is in our DNA, too. Before founding Vertical Solutions, Dustin purchased Salt Lake City’s The Front Climbing Club with the help of “friends, family, fools” and a seller-carry. With a small but scrappy team, he operated the facility and learned valuable lessons as the years went by. Others eventually noticed the gym’s birch walls and wanted them in their facilities. This is what led to the creation of Vertical Solutions.
The aesthetic birch walls from Vertical Solutions at The Crag in Nashville, Tennessee.
After 13 years of business ownership, Dustin and John have grown from naïve entrepreneurs to climbing industry professionals with unparalleled expertise. They have since expanded into a vertically integrated company that includes Habit, Proxy Productions and Sugarhouse Holds. Each subdivision cranks out different products – including climbing holds, flooring and pads – designed to meet clients’ needs.
And through Vertical Solutions, Dustin utilizes his experience as a gym owner to guide clients through industry-leading consultations, which provide guidance for those who are on their own entrepreneurial path.
Climbing wall and flooring production specialists of Vertical Solutions and its subdivisions at work.
The Next Steps
An increased number of successful gyms helps strengthen the sport of indoor climbing and the entire industry. A stronger, larger industry means a better bottom line for everyone involved. So, we want to help as many people as possible.
If you’re not quite ready to immediately consult with us, then stay tuned! This is simply the first of many articles we’ll be releasing in our “Starting a Climbing Gym” article series. Over the next several months we’ll cover everything you’ll need to know in order to own a climbing gym of your own.
We’ll review business formation, the process for securing your project’s funding and financing, the importance of protecting your assets, how to find a proper location and facility, the do’s and don’ts of gym design, planning for opening day and much, much more.
And you won’t just be hearing this information from us! Throughout the series we’ll spotlight different clients that we’ve worked with in the past and showcase their proven, successful projects.
We cannot wait to begin the journey with you. We hope you’re excited, too.
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This story was paid for and produced by the sponsor and does not necessarily represent the views of the Climbing Business Journal editorial team.
Depiction of the soft-over-hard design of Composite-X’s Skuish holds. All images from Composite-X
By Noah Rezentes
Climbing holds have come a long way since the first holds shaped in clay hit the US market in the early 1980s. Polyester, polyurethane, wood, fiberglass and even aluminum holds now adorn the walls of climbing gyms around the globe. Digital 3D boulder problem scanning and 3-D hold printing are now in our vocabulary, and more experiments in the industry are underway.
Bulgaria-based Composite-X, one of the world’s largest climbing hold manufacturers, unveiled at the Halls & Walls 2019 trade show a new development in its climbing hold fleet called Skuish. Skuish holds are uniquely made with an outer rubber layer over a hardened core. The purpose of the design is simple: rather than your hand adapting to the rough surface of a hold, the surface of the hold deforms ever-so-slightly to your hand, providing a less abrasive texture and thus saving your skin.
“All projects start with experimenting in the lab and then proof of concept, but the idea was not randomly found…Rather, this was targeted,” says Daniel French, Founder & Executive Director of Composite-X, who has nearly 20 years of experience in climbing hold manufacturing. Skuish is the most recent addition to his list of developments at the company which includes the durable polyurethane called Dannomond as well as an upcoming sand-filled urethane called Dannolast.
Skuish holds on display at Halls & Walls 2019.
Since the two parts of Skuish holds are bonded tightly together during production, the holds can be bolted or screwed to a climbing wall as usual, and the soft backside of the holds reportedly decreases the likelihood of unwanted spinning.
Skuish holds are currently in a pre-release stage and not yet available for distribution,while the material undergoes additional testing. Stay tuned to the Composite-X Facebook page for updates.
“Our hope is to allow Skuish to go as far as it technically can — as is the case with all the projects we do at Composite-X,” concludes French.
Last week, professional climber Magnus Midtbø released a video on his popular YouTube channel profiling a new gym that he is opening in Kristiansand, Norway. The gym resides in a building that formerly housed a kids indoor adventure park with 57-foot-walls, ropes courses, a few climbing walls, and other features. While touring the space in the video, Midtbø noted a collection of TRUBLUE auto belays that appear to have remained in the facility as leftovers from the kids adventure park. Stopping at one auto belay, Midtbø said, “There are a lot of accidents with the TRUBLUEs.” Midtbø went on to assert that “people actually start climbing without being clipped in,” and explained how another gym that he owns, in Oslo, opted to make its auto belay gate larger, “so that people wouldn’t start climbing without being clipped in.”
It was Midtbø’s specific citing of “a lot of accidents” in regards to the TRUBLUE brand that made us at CBJ curious to dig deeper. So, we promptly reached out to Chris Koske, the Vice President of Marketing at Head Rush Technologies, which owns TRUBLUE, to check the validity of Midtbø’s statement (comments begin at 00:05:58 in the video below).
“With all due respect to Magnus, I think it was a flippant comment,” Koske told CBJ. “While we are aware of climbers free soloing and falling on rare occasion, to say that auto belays are dangerous is preposterous.”
Koske offered some statistics, saying that there are over 1 billion climbs on TRUBLUE auto belays per year around the world, and that there are more than 30,000 TRUBLUE auto belay devices currently “in the field,” meaning at gyms, adventure parks, and other climbing walls in more than 60 countries. “Proper signage, orientation and operational precautions are necessary with our product, just like any other orientation to a climbing facility,” Koske added.
TRUBLUE also happens to be the only auto belay tested to meet the European CE (EN 341:2011 Class 1A) standards, according to Koske; without such designation, a product can be removed from the European Union market. And Koske pointed out that TRUBLUE devices are tested to 10-times the requisite CE standard. Such certifications are posted on the TRUBLUE/Head Rush Technologies website.
Yet, aside from the TRUBLUE brand, specifically, would it be accurate to say that there are a lot of accidents with auto belays, in general?
In a word, no. At the Climbing Wall Association Summit last year, representatives from the athletics insurance company Monument Sports gave a presentation in which climbing incidents were broken down according to the various climbing disciplines: While bouldering accounted for 77 percent of the total reported incidents for a period of time that spanned 2014-2018, auto belays accounted for only 5 percent. (Top rope climbing also accounted for 5 percent, and lead climbing accounted for 7 percent.)
To be clear, CBJ’s overarching intention here is not to “call out” Midtbø. It was obviously a passing comment and CBJ’s inquiry should not be taken as a personal affront. But at the same time, Midtbø’s video currently has more than 300,000 views, meaning that a lot of people have been informed by it. CBJ feels an obligation to seek truth, accuracy, and clarification whenever climbing industry statistics are being cited.
USA Climbing recently inked a multi-year partnership with the outdoor brand YETI. YETI is perhaps best known as the maker of insulated coolers, tumblers, and other beverageware. As a result of the deal, YETI becomes the organization’s “Official Sustainability Partner”.
The initial large-scale integration of the YETI brand into USA Climbing will be as the first title sponsor for the upcoming Bouldering Open National Championship. The championship, which will begin on January 31, will thus be known as the 2020 YETI Bouldering Open National Championship.
In the press release carrying the announcement, “providing critical support for the US National Team” was identified as a benefit of the partnership, which comes two months before the international climbing season begins and six months before the Olympics in Tokyo.
USA Climbing’s CEO, Marc Norman, said, “We are absolutely thrilled to partner with YETI. Not only are the products and brand’s commitment to sustainability and reducing single-use plastic perfectly aligned with our community’s needs and lifestyle, but their coolers and drinkware will also play a key role in keeping our athletes hydrated as we compete in Tokyo’s hot and humid conditions.”
The Vice President of Consumer Marketing at YETI, Bill Neff, added, “We love how [climbing] continues to be introduced to more and more people and we’re excited to help support that growth while working to reduce single-use plastic.”
Other brands currently partnering with USA Climbing include The North Face, Butora, Petzl, Clif Bar & Company, Gnarly Nutrition, and many others.
Isaac Caldiero on American Ninja Warrior (Las Vegas Finals). Photo by David Becker/NBC
Synergy Climbing and Ninja Chattanooga, TN
Specs: This new facility is a revamped and expanded version of the Tennessee Bouldering Authority, a popular Chattanooga gym that has been in existence since the year 2000 with 3,000-square-feet of “indoor rock climbing walls and dedicated training space.”
Synergy Climbing and Ninja is a collaborative effort between legendary climber Lisa Rands and American Ninja Warrior champion Isaac Caldiero. As the gym transitions from being Tennessee Bouldering Authority (TBA) to Synergy, it will “preserve TBA’s original character and dedicated training space.” In fact, a “TBA training zone” will be modeled after the original TBA space to provide climbers with a familiar climbing area and training boards. The facility will also feature a ninja obstacle zone designed by Caldiero, a fitness area, yoga room and cafe.
Lisa Rands on Crimp Ladder at the Way Lake area of California. Photo courtesy of Wills Young
In Their Words: “We’re really excited to team up with TBA, Chattanooga’s original and most respected climbing gym. We’ll have a bigger space but preserve the awesome routesetting and sense of community that makes TBA such a great place to train. It’s also amazing to work with our long-time friend, Isaac Caldiero, to bring his vision of an authentic ninja gym to our home city.” —Lisa Rands
Le Crux Laval concept art. Image provided by Le Crux
Le Crux Laval, Quebec, Canada
Specs: 17,000-square-foot facility will feature 10,000 square feet of bouldering terrain. Other amenities will include a gear shop and a training area with weights, campus boards, two hydraulic walls (Kilter and Tension), and other accoutrements. The floorplan will also include workspace, according to the gym’s co-propriétaire, Jean-François M. Carrier: “There will be a lot of students nearby, so we’re going to have a student or professional area with coffee and bistro snacks, tables and work spaces with Wi-Fi. It will be for students and professionals who want to come in, get some coffee, finish their work, and then go climb.”
The gym in Laval (which is the third largest city in Quebec province) will be the second Le Crux facility. The first Le Crux is located in the Boisbriand region of Montreal; it was a revamped version of a gym that originally opened in 1998 called Action Directe. The Le Crux climbing team based out of the Boisbriand gym is one of the most decorated in Quebec, having been cited as the best provincial team (and more recently the best youth team) for several years in a row. The new Le Crux location in Laval will continue to have a competition and team training focus, while also appealing to the casual and student base.
Bouldering at Le Crux’s Boisbriand location; youth team banners adorning the walls. Bouldering photos by Nicolas Verstraelen
Walls and Flooring: Delire CRM Software: Rock Gym Pro Website: lecrux.com Instagram: @lecrux.escalade
In Their Words: “The new gym will be in the center of Laval’s downtown. It will be a 10-minute walk from one of the biggest metro stations connecting to Montreal. It will be close to a popular college called Collège Montmorency, and the University of Montreal has a campus [in Laval] too. It is going to be well-placed. So we’ll have two gyms—the biggest bouldering gym on the North Shore of Montreal at Laval, and the only all-around rock climbing center on the North Shore of Montreal [with the Boisbriand location].” —Jean-François M. Carrier, Co-Propriétaire
Rock Gym Pro (RGP), the popular customer management and point of sales software for climbing gyms, announced in a January update that it now has an application programming interface (API). The API enables gyms using RGP to connect their activity in the RGP software with external marketing services.
Already, the API works with Zapier, an integrations platform that automates actions between web applications. Gyms can now set-up the sending of “events” in RGP – such as check-ins or bookings for a specific facility or customer – to Zapier which then trigger actions within 3rd party applications like Google Docs, MailChimp and others. Identified examples of use include managing a list of active members in RGP within another system or automatically sending new guest details to an email campaign or SMS messaging system.
“We’re super excited about the Zapier integration,” says Andy Laakmann, Founder/Developer of RGP. “We’ve had a number of gyms request a way to connect RGP data with apps they use outside of RGP…It will be fun to watch how our savvy customers put this tool to use.”
Kristin Horowitz, COO of The Pad Climbing in San Luis Obispo, California says, “The integration will save us hundreds of hours over the course of the year and give us a much better picture of our operations across every single touchpoint with potential and existing members…The less ‘busy work’ someone has to do to produce results, the happier they are – and everyone at The Pad Climbing is pretty happy.”
The first iteration of the API will be read-only, meaning gyms will not be able to alter their records inside RGP through these applications. The RGP newsletter carrying the latest updates confirmed the company plans to develop “more robust capabilities” in the future, following further feedback from its clients.
One of those capabilities currently in development is using the API to offer climbing gyms 24/7 door access and turnstile entrance management, a project which Laakmann confirms is coming soon.
“The basic read-only API released in this latest update is really just the foundation for bigger things to come,” continues Laakmann. “We’ll be gathering feedback in the coming months to see how gyms want to use it – the possibilities are almost endless!”
The annual gathering for climbing gym industry professionals, which is the largest of its kind in North America, is scheduled to kick-off on May 11, 2020.
The CWA Summit, hosted by the Climbing Wall Association, will consist of pre-conference workshops to begin the week, followed by a keynote speech and a welcome party on May 13. Roundtable discussions and panel talks continue throughout the remainder of the week, as well as product presentations. Topics to be discussed this year include gym development and management, routesetting, competition, training and gym member inclusion.
The CWA Summit will be held at the Embassy Suites in Loveland, Colorado. Click here for more information and to sign-up to attend, the registration price goes up February 1st.
Behind the Desk…is an ongoing series that interviews people influencing and advancing the climbing industry in gyms around the country. This time CBJ explores one of the largest collections of gyms in the country, Touchstone, and talks to one of the key persons behind the company’s community engagement and ongoing stewardship efforts.
Touchstone Climbing’s Mailee Hung bouldering at the gym. Photo by Outpost Digital Cinema
Name: Mailee Hung Title: Director of Communications and Community Engagement, Touchstone Climbing Location: California
CBJ: Please tell me a little bit about your climbing background and how you found your way to the Touchstone family?
HUNG: I grew up in the California Bay Area and was introduced to climbing through a friend in high school. He brought it up as a fun thing to do after school one day and I was like, “Whose birthday party is it?” We ended up driving 30 minutes nearly every day that year to hit the closest climbing gym.
I more or less gave up on gym climbing in undergrad, but after I graduated I started bouldering outside at Castle Rock State Park near Santa Cruz, California. That’s when I really fell in love with it. A couple years later I got into grad school in San Francisco and applied to work the front desk at Dogpatch Boulders. I worked there part-time while I earned my Master’s. After I finished grad school Touchstone hired me on full-time as their copywriter. The rest is history!
CBJ: Your official title is Director of Communications and Community Engagement. That’s fairly unique, meaning it’s not a formal role that many other gyms have. So, what does it mean, and how do its duties differ from those of, say, a typical gym manager?
HUNG: Touchstone managers are all pretty self-sufficient, but it is a lot to run a gym. The director roles exist to support all of our managers in various capacities. Community engagement is one of our core values—we’re a company full of climbers who all know firsthand how transformative rock climbing can be, so it’s a priority for all of us to try and make it as accessible as we can.
Part of my job is to help managers identify groups in their neighborhoods that could be good to work with, help them stay engaged in their local communities, and share ideas and resources. At our corporate office we’re a pretty tight team with a fair amount of job overlap, so we’re able to collaborate and come up with company-wide or big-ticket events, like our Pride Month celebrations, Access Fund or stewardship fundraisers, the Woman Up Climbing Festival, etc.
CBJ: Your previous title was Outreach and Communications Director. What are some keys to community engagement —or “outreach”—that might be unique to a climbing gym?
HUNG: Climbing gyms are amazing conduits to the outdoors because they give people an opportunity to gain skills they can use outside (if they want!) while remaining really logistically accessible—you don’t have to leave the city to climb anymore. And I’m sure I don’t need to wax poetic here about how great climbing is for physical and mental fitness, emotional regulation, fear management, confidence, and so on, for people climbing at every level. It’s just such an amazing activity that really can benefit anyone.
Hung using her bouldering skills outside. Photo provided by Hung
But I think we need to be conscientious of how climbing looks to people currently outside of the community. While cost is a barrier to entry for some, the bigger issue tends to be the perception of climbing and climbing culture. I like to compare it to polo. Someone can tell you that polo is totally life-changing and they’ll give you a horse and all the gear and teach you how to play…but I mean, can you see yourself getting into polo? There’s a difference between accessibility and inclusion. So when we’re introducing new climbers to our gyms, we try to be cognizant of ‘soft’ barriers that go beyond just being unfamiliar with the activity.
As a side note, we are moving away from the term “outreach,” since it can connote an uneven power dynamic where one party expects the other to conform or assimilate rather than an equal exchange. We now prefer “community engagement,” but given that “outreach” is so entrenched in the lexicon we’re trying to balance embracing new terms while keeping our programs easy to learn about and find via search engines.
CBJ: One aspect of Touchstone’s communication is its breadth of social media—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube—all of which are quite active. What’s the secret to maintaining such substantial social media? Does that all fall onto your shoulders, or is there a whole communications team?
HUNG: No secret, just our incredible Marketing Director and Graphic Designer, Heather Bellgreen! She’s the mastermind behind our social media presence. She’ll task me with specific duties and I’ll do most of the marketing copy (and the gyms are largely responsible for managing their own social media), but for the most part if we’re doing anything right marketing-wise I’d say it’s all her!
I think people have this idea that Touchstone is this massive operation, but it’s really not. There are like nine of us at the office and that’s it. But we’re a really tight team, so I’d like to believe that some of that impression comes from us working so well together.
Hung posing for a snap at one of Touchstone’s holiday party events. Photo provided by Hung
CBJ: Touchstone is getting ready to open a new facility, Pacific Pipe. What will that opening entail in your role, specifically?
HUNG: Part of my role is assessing demographic gaps in gym participation. Moving into a historically Black neighborhood when climbing is still perceived as a sport primarily for white people means that we’re working to be part of the community and not be seen as some weird, niche facility. That includes being particularly mindful of our context and communicative with local schools, neighborhood groups, and community organizations. The same theory applies to all of our locations, but these relationships are all conversations held over time—my role will be helping Pacific Pipe to stay engaged in the neighborhood and recognize opportunities for collaboration and coalition-building.
CBJ: Can you give any advice to other gyms that might read this and want to adopt a role for a Community Engagement director in their facility? What would a job announcement for such a role look like?
HUNG: I think that every gym should emphasize community-centric work—an environment that promotes equity and inclusivity is supportive for everyone, and climbing (like all things) thrives with a greater variety of people in it! Your gyms will be more appealing to a broader audience, and really cool connections can happen between members and partner organizations.
In terms of what a job announcement might look like, that’s kind of hard to say. I think there are a number of effective ways to approach community engagement, and my way is by no means necessarily the best. It might be better to frame it in terms of candidate qualities. Someone who would do well in this type of role would have really clear communication skills and a lot of tenacity and compassion. The goal isn’t getting people to try climbing once and then it’s all on them to come back or not, the goal is to change perceptions—of both the climbers and the gym. You want someone who can relate to the specificities of your location as well as the context of your community partners and prospective members.
CBJ: Touchstone, as a brand, has a lot of locations—Dogpatch and Mission Cliffs in San Francisco, Berkeley Ironworks and Sacramento Pipeworks, Diablo, Metalmark, Cliffs of Id…how do you maintain a wide Touchstone community that encompasses all those gyms? Or, is it more about creating a community and an identity for each individual facility?
HUNG: It’s a little bit of both, I think. All of our gyms are really unique in themselves and we give them the freedom to grow and evolve as they will—we don’t try to control them from the top down. But I also think that our members recognize that they’re part of a bigger community that shares their values and priorities. It is a lot like family—maybe you don’t see each other much or watch the same TV shows, but you always have a place to crash and people who’ve got your back.
Got a cool story? Tell us!
Do you know somebody who works in the climbing industry and would be good to profile in a Behind the Desk segment? (Or, do you work in the industry and have a personal background that you think others would enjoy learning about?) If so, please contact us and tell us about it!
