Black Diamond Gets Into The Shoe Market

Black Diamond Equipment®, a global leader of innovative active outdoor performance equipment and apparel, today introduced its Spring 2018 climbing collection, including the debut of the brand’s first line of climbing shoes. The collection also includes stretchable, breathable rain apparel and new trekking poles in its Distance Z-Pole Series, with improved rapid deployment technology. For its debut in the climbing shoe category, Black Diamond introduced Engineered Knit Technology, which provides stretch where necessary, support where it matters most and exceptional breathability for unparalleled comfort. Knit Technology is featured throughout the complete line of climbing shoes, beginning with Momentum, a shoe that utilizes the technology for a breathable upper refined for gym climbing. “When we put our heads together on the design of these shoes, we wanted to blend the tradition of old world European hand craftsmanship for making climbing shoes with the technology of Asia’s modern manufacturing processes and material know-how,” said Kasey Jarvis, Black Diamond Equipment’s vice-president of design. Black Diamond’s NeoFriction rubber – inspired by its forging processes from carabiner manufacturing – is molded, rather than being cut from one sheet of rubber consisting of the same thickness. Shoes will feature rubber and rands built for durability and optimized for consistency, enhancing overall performance and grip, varying by style. Each mold has been individually created to fit together – unlike the trace, trim and hand-grind method of other manufacturers. Black Diamond’s entry into the climbing shoe market will consist of nine models with neutral, moderate, slightly downturned and aggressively down-turned lasts. Of the nine models, three are women’s specific with one children’s model.

Stuck In KC Climbing Gym Elevator

The Cave Bouldering gym in Kansas City sits 10 stories underground. Last week, eighteen people were on their way down for an evening session when their elevator suddenly stopped and they had to be rescued. Walt Clements, acting president and CEO of Dean Realty Co., the company that owns the business park where The Cave is located, told FOX 4 TV station that the group was making its way down to The Cave Bouldering Gym on the bottom level when they became trapped. Clements believes user error is what caused that to happen. Posted next to the elevator is a sign that reads no more than 6-riders are allowed at once. Kansas City firefighters said they were told that three people were unconscious, but when crews arrived, they rescued 18 people, who were brought one at a time up a ladder, and given cold water and oxygen. “The heat can take over pretty quick and you may have some heat cramps, heat strokes, things like that, and that`s what we start getting in dangers of,” KCFD Battalion Chief James Garrett said.

A Profile: Chris Danielson

Danielson at the CATS bouldering gym in Boulder, CO. Photo: Caroline Treadway
By Abree Murch From holds and walls to setting World Cup competitions, there are very few parts of the climbing world Chris Danielson hasn’t touched. Though perhaps most well-known for his work with USA Climbing, he is well aware that his path through the climbing world is a convoluted one. “I have friends that I’ve climbed with for a long time and if you asked them what I do, they probably wouldn’t be able to answer,” he laughs. Danielson has one of the most impressive resumes of anyone working in the indoor climbing industry; most international World Cups set, International Chief Routesetter, former Chair of the USAC Routesetting Committee and now administrator of the routesetting clinic program, USAC Rules Committee, designer of national competition bouldering walls, served on several CWA committees, climbing gym start-up consultant, and last but not least is the sales rep of several major hold brands. But for a guy known more in the plastic world, he got his start on the rock of Colorado.

Getting His Start

Danielson grew up in the woods of upstate New York, but was introduced to climbing at the age of fifteen through an Outward Bound trip in Colorado. He learned the basics of top roping in the San Juan mountains and brought them home, where he and his friends made do with what local climbing they had. “We were running around, finding whatever spots we could outdoors,” Danielson explains. “We’d go to Blockbuster video late at night because it had a cobblestone exterior wall and rent some movies, and then after they closed we’d just spend some time climbing on this fake cobblestone wall, making things up.” Danielson credits these late-night escapades with awakening his interest in routesetting, and his first real job in the climbing industry followed shortly after. While attending Miami University of Ohio, he began working at the school’s newly-built climbing wall. There he expanded his own climbing skills, learning to lead climb and then boulder at the Red River Gorge and Hueco Tanks, respectively. “Without that school program, I probably wouldn’t do any of the things I do,” Danielson concedes. “I think routesetting is a thing you learn on your own no matter what you do. There might be some foundation that you can give, but really the way you learn is through practice and maybe a bit of mentorship.”
Danielson (center left) setting for the Boulder, CO Lead World Cup. Photo: Caroline Treadway.
When school ended, without any job prospects, Danielson decided to move out to Colorado with some friends. He had some construction experience and when he came across an ad in the paper for a job building climbing walls with Eldorado Wall Company, he decided to apply. “I went in on a Friday to interview with Eldo walls and left on a Monday to drive out to New Jersey to build the New Jersey Rock Gym,” Danielson recalls. “I did that for a year and a half and that definitely got me a good bit of experience in the industry.” He also worked at the Boulder Rock Club as a setter and started gaining exposure to bigger competitions. Though his setting skills were developing at this point, Danielson decided to go a different way. In 2000 he took a detour into academia and completed a year-long accelerated Master’s program in philosophy, religion, and anthropology in Chicago. Afterwards he moved around the east coast, pursuing opportunities in the social sciences in New York, Washington DC, and Boston.

Useful Experience

Yet all the while Danielson still had a foot in the climbing world. In DC, he worked briefly for SportRock Climbing Centers as a setter and head coach. When he moved up to Boston a year or two later for a part-time research internship at Harvard, he was brought on as the head setter at MetroRock, the newest gym in the area. “It was a big new gym and I had to do some routesetting planning,” Danielson says. “I had to figure out who else was going to be setting and how to manage the rotation of the routes. I eventually realized that they didn’t order as many holds as they needed. While I was doing that as their employee, I realized through the process of going in and talking to the owners about the operational aspects of the gym, that I might actually have something to offer people who are just starting gyms.”
Danielson always rocks the style. Photo: Matt Hulet
Danielson was also referred to the owners of the Rock Club in New Rochelle, New York. “I knew I didn’t want to live in New York, so I thought, ‘Okay, what can I do to help?’ We simultaneously proposed that I would consult for them in some way. I didn’t know what that would look like and I think he just recognized that he could use some help and didn’t have staff people in place that knew the things he wanted to know in the early stages of starting the gym,” Danielson said. This opened his eyes to another possible line of work in the climbing world: “Those two experiences with those two gyms in particular, along with all of the others, led me to realize that I have a bunch of useful experience around the climbing industry.”

A Bricolage of Work

Near the end of 2005, Danielson was living in Rochester after spending time in Boston and New York. He was approached by eGrips to see if he’d be interested in selling climbing holds. “I had no idea about it,” Danielson explains. “I had no idea that was even a job – and it wasn’t really a job for most people at the time. But it was an opportunity to sell something that I thought was cool and work in the climbing world.” He moved back to Colorado to take the position as an independent sales rep with eGrips. In addition, Danielson remodeled homes and took a part-time job with USA Climbing, bringing him back into the world of competitive climbing. “I’ve always cobbled together a sort of bricolage of work around climbing and indoor climbing, and that’s what my world is today,” Danielson surmises. He currently serves as a chair of the USA Climbing Rules Committee and administers the routesetting training program, in addition to continuing his work as a sales rep for a number of climbing-related brands and a consultant for new gyms: “Most of the time, I’ll work with someone over the course of anywhere from a month to a year or two years as their project grows, since climbing gyms take a long time to start up.”

Looking Ahead

After spending so much time in so many different sectors of the industry, Danielson has had a front-row seat to the explosive growth climbing has been experiencing. “I think the curve is a healthy one, as you reflect on the industry itself,” he observes. “And then there’s just small trends within that – though I’m not sure I’d call them trends as much as burgeoning developments. For example, we’ve seen the consistent growth of the bouldering gym model. And mere feet away from The Spot, you have ABC, which is a kid-centric, gymnastics model climbing gym. Or gyms like the Vital Gyms, which are generally smaller 24/7 gyms that are built as lower-cost startups but they have multiple facilities.” Danielson has also noted other aspects of growth that are more product-specific. “There’s a general pattern of professionalization of what thirty years ago was a fun, private recreational industry for its practitioners,” he notes. “People really care about what they’re offering. They want to cultivate the experience. The ambiance is there with every other aspect of the climbing gym – the lighting, the flooring, the interior design. All of those are constantly evolving as part of the general pattern of growth.”
Danielson testing moves at Climbers Rock. Photo: Jeremy Nathan
In terms of competition, Danielson takes a pragmatically optimistic view now that the Olympics are on the horizon. “I’m open-minded in terms of what I think is going to happen with the Olympics,” he says. “In terms of the actual implications, I’m simultaneously open and really comfortable with being kind of naive about it.” An avid sports fan in general, Danielson approaches the Olympics from the standpoint of what’s interesting about sports. “You can’t imagine how it doesn’t make something more interesting when you have the Olympics come into the equation. Now, interesting doesn’t necessarily always mean good – it’ll probably mean pros and cons,” he said. But he doesn’t see these challenges as inherently negative. “The Olympics, as long as it’s presented in a positive light and what’s presented represents the sport well, could be a great thing.” In terms of how the Olympics might affect his business, Danielson predicts growth consistent with the long-term pattern seen thus far in the industry. However, he does take interest in the fact that climbing is the youngest of the five sports being introduced in Tokyo in 2020. “There’s a chance that because it’s the newest of the new sports for the audience, it could have a greater impact in terms of what happens in the global marketplace of climbing. But I don’t know. I’m intrigued by it, excited by it, but I’m not foolish enough to think that it won’t come with a bunch of hard questions for the sport of climbing or implications for what you’d call the soul of climbing.” Danielson’s own philosophy on this soul of climbing doesn’t seem to be one that’s easily swayed by changes in the industry, Olympic or otherwise. For him, movement is movement. “If you take change with an open-minded approach, that climbing can be for people what they’d like to make it be – and at the core of it, it’s moving over a wall, and the fluidity, beauty, and technical facets of that movement – then wherever it goes, it can be good.”

World’s First “Climbing Window”

A view from the inside of the new “Climbing Window”. Photo: TwentyTwo Cover Images
Climbing walls have been showing up in corporate headquarters for years but a new London skyscraper is taking that idea to a whole new level. The developers of a new 62-story skyscraper, 125 meters (410 feet) have added a climbing wall within a window as the centerpiece of a new workspace. The building, dubbed Twentytwo clocks in with 1.275 million square feet of office space for a mix of small and large businesses, as well as start-ups. It will be among the tallest buildings in the capital’s financial district when it is developed. ‘We recognize the role of the office has changed, with workplaces now needing to do so much more than simply accommodate people,’ Sir Stuart Lipton, partner at Lipton Rogers Developments told CNN. The scheme will contain a workspace for 12,000 people, as well as a food market, ‘innovation hub’, well-being retreat and spa, a gym, cycle hub and the city’s highest free public viewing gallery. Don’t dust off your climbing shoes just yet though – it’s not scheduled for completion until summer 2019.

VR Helps With Fear Of Heights

You may think that your climbing gym can help people get over their fear of heights but technology is proving to be even more successful. Six University of Washington students have developed a virtual reality (VR) rock climbing game to study how users experience the fear of heights and help them get over it. The game incorporates three levels of rock climbing, increasing in difficulty according to Geek Wire. The first level is a simple procedure of climbing from one block to another without being stuck in one place. The second level includes different elevations and mountains to climb through, making it easier for the user to fall down. The third level involves challenging swinging techniques needed to reach to the top of the climbing wall. “Most of the participants said it was really immersive, in the sense that they were actually feeling like they were climbing a mountain,” said project developer and video producer Jeewon Ha. “The gap between level two and three was so big that barely anyone passed through level three,” said Ha. Once a user is no longer able to grab onto the rocks, they feel the sensation of falling down, which ends the game. “Most people avoid the thing they’re afraid of,” Dr. Hunter Hoffman, Director of the Virtual Reality Research Center at the Human Photonics Lab at the University of Washington said. “The nice thing about virtual reality is that people are more willing to go closer to their fears.” “Therapists use experiences like this to help with phobia of heights, water, and other exposure therapies,” game designer Muhammad Hussain said. “When you think of immersive experiences, you think of virtual reality. It kind of speaks for itself.”

Partnership Closes Outdoor Loop

By Michaela Cloud Two companies that both began with outdoor climbing have partnered with a single, unified vision: build better climbing communities and get outdoors. Momentum Indoor Climbing formed over 10 years ago next to a REI store in Sandy, Utah. Today, Momentum carries the state with three immense climbing gyms. This year, the indoor climbing brand will take its first large step of expansion into the Lone Star state alongside well-renowned outdoor retailer REI. Momentum is in the midsts of opening two modern climbing facilities in the Houston area. Inside these gyms, REI is creating an entirely new concept, which they have branded REI Co-op Climb. REI Co-op Climb will be an actual full-service REI climbing pro-shop located within both of Momentum’s new gyms. Although the shops are approximately 500 square feet, the company is utilizing every inch to give customers firsthand access to a wide array of equipment, yoga essentials, training gear, and more. The shop incorporates everything REI has to offer, including the REI membership program — dividends included — and the REI Outdoor School. In late July, Momentum’s first Texas gym will open in Katy, 25 miles west of downtown Houston. Momentum Katy will be a fully equipped climbing gym with 36,000 square feet of climbing surface. Momentum Silver Street, the company’s second Texas location, will be an all-inclusive bouldering establishment. Located in the Washington Avenue Arts District near the heart of downtown Houston, Momentum Silver Street will amount to over 40,000 square feet of climbing terrain, making it one of the largest bouldering gyms in the world. Momentum and REI will work together to give climbers the most complete experience possible. Not only will climbers have direct access to a high-end store, but they will also receive direct access to indoor and outdoor clinics, events, weekend camping and climbing trips to Austin, and more through the REI Outdoor School. Momentum Katy and Silver Street will be teaching selected indoor climbing clinics.

Closing the Outdoor Gap

Momentum CEO Jeff Pedersen says that over the years, his team has built a successful climbing school that focuses on creating all-around great climbers, indoors and out. But he still felt like there was something missing. “The thing that we don’t have a lot of bandwidth for is to really close the loop for new climbers by directly sharing our inspiration for this business—which is outdoor climbing,” Pederson told CBJ. Pedersen says the new partnership will allow the two companies to work closely together to create distinct, well-integrated outdoor offerings and at the same time, allow Momentum to keep doing what it has always done in the indoor space. Pedersen, of course, believes that this partnership is good for his business, but also for the local community. “Partnering with REI and having a streamlined way to get folks outdoors is incredible for Houston customers to have access to,” Pederson explained. The partnership has been in the works for years. Nearly four years ago, Momentum’s expansion team began researching the Houston market. Through internal conversations, it was known throughout the industry that Houston was up and coming, and as an underserved area, stood out as an appealing new-gym market to Momentum. Soon, an opportunity arose with a local Houston climber named Rees Williams. Williams initially reached out to Momentum about building a facility of his own in the Houston metro area. Soon, the Momentum team began making trips to Houston and almost instantaneously, a bond formed. “Our initial foray into the market was also the beginning of a great relationship with a local climber who has the requisite background and experience in management to take on, really, our biggest project yet, which is the Katy full-service gym opening in July,” Pederson said about Williams. This summer, Williams will head Momentum Katy as the gym’s general manager.
A recent big wall photo shoot at Momentum Millcreek. A good partner is key. Photo: Momentum

Finding the Perfect Partner

While Momentum was making its way into Houston, REI was waiting for the right move to get into the indoor climbing industry. It all depended on the perfect partner. Pedersen and REI CEO Jerry Stritzke met briefly at the Winter Outdoor Retailer show in Salt Lake City in 2016. Soon after, John Sheppard, REI’s Divisional Vice President of Experiential Programs & New Ventures, reached out to Pedersen and the two began discussing a potential partnership. Sheppard began making trips to Momentum’s facilities and met the rest of Momentum team. Through these trips, Sheppard was able to fully grasp Momentum’s concept and vision, and believed the partnership with Momentum would be an excellent fit. “I think Jeff had the best insight into the industry. Their brand and values really lined up with ours so it struck up really good conversations about long-term, how we could work together,” Sheppard said. Both Pedersen and Sheppard have an aligned strategy and vision for the partnership and where the climbing industry is headed. “John and I are the gray-haired guys of this thing,” Pederson said of the commonalities and instant connection between the two teams. “He’s got a young team, I’ve got a young team. It’s really been wonderful to see the way that our teams have hit it off on this thing as well. It’s a very natural fit, I think. This was felt from both sides as we started working together.” The partnership is a long-term deal for the Katy and Silver Street gyms. Although it’s too early to make any concrete plans for the future, John Sheppard isn’t shy to talk about his aspirations for the two companies. He clarifies that although the Houston market was the initial plan, the transactional nature between the two companies has both teams thinking more. “We were looking to partner with somebody who could have large expansion possibilities that mirror REI’s own footprint,” Sheppard said. “We were looking for companies who had the expertise, the business structure, and the financial backing to do that.”

Looking Forward

While the companies are optimistic about future plans, both are hesitant to retrofit REI Co-op Climb into existing Momentum gyms. Pedersen’s reasoning is that the Katy and Silver Street gyms were specifically built and designed to house REI Co-op Climb, while the existing gyms in Utah are not. Sheppard of REI explained that their idea for this partnership was not to “shoehorn” something into an existing model, meaning this partnership warranted a new entity, and a new brand. REI Co-op Climb even has its own distinct logo. While the Momentum gyms in Sandy, Millcreek, and Lehi are popular in the Salt Lake area, both Pedersen and Sheppard agree that the companies are more into “looking forward, not back.” REI has partnered with climbing gyms across the nation before, but never to this extent. With the presence of REI Co-op Climb and Momentum’s facilities, the partnership will undoubtedly bring in novice and expert climbers alike. “From an alignment standpoint, Momentum feels like REI’s going to help us reach a bunch of people we wouldn’t have otherwise reached more quickly,” Pedersen said, emphasizing the importance of this branded equilibrium. “This is a huge value and we will naturally bring people through our doors that may not have yet become REI members,” explains Pedersen. “Just being able to reach each other’s potential new customers and members very effectively and in an aligned way is the real power here to this deal.”

The Climbers Gym

The synergy within the two groups is paramount. When asking for REI’s reasoning to partner with Momentum, Sheppard explained, “We knew we wanted to enter a partnership with a very promising national-presence gym. The thing that drew us to Momentum more so than the others is that Momentum is a climber’s gym. It’s managed by climbers; there’s a passion for climbing there — it’s not purely a gym experience.” REI believes that a life outside is a life well lived, and this mantra exemplifies the main goal of the partnership. Both Pedersen and Sheppard began their climbing careers outdoors, and although Momentum is an indoor climbing facility, Sheppard delineates the comparison between an outdoor company and an ‘indoor’ company. “We see the rise of popularity of climbing gyms, and we don’t think that indoor climbing is a contrary to outdoor climbing. It’s a compliment. For us, it is access to a large and expanding group of people who want to get outdoors, or be active in a sport that is a primarily outdoors.” “To be able to share [climbing] with more and more people with the support of a company that has been around far longer than we have, and with the broad reach of REI, is just really exciting for us,” Pederson said. Although there are many disciplines of the sport—indoor, outdoor, bouldering, etc., Pedersen proclaims Momentum’s true focus is fostering a love of climbing. “Now, having built and worked very hard on our model for a little over ten years, we’ve built what we think is a great climbing school that has naturally focused on how you do climbing, period.” The new REI partnership will only help to make that focus stronger.

New Gyms For Touchstone and Central Rock

The bouldering walls at Central Rock Framingham will be similar to other bouldering areas in the Central family. Photo: Central Rock
Two of the largest climbing gym developers in the US have announced they will be opening new facilities later this year and in 2018.

Central Rock – Framingham

First up is Central Rock’s new bouldering-only facility in Framingham, Massachutes, a suburb of Boston. The gym is expected to include 10,000 square feet of bouldering terrain as well as fitness and yoga space. The gym, which is billed as a “high-end bouldering gym” for adults, their planning application reads. Brothers Ed and Joe Hardy stressed that “This is NOT a facility for birthday parties or youth events. This is a gym for new and serious climbers to practice their sport and get fit.” Central Rock expects to invest about $500,000 to improve the site, according to paperwork filed by the town. The Massachutes-based company is also in the process of building a full-service climbing facility in Syracuse, New York which plans to open in late fall of 2017. Ed Hardy told Syracuse.com that Syracuse appealed to him because, like Worcester, it has a lot of college students, who, along with young professionals, are among the most active participants in the sports of indoor and outdoor rock climbing. “Syracuse was kind of the next logical step,” he said. When finished, these two facilities will bump Central’s total gyms to nine and possibly become the third largest climbing gym developer by total climbing square feet, in the US (preceded by Earth Treks and Touchstone respectively).
Central Rock Gym Syracuse Tour

Central Rock Gym Syracuse Tour! 15,000 sq. ft of climbing! Not in video are the fitness areas, yoga room, party room, bathrooms (lockers and showers), and retail area. Get ready Syracuse climbers!! Please spread the word. Opening this Fall!

Posted by Central Rock Syracuse on Monday, May 22, 2017
 

Touchstone – Pasadena

After several false starts, Touchstone has announced they will now open a full-service climbing facility in the city of Pasadena. The 28,000 square foot climbing facility just north of downtown Pasadena will be the largest in the company’s fleet and will be the second sport climbing facility for Touchstone in Southern California.
A rendering of the new Pasadena Touchstone facility. Photo: Touchstone
“Pasadena is one of the very first markets we looked at in the LA area,” Senior Manager, Jeffery Bowling told CBJ. “We’ve been trying to find a building that would suit our needs for several years, and we are really excited to have landed on this location. The new facility will open sometime in 2018. While that facility is being built, Touchstone is busy getting the walls ready at their Burbank gym, dubbed Verdigo Boulders, which opens sometime later this year.

Video Peek from Vertical Solutions: Übergrippen

Vertical Solutions has been in the business of climbing gym consulting, unofficially, since starting out almost a decade ago as a climbing wall designer and builder. From the very beginning it was imperative to deliver more than expected. While working with clients on their climbing wall projects, it was a natural progression of their working relationships to provide climbing business start-up advice where needed, given their personal experience with owning and operating successful climbing gyms. Years, and many dozens of commercial projects later, Vertical Solutions is providing more expertise than ever for their clients. The latest success story is Übergrippen in Denver, CO. The VS Team worked with Übergrippen owners Jake and Kim Crine for over two years on almost every aspect of their climbing gym business. With their doors about to open in the coming month, a short preview video was produced to give a quick glance into what the owners have created with the help of the VS Team. About working with Vertical Solutions on this nearly-completed project, Jake Crine commented: “We started working with the VS team two years ago and they have been consulting with us at every turn of our project, even past the traditional obligations. They were instrumental in all the necessary big items like building size, wall space, and projected membership etc. But one of our initial focuses was on maximizing profitability with retail sales, and how much supplemental monthly revenue we could generate to justify the increased efforts and purchasing costs. The VS crew worked tightly with us on the design of our retail area, the overall size, the breakdown of product categories to carry, and even all the way through setting up vendor meetings with us at the Outdoor Retailer show to set up accounts. After that, we were really keen to develop an operational model that saw us and our staff being efficiently organized from day one. This meant that they spent a lot of time with us on developing our Standard Operating Procedures, training our staff on all aspects of our business, and even setting up our retail Point of Sale system before our doors were even open. This help was truly priceless and was a no-brainer for us to add on.” Keep a look out for a new video when Übergrippen officially opens their doors. To learn more about Übergrippen, head over to their website or contact Jake Crine. To learn more about Business Consulting services from Vertical Solutions, head over to the Consulting page on their website, or email sales@verticalsolns.com for more info.  
This story was paid for and produced by the sponsor and does not necessarily represent the views of the Climbing Business Journal editorial team.