New Mesa Rim Reno building rendering.
Press Release:
Mesa Rim Climbing and Fitness Center will open an ultramodern indoor climbing facility in Reno, Nevada. The San Diego-based climbing and yoga business, which operates two facilities in Southern California, is building a custom-designed climbing center that will feature 25,000 square feet of top-roping, lead climbing and bouldering terrain, awe-inspiring 50 foot climbing walls, a professional yoga studio, a complete array of fitness equipment, and stylish locker rooms.
Mesa Rim Reno will cater to the area’s large climbing community as well as to outdoor enthusiasts and local athletes. Ian McIntosh, Partner and General Manager of Mesa Rim Climbing Center states, “We believe that climbing is more than a sport; it’s a lifestyle. Climbing and yoga can be transformative experiences — physically, mentally, socially, and beyond.” In regards to joining the Reno community he states, “We feel the Reno area is the perfect location for a modern indoor climbing facility that can serve not only as a place to climb and train, but as a community hub for outdoor and fitness enthusiasts in the Reno-Sparks metro area.”
Mesa Rim Reno will be centrally located at the corner of Harvard Way and Yale Way, near the Reno airport. MBA Architects of Reno has been selected to design the 24,000 square foot building and Clark/Sullivan Construction will oversee construction of the facility. Mesa Rim has once again chosen the leading climbing wall manufacturer, Entre-Prises, to build their custom and cutting-edge climbing walls. “We couldn’t be more happy with the team we’ve been working with,” said Mike Helt, Operations Director for Mesa Rim Reno. “They’ve worked tirelessly to bring our dream into reality and have created a very unique destination that will become a landmark for the Reno area.”
Mesa Rim is also proud to announce that the Reno location represents a new partnership with the owners of the Climbing Business Journal, Mike Helt and Marlowe Kulley. In addition to being founders and editors at CBJ, the first and only trade journal focused on the indoor climbing industry, Marlowe is an experienced project manager while Mike has been a leader in the climbing industry for over 20 years and has worked in countless climbing gyms across the country as a professional routesetter, instructor and consultant. Mike and Marlowe are happy to call Reno their home.
Mesa Rim opened the doors to their first climbing gym in San Diego in 2010 and has quickly become a leading indoor climbing and fitness facility that is dedicated to serving the needs of the whole community. They operate top-quality, modern indoor climbing, yoga, and fitness facilities that inspire people of all ages and ability levels to increase their physical fitness in a fun and social environment. Mesa Rim Reno will be their third climbing facility.
Mesa Rim values community involvement and is offering a limited number of community members the opportunity to participate in this business venture. If you would like to be a part of Mesa Rim Reno or have feedback on the project please MesaRim.com.
The Pad’s new walls.
Press Release:
After a grueling nine months, SLO Op Climbing is about to give birth to its newest baby, flagship bouldering gym The Pad. Over three times the size of SLO Op’s current gym in San Luis Obispo, the new gym features a yoga studio, weight room, terrain for specific climbing training, kids’ wall, and 5000 sq feet of exciting climbing terrain. Membership to the club includes access to both locations, free climbing shoe use, and free yoga classes. A robust youth program is being developed as the gym grows, as well – with scholarship opportunities available.
SLO Op Climbing is a 501c7 nonprofit social club that started over a decade ago in a small storage unit in San Luis Obispo, California. Its founders were Cal Poly students and community members and it grew from a small group of people to over 1000 members in its current facility. The gym’s buildout was funded by crowdsourcing from the local community: “We’ve been doing that for every incarnation of the gym,” says Kristin Tara Horowitz SLO OP Executive Director, “We’re even in national bestselling $100 Startup for doing this before it had a name. It’s a great way to validate an idea before investing too much time and money into it.”
The idea to bring the gym to Santa Maria came from Horowitz’s love of the people of northern Santa Barbara county. Horowitz was an English lecturer at Hancock College for five years, and her investment in the community there allowed her to convince people that the gym would be a success. “We were just kids doing something fun for our tiny climbing community during our years at Poly,” said Horowitz. “But over time, the club is something so much more – people don’t start out as climbers when they come, but they not only become them over time, they forge deep friendships, meet partners and spouses, and spark really cool, creative collaborations in SLO and beyond. I really hope we can do the same thing for Santa Maria.”
The gym’s build was done almost entirely by SLO Op members, staff, and eager Santa Maria area residents. “From the contractors, to the painters, to the electrician, they’ve all contributed their efforts to help us get this off the ground for a lot less than a normal contracting job would be; putting in real elbow grease to build something you believe in is the SLO Op way,” says Horowitz, who built and designed The Pad alongside her husband, Yishai -. Even the gym’s manager, Dustin Wise, has been spending long hours alongside the paid contractors, hiring staff and working to prepare the gym to open during breaks.
After months of significant delays, the gym is poised to open and hopes to make its mark in the climbing world. Over three times bigger than the existing SLO Op location, The Pad, features a 10,000 square foot warehouse with truly aggressive and ground breaking terrain. Designer Yishai Horowitz’s goal is to maximize space, push boundaries of design and aesthetics, and he took his over ten years of experience visiting gyms and operating the SLO Op in various stages to figure out what would work best for the club. You’ll find steep, inspiring terrain when you visit, that’s for sure. It’s stand out features are the wave wall to snow-cone, a slab wall giving way to an arching arete and the impressive archway (inspired by the bill of Yishai’s ubiquitous ball caps) that’s so big the city required fire sprinklers installed in it.
SLO Op Climbing is a 501c7 non profit social club that’s been around in various forms for over ten years, and was the country’s first non-profit bouldering gym. Despite its name, it is not a co-op. It started out as something close to it with its first build and fifteen members in a storage unit, but over the years, the club has burgeoned to over 1000 members and a 3500 square foot facility with weight room and yoga classes. SLO Op is a club that maintains facilities and programs that better the climbing community and does regular outreach to at risk youth and veterans in the area. Membership with SLO Op grants access to both the SLO Op 24/7 facility and The Pad’s extended hours facility (we hope to make it 24/7 as well over time as the community builds).
What are SLO Op’s next goals? “Definitely a larger facility in San Luis Obispo,” says Horowitz, “But that’s a much more expensive proposition that we hope The Pad will be able to help fund.” Any other locations? Time will tell. SLO Op’s grassroots and cost-effective approach to building gyms is getting harder and harder to execute with increased regulation requirements at the local and state levels, so expansion really depends on the resources available at the time. SLO Op welcomes inquiries from anyone interested in getting started with their own project.
There’s a change coming this fall and business of all kinds, including climbing gyms and gear shops, need to be ready. The change takes the form of a new way to make credit card transactions.
Beginning October 1st, 2015 customers will stop swiping the credit card. Instead, they will insert their card into a slot, just like people do in much of the rest of the world, where the credit card machine will read a microchip, not a magnetic stripe. The customer will still be signing for the time being, but the new system also enables the use of PIN numbers, if card issuers decide to add them to their cards.
These new credit cards called, EMV (short for Europay, MasterCard, Visa) are basically the same as your standard magnetic stripe “swipe-and-sign” cards, only they’re more secure.
The added security is packed into a small, “smart” microprocessor computer chip embedded in the card. The metallic microchip, which Visa claims is nearly impossible to counterfeit, stores and safeguards private cardholder data. Every time the card is used, the chip generates a unique, one-time authentication cryptogram signature that proponents of the technology say is incredibly difficult to duplicate.
“It’s quite difficult to clone the chip,” Eric Dunn, senior vice president of payments and commerce solutions at Intuit, told Entrepreneur Magazine. “It’s not that hard, unfortunately, to clone a magnetic stripe card, so this means bad guys who try to earn a nefarious living by skimming magnetic card numbers and recreating magnetic stripe cards can’t do that when the world migrates to EMV chip cards.”
The U.S. is the last major market to still use the old-fashioned swipe-and-sign system, and it’s a big reason why almost half the world’s credit card fraud happens in America, despite the country being home to about a quarter of all credit card transactions.
What this means for climbing gyms and retailers that accept credit cards is very clear. They must purchase and implement what some call, “chip-and-dip” readers or face the possibility of paying out for any fraudulent charges. This “liability shift” is the driving force behind the new chips and is not something that should be ignored.
New chip reader.
liability shift
Right now, if you process a fraudulent card, the card issuer absorbs the cost, whether it be Bank of America, Chase, Capital One, etc. After the “liability shift” hits, if someone pays with a fraudulent chip card and you haven’t upgraded to an EMV reader yet, the liability falls on you. The card issuer is off the hook.
According to MasterCard’s Carolyn Balfany, the company’s expert on all things related to the new EMV payment system, “Whenever card fraud happens, we need to determine who is liable for the costs. When the liability shift happens, what will change is that if there is an incidence of card fraud, whichever party has the lesser technology will bear the liability,” Balfany told the Wall Street Journal. “So if a merchant is still using the old system, they can still run a transaction with a swipe and a signature. But they will be liable for any fraudulent transactions if the customer has a chip card. And the same goes the other way – if the merchant has a new terminal, but the bank hasn’t issued a chip and PIN card to the customer, the bank would be liable.”
What’s the Cost
Intuit, the company that produces Quicken and TurboTax financial software discovered that nearly 60% of those in a recent survey cited the cost of a new terminal or reader as the top reason keeping them from upgrading, while 85% who aren’t making the switch are unaware of the financial and legal liabilities they will be responsible for starting in October.
“The biggest barriers for small businesses to become EMV-compliant are cost and lack of time or resources required to research terminals,” Eric Dunn, Intuit’s senior vice president for payments and commerce solutions, told The Street.
Depending on the number of terminals and the payment vendor, a climbing gym should expect to to pay several hundred to several thousand dollars this year to make the proper upgrades. Each new machine is estimated to cost about $250, and installation might cost twice that. American Express is offering each small business $100 towards the upgrade, but that only goes so far. And other companies such as Chase Paymentech, First Data, Ingenico, Hypercom and Verifone are offering full-sized, more fully featured Wi-Fi countertop chip terminals ranging from $150 to $300.
If you’re one of the gyms that uses Square to process credit cards you’re in luck. The company has a $29 reader that will accept both magnetic-stripe and chip cards, and can be used with iPhones, iPads and Android devices. The card deck-sized portable reader, which wirelessly connects to smartphones, tablets and Square Stand, also processes contactless NFC (near field communications) transactions, like Apple Pay and Google Wallet payments.
Stephanie Ericksen, global risks products vice president at Visa, suggested in Entrepreneur that you shop around for the best EMV card reader deal, just as you would if you were looking to upgrade your cellphone. “Now is a good time to see if you can’t get a payment system that’s even cheaper and better than what you had before,” she said.
Actual poster for the comps.
The New Zealand Alpine Club (NZAC) got into hot water recently when a comp poster caught the attention of the local national electricity body. The poster features a drawn silhouette of a person hanging by one arm from a power line above a cityscape.
Graeme Peters, chief executive of the Electricity Networks Association, said the Alpine Club’s poster promoted reckless behaviour. “I can’t understand it. I looked at it and I just thought, that’s crazy,” Peters told the Stuff.co.nz. “You wouldn’t be bouldering, you would be smoldering.”
The Alpine Club was contacted on Wednesday by WorkSafe NZ and the Electrical Engineers Association, who believed the poster was “reasonably likely to cause someone to break the law by climbing and swinging from the power lines.”
“It is a heavily stylized cartoon image that is clearly not based in reality,” said NZAC General Manager, Sam Newton in a press release. The poster had a total print run of 60 copies which were distributed to the climbing gyms where the events are held. “No suggestion that the events are held on power lines is made at all,” Newton said.
“Doing one-armed pull ups is extremely painful and is likely to cause injury. Climbing on power lines is even worse. NZAC is against both,” he said. “So we would like to make it perfectly clear – we strongly discourage anyone from doing one-armed pull-ups and/or climbing on power lines. Common sense really. Use both arms to do pull-ups and stay away from power lines altogether,” he said
“We are somewhat surprised at the perceived power and influence of such a small part of an image on such a niche website. But we will direct that influence to good effect.”
“We have replaced it with a sign that I am sure the EEA will appreciate. It feels good to help,” Newton said.
Amended screen shot from the NZAC website.
Press Release:
USA Climbing, the United States National Governing Body for the sport of competition climbing announced today that Skratch Labs will sponsor the first ever Youth All Around award, to be presented in Kennesaw, GA next month at the 2015 Youth Sport and Speed National Championships. There will be two winners of this award (one male and one female) and their results at Youth Bouldering Nationals, Youth Sport Nationals, and Youth Speed Nationals will be determining the ranking of this award. In addition to driving the creation of this prestigious award, Skratch Labs will also be present in the Coaches’ Lounge in Kennesaw to discuss hydration and performance principles with all USA Climbing Coaches.
“The Youth All Around Award is a fantastic extension of our support for USA Climbing” said Jay Peery, Vice President, Sales at Skratch Labs. “As a company, we support the idea of a balanced approach to life, and the award’s focus on athletes who excel across the entire spectrum of competitive climbing represents that perfectly”
“I’ve always wanted a way to recognize those athletes that are at the top of their game in all of our disciplines” said USA Climbing CEO Kynan Waggoner. “With the support Skratch Labs, a company that is primarily interested in maximizing the performance of our athletes, we’re able to highlight those male and female athletes that “do it all” within USA Climbing.”
IFSC Speed hold.
The International Federation of Sport Climbing has entered in to an exclusive collaboration with Planet’Roc, one of the KIT GRIMPE’s trademarks, for manufacturing and selling the IFSC Certified Speed Holds.
Planet’Roc will manufacture and distribute the holds using pricing, quality and design agreements set up with the IFSC. Thanks to the REV’OLUTION Technology, these holds will be lighter, standardized and UV-resistant. As a result, they will be easier to install, they will last longer, and they will be more precisely identic.
This new technology opens up exciting perspectives for the upcoming Speed competitions, by ensuring an equal playing field for all the athletes. In a discipline where World Records seem to be falling like dominos, it’s safe to assume that we will see some historic performances on these holds, and perhaps even a new World Record in the near future.
Certified Speed Holds provided by Entre-Prises are still valid for IFSC Speed World Cup use, and Entre-Prises remains an official manufacturer for the IFSC Certified Speed Wall, but all new IFSC Speed Climbing competition walls will have to be equipped with the new certified Speed Holds.
Mountain Project.
Last week, REI purchased Adventure Projects, a website that compiles trail data for climbers, mountain bikers, skiers, hikers and trail runners, for an undisclosed sum. Adventure Projects is a Boulder-based business founded in 2005 by Nick Wilder and Andy Laakmann. Laakmann is also the developer and owner of the very popular climbing gym POS software, Rock Gym Pro. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Megan Behrbaum, manager of New Ventures at REI headquarters in Seattle in told Times Called Business, “Mountain Project is a hub for the climbing community to talk about and discover the best spots to climb around the world. It is the definitive resource for more than 3 million climbers, featuring more than 125,000 climbing routes.”
Last year the Mountain Project site had three million unique visitors.
Adventure Projects, which is divided into different websites based on the sport, has 4.5 million users across five areas: rock climbing, mountain biking, hiking, trail running and backcountry and sidecountry skiing.
Prior to the purchase, Adventure Projects’ revenue came from ad sales. Since being acquired by REI, the site has cut about half of its ads.
“REI is the dream partner for us: they will remove the toll of taxes, accounting, insurance, legal issues and general overhead,” said Adventure Projects CEO Nick Wilder.
“They want us to simply focus on building great products and to do more of what we love to do. REI’s mission – is perfectly complimentary to ours: to help most of those same people find the best trails and climbs and to get more enjoyment out of these special experiences,” Wilder said.
Wilder went on to tell the Business Den, “I love programming and sports – this is the perfect merger of everything I’m passionate about.” “As the owner of the company, I get to focus on what I love, which is building the projects, and less on running a small business.”
REI plans to let Wilder and his team continue their operations independently.
Wilder founded Adventure Projects with rock climbing partner Andy Laakmann in 2005. The duo started the website as a hobby without any intention of turning it into a business. Originally, the site only included trail data for rock climbers.
“It’s just fantastic. We used to struggle just to make payroll and now they (REI) pay us. I am incredibly lucky to be able to combine my professional passion with my outdoor pursuits,” Wilder added. “But as the sites grow, so does the overhead. While it’s a good challenge to build a business, the real joy for me is building the products.”
The gym’s build was done almost entirely by SLO Op members, staff, and eager Santa Maria area residents. “From the contractors, to the painters, to the electrician, they’ve all contributed their efforts to help us get this off the ground for a lot less than a normal contracting job would be; putting in real elbow grease to build something you believe in is the SLO Op way,” says Horowitz, who built and designed The Pad alongside her husband, Yishai -. Even the gym’s manager, Dustin Wise, has been spending long hours alongside the paid contractors, hiring staff and working to prepare the gym to open during breaks.
After months of significant delays, the gym is poised to open and hopes to make its mark in the climbing world. Over three times bigger than the existing SLO Op location, The Pad, features a 10,000 square foot warehouse with truly aggressive and ground breaking terrain. Designer Yishai Horowitz’s goal is to maximize space, push boundaries of design and aesthetics, and he took his over ten years of experience visiting gyms and operating the SLO Op in various stages to figure out what would work best for the club. You’ll find steep, inspiring terrain when you visit, that’s for sure. It’s stand out features are the wave wall to snow-cone, a slab wall giving way to an arching arete and the impressive archway (inspired by the bill of Yishai’s ubiquitous ball caps) that’s so big the city required fire sprinklers installed in it.
SLO Op Climbing is a 501c7 non profit social club that’s been around in various forms for over ten years, and was the country’s first non-profit bouldering gym. Despite its name, it is not a co-op. It started out as something close to it with its first build and fifteen members in a storage unit, but over the years, the club has burgeoned to over 1000 members and a 3500 square foot facility with weight room and yoga classes. SLO Op is a club that maintains facilities and programs that better the climbing community and does regular outreach to at risk youth and veterans in the area. Membership with SLO Op grants access to both the SLO Op 24/7 facility and The Pad’s extended hours facility (we hope to make it 24/7 as well over time as the community builds).
What are SLO Op’s next goals? “Definitely a larger facility in San Luis Obispo,” says Horowitz, “But that’s a much more expensive proposition that we hope The Pad will be able to help fund.” Any other locations? Time will tell. SLO Op’s grassroots and cost-effective approach to building gyms is getting harder and harder to execute with increased regulation requirements at the local and state levels, so expansion really depends on the resources available at the time. SLO Op welcomes inquiries from anyone interested in getting started with their own project. 
There’s a change coming this fall and business of all kinds, including climbing gyms and gear shops, need to be ready. The change takes the form of a new way to make credit card transactions.
Beginning October 1st, 2015 customers will stop swiping the credit card. Instead, they will insert their card into a slot, just like people do in much of the rest of the world, where the credit card machine will read a microchip, not a magnetic stripe. The customer will still be signing for the time being, but the new system also enables the use of PIN numbers, if card issuers decide to add them to their cards.
These new credit cards called, EMV (short for Europay, MasterCard, Visa) are basically the same as your standard magnetic stripe “swipe-and-sign” cards, only they’re more secure.
The added security is packed into a small, “smart” microprocessor computer chip embedded in the card. The metallic microchip, which Visa claims is nearly impossible to counterfeit, stores and safeguards private cardholder data. Every time the card is used, the chip generates a unique, one-time authentication cryptogram signature that proponents of the technology say is incredibly difficult to duplicate.
“It’s quite difficult to clone the chip,” Eric Dunn, senior vice president of payments and commerce solutions at Intuit, told Entrepreneur Magazine. “It’s not that hard, unfortunately, to clone a magnetic stripe card, so this means bad guys who try to earn a nefarious living by skimming magnetic card numbers and recreating magnetic stripe cards can’t do that when the world migrates to EMV chip cards.”
The U.S. is the last major market to still use the old-fashioned swipe-and-sign system, and it’s a big reason why almost half the world’s credit card fraud happens in America, despite the country being home to about a quarter of all credit card transactions.
What this means for climbing gyms and retailers that accept credit cards is very clear. They must purchase and implement what some call, “chip-and-dip” readers or face the possibility of paying out for any fraudulent charges. This “liability shift” is the driving force behind the new chips and is not something that should be ignored.
Press Release:
USA Climbing, the United States National Governing Body for the sport of competition climbing announced today that Skratch Labs will sponsor the first ever Youth All Around award, to be presented in Kennesaw, GA next month at the 2015 Youth Sport and Speed National Championships. There will be two winners of this award (one male and one female) and their results at Youth Bouldering Nationals, Youth Sport Nationals, and Youth Speed Nationals will be determining the ranking of this award. In addition to driving the creation of this prestigious award, Skratch Labs will also be present in the Coaches’ Lounge in Kennesaw to discuss hydration and performance principles with all USA Climbing Coaches.
“The Youth All Around Award is a fantastic extension of our support for USA Climbing” said Jay Peery, Vice President, Sales at Skratch Labs. “As a company, we support the idea of a balanced approach to life, and the award’s focus on athletes who excel across the entire spectrum of competitive climbing represents that perfectly”
“I’ve always wanted a way to recognize those athletes that are at the top of their game in all of our disciplines” said USA Climbing CEO Kynan Waggoner. “With the support Skratch Labs, a company that is primarily interested in maximizing the performance of our athletes, we’re able to highlight those male and female athletes that “do it all” within USA Climbing.” 
