The $200 Question... PART ONE

I asked the holds companys of the World two questions the other day, the whole thing came from some stuff that I was reading on the forums over at Routesetter...
Here's what I asked them...

Q1) If someone called or emailed you wanting to buy holds and they had $200 (or the equivalent in whichever country you're in) to spend on holds, excluding shipping, but didn't know your company OR your brand what would you send them??? (Retail prices not wholesale pls, and this would more than likely be for a home wall rather than a gym setting)

Q2) Do you have a "Hold of the month club?", if you do how much is it per month and what should people expect to get from it??

I was going to post the answers in one larger email next week, but as the article is taking a fair old while to write and as the answers have been coming in I decided to do this in parts rather than as one Uber article... here's the first few replies, I hope that they're informative.

Metolius got in first... fast as lightning..

A1) Brooke says "Its orders exactly like this that saw us create the Mega Pack series. Basically a variety pack, with our standard holds, micros, modulars and macros, plus a bunch of our specialty holds, screw on hand/foot, a rail, a plate, outside corner, roof jugs, multi-wrench all hardware and how to build a climbing wall flyer. Basically a wall in a box: just add plywood!

Mega Packs come in 30 (below image), 40, 50, 60 hold collectionsEven a Kids Mega Pack (35 super-positive, kid friendly shapes)Kids Mega Pack

A 50 Hold Mega Pack = $159.00 so I'd also add a 5 pack of mini-jugs = $34.95 (can't ever have enough mini jugs and they'd have enough for a burger/beer left over. They would be getting 55 total holds or $3.52 per hold cost..."
Q2) "We don't have a hold of the month club"

Rock Candy was FAST out of the blocks aswell!!

Q1) Nathan sent me photos of all of his holds... which is great.. here what he says:
"For $200 retail I would send a customer a mix of small and medium sets, maybe thrown in a large set (bolts included). Considering they are not familiar with Rock Candy Holds, I'd try and throw in a good mix of our styles/shapes. Such as a set of Flubbers (clean simple slopers), McNasties (unique styled jugs) and Alae Draccos (Ohio sandstone inspired incut edges). I have included pictures of two orders I filled this week so you can get an idea of how much rock candy $200 gets you.

The first cost about 180 and included 30 holds,

• Alae dracos
• Sandboxes Med
• Sandstone Crimps
• Thizzle
• Pedal Pushers
  
• Hueco crimps

The second cost 215 and included 35 holds.

• Mcnasties
• Skeeters
• Love Buckets
• Hueco Crimps
• Retox
• Pedal Pushers
  
• Sandstone Crimps

Q2) "We do have a Holds of the Month club. Our Hold of the Month club contains 5 to 10 holds each month. You will either receive 5 large to x-large holds or 10 small to medium holds. Every hold you get is new to our line and only available through the hold of the month program for a while then we add them to our line. We make our holds from a polyurethane mix so they are durable and the texture is great. We try to vary the sets sent so that you are not getting the same type of hold every month. The holds ship out in the first week of each month and shipping is included in the $39.00.

Currently if you sign up for the program you recieve an extra free set of 5 small holds your first month

I've included a picture of this months set (below). In the past we have sent out the Chubs, Large Sandboxes and a mix of small and medium holds not yet on the website."

Third off of the line was Halo holds!

Q1) Marks always good for a chat about stuff, here's what he fires me... "Alright buddy, this is far from a this or that question. It would depend what they were looking for and what there wall is like. If its a flat, not a lot of angles wall. I would send them the volume. (I'll knock 10 bucks off the price for them) The volume can add a lot of dimension to a boring home wall, opening up lots of new potential they never knew the wall had.If their wall already has a lot of angles to it. I would recommend the Real Rock: Series, 2XL and 4XL and our new crimps. (Killer to climb on by the way. They'll be on the site soon!)But if they value their fingers and like open handed I'm sending the 5XL cube and Dionysus their way.While I love the Hueco to death. I'm not gonna recommend it for a home wall unless you wanna have a hold on your wall that your cat can sleep inside."

Q2) We don't have a hold of the month club.

RIGHT!!! That's Part One done, Part Two should be up in a few days... drop a comment on the post if you've got questions.

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Review > Slap Holds > Pinches

Incase you've been hiding under a rock you may have missed the fact that Slap Holds sent us some of their pinches (and screw ons) for review, we're the first people in the America (North or otherwise) to get any of these holds...

Soon as we got them they hit the wall, what we got sent was a mix of two sets...

... The Fat Cats and the DR Pinches. Well the Fat Cats and one of the DR Pinches, and from the following video will show, they're pretty hard to hold... well if you're half awake on a Sunday morning, they're hard to hold :)



The holds are great, you'll spend sometime dialling in the route.. because there is a pretty exact way to hold them. Rotate the holds a little and the problem gets harder or easier depending on the hold. I've managed to set a route that I can tweak so depending upon how hard I want to climb I then change it accordingly. The holds have been all over the wall and they're easiest to climb on when they are set on a slight overhang or vertical terrain, but if you fancy sonething alittle spicier then just grab a wrench and have a turn.

Overall the holds are great, either as slopes or in their pinch format. There are lots of pinches out on the market, but these are a little different, the dynamic duo that shape the holds, Lucy and Dylan (a formidable husband and wife team), are probably some of the hardest working people I've met. Dylan is bad at holding pinches... so they've designed something that will make you work hard for the send. Let's hope he's bad at pockets and slopers as well because if these are anything to go by then they'll be great ol'holds. The one thing that is apparent from the holds we have is that Lucy and Dylan aren't shoddy at shaping. Rather than just shape a flat sided pinch they hit you with a shaped in thumb catch on a sloping pinch so there's alot of scope for where you hold.

Also the devil is in the details with these holds, screw holds to stop them spinning and nice flat bases so they lay flush to the wall.. what I notcied this morning when I was clambering about is that some of the holds have the Slap logo on them.....which is cool, having a logo on a hold is good for when you're sorting through 1000's of holds and they're all pretty similar colors and whilst we're looking at colors Slap offers...
all the above... but what I like is this..
say it with me... "cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese!", imagine having holds that look like this on your wall, you know that they're going to stand out!!

We've got a lot of pinches on the wall here, and its nice to have something that's a little harder to hold onto, if you're looking to sort out your pinching power then look no further than the Fat Cats, but i'd look into the Big Cheese's aswell!

RATING
NOODLES SAYS
Pinchy, pinchy, slopery fun for the entire family. Well if your family is a bunch of climbers anyway, hard to hold but super pleasant to hold onto... they take a while to figure out, as they're harder to read than your normal pinches. People have moved into the holds waaay to fast and have just got spat off of the wall, body position is very important with these holds and you're going to get a serious workout no matter what you do with them. As a first look at a new hold maker i'm impressed with what they're doing, we'll get some more shapes and see if this holds up in the long run... but i'm sure it will!! Overall the shapes are nice and friendly for your hands, matching isn't really an option unless you're super strong or very very careful (You can do it, but its HARD!), the texture is nice so you can catch onto the holds all day without worrying about you skin getting nailed.

[[Sorry about the lack of pictures with us climbing on the holds, our cameras have crapped out :( And we're waiting for them to get repaired]]

CHRIS SAYS
Did you watch the video? Did you? Did you see the fun the Noodles was having getting dropped onto his ass? Did you see him dive for the wrench? That's what he means about dialling in the route, that video was all shot in the space of 10 minutes before we went to the gym, and the shots that you see are sequential... there's one shot missing because the language gets a bit mature at one point whilst he's trying to move off of the 2nd move, so we left it out because it'll make you wince. He was trying super hard to get that route, he'd been trying it the day before for a while and it was good to see him work to get up something. I'd like to say that I flashed it first time, but it took me a while to get it :)

You can tell the Slap worked hard on the shapes, they're tricky to grab and to stick and that's a good thing! If you had holds that you could haul on all day they you'd just get bored.... I like them, there's no hard edges for you to kill your tendons on, and the texture doesn't rip your hands. Overall I like the holds, and I want more more more!!! Noodles just told me that Dylan is in the workshop getting out an order for some Swedes, if the Swedish are ordering these holds the YOU SHOULD probably get some for your wall too.

PROS

• Tendon friendly
• Great for setting hard boulder problems
• If you're in the US or Canada and you get them soon you'll be one of the first to get them!
• Great colors, check out the "Big Cheese" holds... they're pinches as well!
  

CONS

• They might be expensive if you're ordering from the US... (see below point to make it cheaper!!!)
  
• Get them shipped via boat, its longer than UPS or Fed Ex but its worth it in the end
• You're not going to get any beginners climbing a boulder problem on these... so careful where you set with them, they're not really V0 material :P
  

PRICE

• Slap is a UK company so prices are in GBP > Great British Pound
  
• The Fat Cats are 5 holds at 22.00 = 4.40 GBP per hold
• The DR Pinches are 6 holds at 32.00 = 5.33 GBP per hold

Review > Climb-It > Sediments

Question: What do you get if you feed the Hulk radioactive tacos, poly urethane and green dye?
Answer: The Sediments in dayglo green from Climb-It Holds.

Do you think i'm joking?
Do you think i'd bolt a Hulk doll to my wall for fun?
(well if you answered yes to bolting a Hulk doll to the wall you'd be correct...)But i'm NOT JOKING about day glo green holds...
Nope, not one bit...I really do need to get a black light into the wall one day soon, between Holdz and Climb-It it's getting a bit trippy, and we love it!

Straight out of the box you know you've got your hands onto something completely different, but you're not sure how different until you see the whole line, get out your bolts and start getting them onto the wall.. let's see what they look like...What you're going to see is a whole bunch of holds that look like they have pebbles stuck to them, and you look and you wonder "Can I really climb on this?", "Aren't those pebbles going to rip out when I hang on them?" The simple answer is yes, you can climb on them and no the pebbles aren't going to rip out... we did a quick field test with Seb who weighs just over 200 and he was dropping bombs on them, we even had a few "stamp" tests where I'd bang down onto the pebbles from above and they're solid.Looking at the holds once you've got them on the wall shows you how much choice you have.. and its a LOT! It took us a while to get into the flow of the holds, just grabbing a rock that's attached to the main face of a hold is a little weird to start with, but once you realize that the best part of the hold, generally, is the pebble/rock then you get with the program.
I like to set very specific sequences, so I was intrigued to see if there were any of the holds that could be used with just the base as the hold (avoiding the obvious pebbles) and yes there are, if you like a good sloper, like I do, then you're going to have a ball on these holds. The texture on the base and the lines that are scored into them is just enough to hold onto... and because of the rocks you've got to be exact with your hands.I think these holds should be thought of as bolt on features, because sometimes that's what it feels like. You're climbing on a hold, but you're pulling on a feature of that hold... it's different, not a bad different, a good different. The base of the hold has the same texture as the normal Climb-It holds, good and solid but not overly textured, add the cracks that are scored into them and then you've got a pretty good combination for hands and feet. Add to that the fact that the pebbles are essentially a holdable smoother texture feature and you're onto a winner!

We've chucked these holds all over the walls, and they're good no matter where you chuck them..
The only place you have to be really strong or very careful is when you set them on a ceiling. Then the holds become really really hard, even the largest holds become a maybe (for us anyway), if you set the holds as opposing then you can get away with it, with some careful foot placement... some good spotting and some brute strength :)

RATING
NOODLES SAYS
A setter's dream come true, you want to set something easy? Sure go right ahead, use the holds with the big pebbles and rock on... want to set something hard? Grab the smaller holds with the smaller pebbles and have a ball :P At first glance the holds look like they're confusing to climb on, but once you've spent a few hours grabbing and pulling you're going to see that there's nothing quite like this set on the market, and that's a good thing! I've said it before and I'll say it again... "variety is the spice of life" and climbing indoors can (and will) get static after a while. Give your friends and your customers at your wall a treat, give them something to think about, put your hand in your pocket (or the wall owners pocket) and order the Sediments, you'll not be sorry. The sheer amount of moves you can set will make your brain hurt, any route you set will make the climber(s) think. Again Climb-It have done something amazing, they've designed something that no-one else is doing and they've executed the holds that have a style and feel like nothing else out there!

I do have one minor point to say and that is they do take up a lot of surface area on a wall, not a problem if you're a commercial gym, but a slight pain if you have a relatively small home wall... if you are going to have these at home the large, mediums and smalls (possibly the xl's) will be perfect for you.. well unless you're a complete hold junkie like me and you HAVE to have the bigger holds as well..

CHRIS SAYS
"Question: What do you get if you feed the Hulk radioactive tacos, poly urethane and green dye?" looks like Noodles is on the drugs again, but he's not far off of the point... these holds are green, he has a lot of holds over here but nothing quite as vibrant as these! First time we climbed on them we just chucked them all over one wall and it was fun to see how many different ways you could hang off of the holds, there are loads and loads it's stupid how many ways you can grab these things!!! We even managed to get a hand / heel hook on the 3xl, it's cramp but do-able :) Putting them on the roof is off of the cards unless you're Chris Sharma or possibly insane, we have a route across the roof right now and its super hard, we're getting stopped on the roof!! We'll get it in the end it just takes time.

I can see beginners and hardcore climbers really enjoying these holds, turn them any which way you fancy and just go nuts. Climb-It is fast becoming one of the companys I check to see what new stuff is coming out, mainly because they always pull something amazing out of the bag! Yeah the Sediments are great holds, can't really fault them.

PROS

• There's nothing like these out there!!
  
• Great for setting, there's enough choice on them to make everyone happy
• Order a really nutty color like the green we have or the day-glo orange and they'll stand out
• These holds are great for matching, most of the holds have at least two places to hold on them, and therefore when you're setting just with these holds you have plenty of foot placements
  

CONS

• The whole set isn't the cheapest thing out there, BUT (and its a BIG but) the 3xl and 2xl are very big holds
• (Minor point) They do take up a lot of surface area on a wall, but if its a commercial gym you're using these holds in then its a "mute" point. Think of the holds as bolt on features (especially the big holds) and you'll be smiling
• (Minor point (again)) The 3xl needs a really long bolt, probably a bolt thats longer than most holds, make sure you order this when you get this hold, you'll only have to order the bolt if you're ordering wholesale, the hold prices include bolts otherwise!!
  

PRICE

• The 3x-large is 1 hold at $60
  
• The 2x-large is 1 hold at $42
  
• The x-larges are 4 holds at $78 = $19.50 per hold
  
• The larges are 4 holds at $40.50 = $10.10 per hold
  
• The mediums are 4 holds at $28.50 = $7.10 per hold
  
• The smalls are 4 holds at $19.50 = $4.90 per hold
  
• The feet are 8 holds at $15 = $2.00 per hold
  
• The full range is 26 holds at $283.50 = $10.90 per hold

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