Grey Market

One thing I don’t like about the globalised world is how rare it is to stumble across something new and unexpected — something that shakes up the dogma of gear and techniques in climbing. Now everything is known. There are no dark corners left where you see something brilliant and realise no one else has clocked it yet. When was the last time you saw a product and it made your brain buzz with possibility? (For me, it was the Grade 7 Equipment Pod Ledge.)

In the 90s these things felt more common. Mono-point crampons. New Alp guide plates. One Sport boots. Cult gear that only nerds and the hardcore even knew existed — the future before we knew it. Back then the only way to spread the word was slow: convince an editor, write it up in a magazine, hope people read it, tried it, told others. A process that could take years. That was before the internet, and you’d imagine the web would have been a boom for climbing cottage industries — the way companies like Troll, Clog, Wild Country and Chouinard began.

But it hasn’t worked out like that.

The lack of small, technical niche start-ups comes down to a few things. One is legislation, which pretty much kills innovation. Why design and sell a better climbing nut when you can skip the legal hoops and just make chalk bags? Then there’s the problem of making things onshore — investing in tools, machines and people — when customers are used to cheap kit and grumble about the price of quality. Only the big companies have the scale, and even they are drifting towards wherever labour is cheapest.

Some will argue this isn’t true. That the big brands are still pushing boundaries: heated chalk bags, lighter kit, new waterproof membranes, eco this and eco that. But are they really? Or are we just refining what we already have — shaving grams, smoothing edges — while calling it innovation?

Which makes a brand like Totem interesting. Like CCH before them, they’ve produced real innovation out of a shed — just as Roland Pauligk did with his revolutionary RPs. It shows it’s still possible.

So what’s stopping others from shaking things up?