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I'm not so sure I'd write off this startup as a failure. I feel like many people who can afford $80/mo climbing gym memberships might look at $5 chalk and $12
by a13n 5y ago
I'm not so sure I'd write off this startup as a failure.
I feel like many people who can afford $80/mo climbing gym memberships might look at $5 chalk and $12 environmentally friendly chalk with nice packaging/branding and buy the latter.
If OP manages to get listed in half the ~500 climbing gyms in the USA, and makes on average 2-3 sales per day in each, they could pull in single-digit millions per year in top line. Not sure what OP's goals are, but that's plenty successful for most.
If you need a VC-caliber story, you can always expand to other products (plenty of other climbing gear to sell now that you have the gym relationships), other sellers (eg. REI, MEC), or go international.
- c1sc0 5y agoOur thinking is to focus on the new generation of climbers who tend to be more urban, more affluent & yes, more environmentally conscious.
- woeirua 5y agoIt's completely antithetical to the environmentally conscious mission to build a product that is going to produce significantly more waste than chalk balls. Chalk residue is a short-term eyesore, but plastic waste lives for hundreds of years in landfills. If you're going to target environmentally conscious customers then your packaging has to be eco-friendly too.
- c1sc0 5y agoFor environmentally friendly packaging (recycled alu tubes) to be viable at our small scale we need to produce a LOT more. In the meantime we try to improve our packaging and offset some of the damage we do by planting one tree per product sold, which is roughly a 20-30% hit on our margins. Personally I think it’s impossible to be sustainable. Working towards reaching sustainability IS possible. So that’s what we do.
- nikanj 5y agoHow about wood / bamboo?
- c1sc0 5y agoWe looked into bio plastics and bamboo for both the tube and closing cap. It’s easy enough to find bamboo-based biodegradable tubes but the closing cap is pretty much always still normal plastic. Biodegradable plastic also has its controversies: it won’t degrade in clean ways outside of commercial composting facilities. There’s also a bamboo-based plastic controversy around toxicity of the product in e.g. bamboo-plastic cups.
- woeirua 5y agoI'm sorry, but what's better for the environment here? Not seeing chalk on holds, or producing tons of trash in the form of plastic bottles with aluminum foil inside of them along with the packaging. Chalk balls on the other hand are biodegradable, and the chalk within is a naturally occurring element. If people stopped climbing these spots the chalk would go away in years.
- c1sc0 5y agoWe're working on getting our products in recycled aluminium tubes. Chalk balls have been proven not to work in terms of reducing dust in gyms, link to the research is on our blog.
- TimPC 5y agoI'm not so sure it's a VC-scale business. Maybe if it's useful for weightlifting and other vertical markets. That being said I wouldn't be quick to write it off as a failure. Most of the climbers in the thread are chiming in as excited about the product. It needs better positioning as I think it's more about being better for your hands than chalk (and a more pleasant experience to use) than it is about the environment. But OP might be on to something here. Particularly if they want a lifestyle business.
- c1sc0 5y agoIt’s most definitely NOT a VC scale business. I’d feel bad if it were.