Climbing holds play a crucial role in what gyms can offer their consumers; they are, quite literally, building blocks of any climbing facility. And a selection of quality climbing holds provides multiple benefits to a gym’s business model: variety for its climbers, inspiration for its setting team, and potential for all forms of climbing programming. Unfortunately, as many of us know, the cost of holds adds up very quickly and usually requires compromising either quantity or quality.
Chris LoCrasto, Lead Sales Rep for Essential Climbing, heard this challenge repeatedly in his conversations. “I’ve been traveling to a lot of gyms across the country,” he explained, “and during that time I’ve spoken with a lot of setters and leadership teams. In each and every conversation, we kept hearing the same problem: How can we get quality holds at a good price point? And the more questions we asked, what it came down to for a lot of gyms was this: We need more jugs, and we need them at a good price.”
Jugs—incut holds that are relatively easy to grab—are useful for every skill level of climber, which means no matter what a gym’s clientele look like, jugs are almost always needed, and in large quantities. “Hearing that demand so often,” LoCrasto said, “is what sparked our idea to create a whole brand around jugs: incut, utility-style holds that can be sold at competitive rates.”
That creation LoCrasto is referring to is Jugz: a hold line with well over 500 shapes, most of which are incut holds. Jugz is designed to supplement any hold inventory, no matter the gym’s size, budget, or business goals. Keep reading to learn more about Jugz and the steps Essential took to create a quality, cost-effective line of climbing holds.
Listening, Then Delivering
For Essential, leading off with conversations before embarking on a new project is just common sense. Listening to the end users ultimately helps a business serve them better, and in this case the message was clear: “In general, it seemed like people were feeling like the market was stagnant,” said LoCrasto. “But they also were in need of new jugs at a good price. And for most commercial routesetters, jugs are utility holds, so you really do need a lot of them. You need different types of jugs as well, for different wall angles or different difficulties. Unfortunately, when you start talking about budget-friendly holds that are also high-quality, you quickly run out of options.
“We believe our Jugz line is exactly what the industry is asking for,” LoCrasto continued. “It’s also what a lot of people have directly asked us for as a climbing hold company. Right now, we’ve got hundreds of shapes, and we’ve got hundreds more that are currently being molded. This includes a lot of different jugs, as well as some footholds, edges, and a few other hold types… so there is a wide variety of shapes, but just about 90 percent of our inventory is quality, competitively priced jugs.”
It’s clear that each choice made for the Jugz line contains deliberate intent, backed by years of experience. “All of our shapers have a lot of experience with climbing holds,” said LoCrasto. “They’re Level 5 USAC Routesetters, World Cup Champions like Gregor Vezonik, or people like Tim Sudeith who’ve been shaping since the 90s. I also did some of the shaping myself.”
With nine different hold companies under their umbrella, the team at Essential focuses on creating new tools to help gyms succeed—and the Jugz line is their latest addition to the toolbox. “We’ve heard what the market is telling us, and we’ve done our best to deliver,” LoCrasto said. “Plus, it provides a great entry point to all of our other products here at Essential.”
Having Something for Everyone
LoCrasto and the team at Essential Climbing know the importance of hold selection in any environment, but especially for commercial gyms. “There’s needs and wants with every hold order,” explained LoCrasto. “But commercial gyms have a much wider range of climbers. You need jugs, and you need footholds, and you need a lot of them. If you have a $180,000 hold budget, you don’t want to show up to routeset and realize you’ve made an expensive mistake.”
LoCrasto also highlighted the importance of catering to newer climbers alongside experienced climbers. “In 99% of gyms, the climbing grade bell curve tends to fall toward the easier side, maybe moderate-plus,” said LoCrasto. “And the routesetting in that grade range requires a lot more in-cut holds, jugs, mini-jugs.”
While challenging holds are critical for the most skilled climbers, routesetters can make use of large, positive holds for every skill range. Many of the holds in the Jugz line, for example, can be used on a friendly V0 boulder, a steep 5.13 endurance haul, and everything in between.
Having spent over two decades in climbing gyms, LoCrasto is no stranger to how valuable jugs are to a gym’s hold selection. He has studied and mastered the opening hold order, ensuring good ratios of jugs, feet and other shapes with respect to the climbing terrain, grading style and discipline (i.e. sport versus bouldering). This insight is something he brings to Jugz, extending his expertise to their customers.
“If you’re building a new gym, hold ordering often falls to the bottom of your to-do list,” LoCrasto said. “So, building out an opening gym is a service we offer for free. I’ve done this eight times over for my personal gyms and lived with the results, so I have that real world experience.”
Juggin’ On a Budget
Many businesses are feeling the strain of budgets lately, and climbing gyms are no different. “The market has gotten more expensive since the pandemic,” LoCrasto said. “Budget-friendly holds were always a good thing to have, but now it’s more important than ever. Even gyms with a large budget benefit from quality, cost-effective holds like ours. If they can fill their needs without eating up too much budget, they’ll have a lot more for their wants.”
Climbing gyms must always balance cost with quality in a way that best fits their needs, but there are ways to achieve quality without a huge budget. Ordering strategically—for example, with companies that provide bulk discounts—can stretch budgets a lot further. “You need holds, and you need a lot of them,” said LoCrasto. “So, if you want to check that box and still be able to get more premium brands like Squadra or Vezi at a steep discount, it’s kind of a no-brainer.”
At Essential, customers can receive bulk order discounts that rise as your order size increases. With the addition of Jugz, LoCrasto and Essential hope that gyms will be able to make bulk orders that line up with their budget. They aim to offer quality across a wide range of price points to help any gym owner make the most of their budget, whatever that may be.
High Quality, Low Cost
One of Essential’s goals for the Jugz line was to show that maintaining a high standard for climbing holds can still result in affordable options. “The manufacturing process was a huge focus,” shared LoCrasto. “Our holds are produced at Aragon, whose plastic is the gold standard for climbing holds. And we know that cost-effective, efficient manufacturing helps keep costs down for us, and by extension our customers. So we make the most of our molds, and we generally avoid expensive treatments like dual-tex, hollow-backing, or tons of set screw holes.
“We wanted to make sure we could maintain low production costs without sacrificing quality, and that all comes down to details. Some of the smallest elements of hold design can significantly increase costs; when you’re producing thousands of holds, it all adds up pretty quickly. Even fitting an extra hold onto your molds can save a ton of money in the long run.”
Upgrade Your Facility With Essential Climbing
When your gym has a quality selection of climbing holds, all your customers benefit—whether they’re first-time climbers or ten-year veterans. And while much of routesetting success comes from the team, it all begins with the hold selection. This idea is what drives Essential Climbing to provide quality holds at affordable price points—holds that any gym can benefit from using.
In addition to their new Jugz line, Essential offers grips from an array of climbing brands, all of which are listed on their website: this group includes Axis, Kumiki, Lapis, Squadra, Expression, Vezi, Chapter and Captain Crux. And with their newest Jugz line, the team at Essential hopes to answer the demands of many climbing gyms even better, at a price they can easily afford.
This story was paid for by the sponsor and does not necessarily represent the views of the Climbing Business Journal editorial team.
