Last week, Asetus packed their bags and travelled to Friedrichshafen, Germany to attend yearly Vertical Pro Halls & Walls fair on 22-23 November.

We had been talking about attending for some time, but late October, we decided to attend and bought the tickets!

The trip itself was a roller coaster, over 10 hours of delays and missed flights and after 35 hours of travelling from our hometown Oulu, we finally arrived to the fair.

Why did we go?

Okay, so why would three of us go all the way to Germany, to a fairly small city called Friedrichshafen? How come we had all the motivation even with all the setbacks during the trip? The answer is simple - we really wanted to see the holds! We also met some old friends, Niki, Erik, Fabi and the boys from Arctic Grips to name a few and, perhaps made some new friends along the way!

Toni and Eelis inspecting some fancy holds.

Okay. So let’s get started!

A little recap of our travel to the fair itself:

We took a night train on wednesday 20th with the idea in mind that we would sleep through the 8 hour ride and get the airplane at 9 am fresh as a rose and arrive to Munich at around 12am. Well, that did not exactly happen…

Our train was late over 6 hours give or take, we missed our flights and had to quickly buy new ones. We found out that our only option is to fly all the way to Milan and figure out on how to get all the way to Friedrichshafen - meaning the accommodation and car in Munich was lost. Still, we got our tickets and were ready to leave Helsinki at 17 pm, but that did not exactly go to plan either..

Our plane was also delayed by over 4 hours, which basically meant that the new rental car and accommodation in Italy was lost. Somehow, a miracle happened - the rental car dealer was so nice that she waited for us, even though we were late for so many hours and gave us the car with some extra costs included meaning that we would finally sleep on real beds! Can you believe it?

We found the car, put on the radio and stepped on the gas…krhm or just accelerated through the night with our fully electric car! Hungry as hell we found some pizza, demolished it and went to sleep.

Sleep was not plenty - we slept for 5 hours and had to continue driving through Switzerland to get to our destination.

ZZZZZZ

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ZZZZZZ 〰️

to the point

The first day

Finally after tiring 36 hours of travelling, we arrived to our destination on Friday. We quickly checked in to the hotel, dropped our bags and ran to the fair hall full of passion! And boy, did that feel awesome!

Seeing all the brands, booths, people and the spirit of the place - was at first, a bit overwhelming. Still a bit exhausted from all the driving and travelling itself, we took out our flyers and stickers on to our hands and started talking to the representatives on some of the first booths on our path.

To be honest, I felt like a kid in a candy store..

I, as an introvert had a bit of a though start with talking at first, but luckily our smooth operator, Eelis Sallmen got the ball rolling fast and smooth!

We instantly bumped into some Finnish friends; Santeri and Aleksi from Helsingin kiipeilykeskus. Andy and Mikael were also there to check the place out and test some of the training walls.

One by one, we walked through some of the first booths, took our chances and talked some business or just about the burden of our travel to the fair. As the sleep deprivation slowly started to fade away, and by steadily getting more comfortable with the whole place the ball really got rolling. I still wish I had been more daring with all the conversations, as I had this feeling on the back of my head, “This is the change to make some great arrangements and contacts, don’t mess this up” After quite a few booths we finally met some old friends - The guys from Arctic Grips!

We first met these guys back in summer on setting summit in Moumo Stockholm, Sweden. We had a great talk with them and even discussed some business! They also had this finger test thingy at their booth, a tiny pinch block. I, of course tried it and put on only 24,7 kg’s with my slightly injured hands, a whopping 6 kg’s shy from the record..Too bad!

We also had the opportunity to see Walltopia’s new quantum wall, with Stefano Ghisolfi climbing some problems on it. The wall has an adjustable angle, holds on the aretes, and the possibility to climb multiple boulders at the same time to name a few of its perks. It’s different, to say the least. Ready product, not quite in my eyes.

We then managed to bump into another old friend, Niklas Wiechmann, from Climbholds. He was our teacher in the setting summit back in summer. After some exchange of general information we grapped a couple of beers and sat down. Their booth was huge, filled with all the brands on climbholds.com - the same place we ordered our next years holds from a couple of weeks ago. There were some new cool shapes, at least for me. Some of them were bigger, some not as much.

Time to sleep

To sum up day one, we saw some holds, then saw even more holds and in the end managed to bump into some old friends and made some new ones in the process, perhaps.

The feeling I got from seeing so many different brands, sets and holds was, that most of them are pretty… similar to each other in terms of the shapes themselves at least. It almost seemed that they are the same thing, but in different brands. Not all of them are, but quite a big chunk.

There was free beer, pizza and hot dogs, so hunger and thirst did not really get into us. The atmosphere was on the roof and party went on late into the night, but we decided to leave a bit early to get some much needed sleep.

ZZZZZZ

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ZZZZZZ 〰️

THE SECOND DAY

The first good night sleep for a while!

Ready. Set. Go. We packed our bags, checked out of the hotel and drove straight to the fair again. This time with even more stance then yesterday. Same things as the day before, we packed in some flyers and stickers and went straight in to the hall!

But first, we got some coffee… Aight, back to the business!

The first thing we did was, that we met another old friend from Walltopia, Erik Massih. He was just as glad to meet us, as we were meeting him. We discussed about the new quantum wall, and other things in general. He was also happy to show us around, and so we made our way through about 3-4 different hold sets and a few of the booths with Erik showing us around.

Something we did not manage to completely see in the first day was the other two halls. As the place was so huge, they had three big halls to pack in the two vertical worlds they are showing off: the sport and professional sectors.

We walked into the hall next door and bumped into some shoes, software and you guessed it.. more holds..

The brands in this place, were perhaps a bit smaller than in the main hall, but that does not mean that they were any inferior to the big brands - but different so to say. There were, of course some questionable shapes, which may not be that functional in everyday commercial setting, but also something that none of the other brands were offering, like the holds and volumes in OLIO booth, witch we unfortunately don’t have any photos of.

The slideshow below showcases a small brand called 5fingers with interesting shapes and texture on their hold set.

After this we walked back in to the main hall, checked out the last bits of the brands we did not have time to go around the day before. This included 360 holds and other bigger and perhaps some more expensive brands.

In the time between the missed brands, we continued some of the yesterdays conversations and business.

Sooner than we had thought, at around 16 pm people started to disassembly their booths. As the first drill sound rang out - it started a chain reaction and people from all of the booths started to take out the holds etc.

We said our goodbyes to our friends and left with our bags a bit lighter from flyers and stickers with a hope in mind, that the work we put in our visitation brings something home - and it will.

The conclusion

What do we have in mind? how did it go? what do we think about the experience?

First off, the whole experience was good for us, in the sense of getting to know people behind some brands and seeing all the holds.

We went to this fair as a very unknown company to make some contacts and perhaps do some business - and to be honest we are not building a gym (yet) so it did not matter for us really. We had everything to gain, nothing to lose.

Meeting our old friends and contacts were perhaps the biggest thing for us, as the boys Jaakko and Eelis would stay in Germany for over a week after the fair, they got some good information on where to go climbing and perhaps even get a guest gig as setters - the thing we do! Keeping up and managing old contacts is important for business, and that is what we did really well.

About the holds themselves, the main characters of this whole show in my eyes: There were a lot of different brands with quite the same shape and/or something that could be recognized as an origin of some well known shape from a widely known manufacturer from somewhere else. This made me think that these are all just the same thing, but in different baskets?

Other thing that I really put my eyes into was the huge sizes of the holds; so many holds in that place were bigger than our biggest macro (and its big). Will the trend take a turn in some point or will we go even bigger and bigger?

Material was also one thing I noticed. Majority of the holds were either PU or fiberglass. In my opinion PE is in some cases better, it is more durable, lasts a very long time compared to PU, but it is of course - heavier. There was one brand that showed us interesting PE holds in which there was less density vs conventional PE which is very dense. The weight difference is big, I must say. About the durability itself, I have no clue.

On the business side of holds, perhaps something will happen in the near future, stay tuned.

Last but not least, huge thanks to all of the people we met and for Vertical Pro on arranging such a massive and broad fair! If you ever think about visiting this fair, were you a gym owner or just a setter, do it.