We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Josh Helke a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Josh, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

We have built our production from the ground up in our own workshop. This has allowed us the unique opportunity to customize our products as we build them to customers unique color and design requests. This has allowed us to recycle our fabric cutting waste into one of a kind products in our customers personal color pallets. Offering a chance at standing out as your own personality in a sea of homogenous outdoor products.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We are designers and builders of innovative gear for Rock Climbing with a strong focus on the Bouldering segment of the sport (Rock Climbing on shorter rocks close to ground with emphasis on gymnastic difficulty)
Our flagship product was a Crash pad, and in 20 years we have become a leader in the Crash pad segment as well as Chalk bags and Chalk buckets for Climbing. We love the art of building gear and do it all in a solar powered workshop in the Mountains of Central PA which allows us to customize our gear to our customers requests.

Bouldering is the most organic form of climbing. At Organic Climbing, USA we are committed to producing the best gear possible. Our products are designed to be functional,durable, and unique. Hand made in the U.S.A., each piece is one of-a-kind. We are an alternative to the industry mainstream. Influenced by the climbing underground, we work to promote individuality and the art of bouldering. Organic Climbing products bridge the simplicity of bouldering and timelessness of art. We believe in promoting individuality and are inspired by the underground art scene. At organic our goal is to produce the highest quality, functional and aesthetic products without any unneeded bells and whistles. Crafted with simplicity and longevity in mind we utilize the highest quality materials and put in the extra time to ensure every piece is unique and stands out. Our small scale of production allows us to focus on adding an artistic one of a kind touch to each piece and to talk directly to you, our customer.

In addition to sewing every one of our crash pads and bags right here in the USA, we strive to source all our materials from US manufacturers and small businesses. Occasionally, based on the availability of American products, some components may be imported. Please contact us for more information.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

When I first started I had done product design work for some other companies in the outdoor industry as a sponsored climber so, when deciding to bring my own company to life I assumed I would look in the phone booth and find a factory to work with locally to make my products…
Every factory I called in 2003-2004 was preparing to close their doors as they had seen most of their contracts leave the US, these were the last of the high quality, high touch, high end domestic manufacturers. I quickly learned that I was not going to be able to make the product of my dreams even in the very last of the last remaining factories as the last ones standing were standing because of military contracts and their interest in taking the risk on a start up in a niche sport did not exist : )
I ended up starting to purchase the machinery from many of the companies I first reached out to for production, during this period many of the old guard earned trust in me like I was their own child and gave me a glimpse into how things get made efficiently in the textile trade. They were my teachers. For my first 10 years we stayed in contact during their retirement and they would give me secret people to call to fix certain machines, or an old timer whom made labor saving sewing attachments in his garage. It was more of a hook up than a interest free load to be injected with this timeless knowledge that quite literally was being lost.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Never compromising on quality, even in the roughest of times during the supply chain crunch that was the covid era we never compromised on our materials, quality.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://organicclimbing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/organicclimbing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/organicclimbing
• Youtube: @organicclimbing