Elevate Climbing Walls

Our Favorite Climbing Wall Projects

jennq — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 05:26:11 +0000

Seattle Vertical World 4.0 Buildout

jennq — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 05:19:46 +0000

Behind the Walls

jennq — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 05:17:54 +0000

Trublue Auto Belays are now available through Elevate

rich — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 23:29:59 +0000

Elevate Climbing Walls is now a distributor for Trublue Auto Belays. The Vertical World has installed them in the Seattle, Redmond, and Everett gyms and we are having a great response from the customers. I resisted putting auto belays into our gyms for years because of a fear of watering down the importance of learning to belay correctly, and not giving the impression to the customer that auto belays are a substitution for not knowing how to belay. We figured out that the best way to implement the Trublue into the gyms is to treat them as if they are training equipment – a great way to get many laps in when you don’t have a partner. In order to have access to the Trublue, the customer must be belay checked and they must go through an orientation before they can use it. So far they are working out great and the customers have been very satisfied. A great addition to our gyms.

Rich Johnston

So iLL: Guard Booth Video

jennq — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 21:04:57 +0000

Check out this new video from our friends at So iLL:

So iLL: Guard Booth from So iLL on Vimeo.

The Story behind the Seattle VW 4.0

jennq — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 02:29:51 +0000

Check out our new video!

jennq — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 01:03:03 +0000

This is a brief video tour of the Seattle Vertical World, a recent Elevate Climbing Walls project:

Making an Older Gym Profitable

rich — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 21:18:19 +0000

One thing that I have learned during the past 25 years is that it is essential to modify, refurbish, expand, or replace old climbing walls in your business after a period of time. In 1989 I started this process with the original Seattle gym and it was based on the textured panel system. Now that I have 4 gyms in the Puget Sound area, I have established a solid history of remodeling climbing walls in my gyms and seeing the financial results from doing so. Climbing walls are like any other equipment in a business, especially a health club. If the equipment gets out dated and shabby, the customers notice. That is why I use the panel system. It is easy an easy system to tear out and replace. I have had the unpleasant experience of demoing a seamless system, and it was a major headache, and it was very costly. Never again.

The bottom line is how this effects your customers. I have seen that creates excitement and a higher level of customer satisfaction, which results in a significant increase in revenues. Believe me, it is worth the investment. Keep your customers psyched.

Rich

Keep pulling

CWA Summit News

rich — Thu, 31 May 2012 20:43:34 +0000

We had a great time at the Climbing Wall Summit in Boulder, CO. It was our first time showing Elevate Climbing Walls with a trade show booth. We were there mainly to observe and learn. There are a lot of climbing walls being built around the country. The level of new business and new climbing gyms is at a very high level. One thing that we learned while we were there is that there are a lot of older rock climbing gyms around the country that have reached the end of their life span in terms of commercial viability and depreciation. What operators of older gyms need to think about is how to put new life into their business either through expansion, or remodel. I have been operating climbing gyms for almost 25 years now. I have learned that it was important to design a gym so it can be remodeled easily when needed. Every time I have remodeled a section of a gym my revenues have always increased significantly. Climbing walls are just like exercise equipment in a health club. You need to bring in fresh equipment every once in a while in order to keep your customers jazzed about sticking with your gym. Elevate Climbing Walls has many years of experience in rejuvenating a climbing gym by remodeling the climbing walls. Trust me, it does work it the pay off is significant.

Keep Pulling

Rich

New Name for an Old Business

rich — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:19:48 +0000

Elevate Climbing Walls is actually part of the Vertical World climbing gym family. Vertical World has been building climbing walls for clients around the country for almost 25 years. Over the years there has been confusion within the company, and with customers, about who Vertical World is as a company. Sometimes a wall customer would call one of the Vertical World gyms for wall info. If we had a new staff member that was not aware of the wall company, there would be confusion. For better customer service and better identity, we decided to relaunch the climbing wall business under a new name and a new look. Much of our work during the past two years has been absorbed with building our own gyms, specifically a new gym in Tacoma, a remodel in Redmond, and a new gym in Seattle. We are now positioned to branch out into new markets and build state of the art climbing walls for a variety of clients.

Welcome to Elevate Climbing Walls

Rich Johnston