On a recent tour of Northern climbing walls with our UK distributor, Stuart Mackay from Beyond Hope in Mossley, Greater Manchester, I realized how difficult it was for many climbing walls to be able to offer and display our products on their premises.
Over the past couple of years, we have also been trying to reduce the amount of unnecessary packaging involved with our products.
The answer to both these problems seemed to me to be able to offer some sort of permanent display unit that could offer and dispense products in a simple, attractive and space efficient manner and that would also last for many years.
Many manufacturers across several retail sectors offer cardboard or plastic product stands but the problem here is that within days or weeks they become damaged or start to look scruffy through natural wear and tear, so I decided that the solution would be to make the units out of high quality plywood, these would have a long life and be recyclable at the end of that life therefore, better on all fronts than cardboard or plastic.
Initial sample unit shows chalkballs in bags as my wife wasn’t keen on a load of loose chalkballs in our kitchen!
The design of our units, allows products to be displayed with the absolute minimum of packaging as nothing needs to hang on wall fittings or sit on a shelf.
So chalkballs are contained in the bottom part of the dispenser, without a bag or header card and likewise, tape and exercise putty on the top part.
Having a modicum of woodworking talent and machinery, I decided to make some units over the Christmas holidays 2019 and offer them into 3 test markets, the UK, Switzerland and Germany.
If the units are well received, we will then offer them to all markets.
First display unit off the production line!
Strength testing!
The Family were pleased when the units were dispatched and the stairs were free again.
In total, we made 60 units and it will be interesting to see how they are received
If anyone has suggestions for improvement please drop us an email.