Habit Climbing is a Vertical Solutions division that distributes climbing holds, unifies a core team of experienced chemists, researchers, engineers, climbers and climbing-business professionals. Under this umbrella, gym owners and route setters can purchase from our 13 partner brands, all from a single, trusted source.

At Proxy Productions, Vertical Solutions’ third-party hold manufacturer, our goal is to supply and connect gym owners with high-quality, reputable hold brands. When producing holds with our mixing machine to ensure a perfect pour every time, we surpass the industry’s high standards for quality, including exact matches to standard colors, durable and chip-proof material and consistent hollow-backing to reduce hold weight.

Our relationship with Habit Climbing and Proxy gives hold brands a successful sales and production platform, allowing success and innovation at any volume to gym owners around the country.

What does this mean for you?

When you build a climbing gym with Vertical Solutions, you get instant access to wholesale pricing on your hold orders for an assortment of top brands, without having to call a single one of them to set up an account. We streamline the process to get you set up and give you the hold brand variation your gym needs to keep your routes fresh for your customers. More importantly, Vertical Solutions has the ability to offer you a significant credit for holds and volumes as part of your climbing wall purchase. This alone can save you thousands of dollars in your startup costs. Vertical Solutions is the only climbing wall builder that can leverage this sort of advantage and is just another way in which we are positioning your business for success.

Why our holds are better

Many holds look-alike to the end-user. But to industry pros, it’s easy to tell the quality of one hold over another. We specialize in a new hollow-back process that minimizes material use and reduces shipping costs significantly. The integrity of the plastic is key to maintain hold strength and durability - that’s why when you turn over a Proxy hold, you will see a much more consistent and proper pour than you could receive with others. Take a look at the no-nonsense comparison here done on the same shape. Which example would you want your customers using? This is what you can expect when you switch to Proxy.

Proxy Quality

Homogenous pour, consistent wall and edge thickness, centered holes on cylindrical bosses, smooth interior surfaces, straight structural webbing, consistent color, smooth & sanded flats, symmetric negative spaces where applicable, constant surface offsets

Industry Standard

Porous underside surface, inconsistent strength properties, variable wall thickness, variable structural webbing thickness, off-center holes and non-concentric bosses, variable color, choppy sanding, inconsistent radii.
Proxy's newly-developed material is not only 10% stronger than our competitors’, but it can also withstand stresses up to 300% of the working-load standards in route-setting. We have gone to great lengths to dial in our plastic composition in the past 2 years, and we are confident that when put up against any other plastic, we will meet or exceed their strength properties. In fact, it already has. Take a look at the strength test performed on Proxy plastic alongside other plastic compounds. A new bar has been set for material strength.

CLICK TO SEE TEST RESULTS
A lot of people don’t get it but if you are a routesetter, you know that color matters. More importantly, color uniformity matters. Since we are closely integrated with Vertical Solutions and climbing gyms, we know what it should look like when you receive a hold set. Color variation is frustrating to deal with and can make your gym look bush-league. This is just one of the reasons why our new color consistency matches industry standards and UV protection is integrated in every dye used.
If you are a hold brand, your retail price is key to your success. What you don’t want affecting that success, is fluctuating production costs. Proxy is set up for exactly what you are trying to do. We have a hold on small volume manufacturing so when you need to ship orders large or small, you can expect the same great price from us. It won’t fluctuate due to our workload, or us taking on some sort of huge plastics job that pays more.

If you are a gym owner, price is a serious consideration as well. When you start a gym, it's hard to imagine the associated costs per square foot of purchasing holds. Our partnership with Vertical Solutions can alleviate a significant amount of that cost when you build a gym with them. Because they are a turn-key solution provider, they are able to roll in your hold purchases with your wall construction, and in many cases you can receive a significant up-front credit for your initial hold and volume orders that can save you many thousands of dollars.
It’s hard to believe but a lot of companies aren’t great at this, or even good at it for that matter. We’re mentioning this for a very important reason. We started this company to manufacture holds specifically for climbers; not produce random plastic jobs for people. We know there are a lot of qualities that large plastics producers are lacking, including customer service. As a result we make it our main priorities to be proactive, responsive and collaborative. The last thing you want is to be treated like you aren’t getting the attention you deserve. And when you call, you are certainly going to have our undivided attention. Just ask our current hold brands.

Receive a Proxy Sample Package

Testimonials

Brian Hestetune
Elevation Rock Gym

Ordering Proxy-produced holds from Habit Climbing is super easy. It's nice because they produce for a lot of brands so we get a lot of choice from visiting just one site. We aren’t locked into one or two brands of holds to choose from. It's also nice because they are all the same level of quality. We actually order a whole variety of our gym supplies from there, not just holds. It’s a huge advantage of our relationship with VS.
Joe Ortega
Birmingham Boulders

Vertical Solutions' integration with Proxy Production, and Habit Climbing holds and volumes made furnishing our new facility with quality urethane holds a simple task. Our setters and customers love the shapes and the plastic, and their color match is spot on. Hold and volume orders were filled quickly and accurately. We are excited to have worked with the VS team on First Avenue Rocks and Birmingham Boulders. We look forward to working with them on our future projects as well.
Lauren Watson
Ground Up Climbing

Like a lot of new gym owners, when we started Ground Up we had to be frugal and make hard choices about what money went where for our startup costs. Climbing holds are a fixed line item for every gym. You know you just have to spend money on them if you want your gym to be fresh and keep your routesetters happy. Since we were working with Vertical Solutions for our gym, we mitigated these costs by taking advantage of their relationship with Habit Climbing, and saved thousands of dollars in the process. Trust me when you are about to open your doors and see the stack of bills piling up left and right, getting a favorable deal on quality holds, which are costly to begin with, was very refreshing.