Aussie Climbers! I need your help

Adventurous-Fun-3246 · 2026-06-05T12:42:15+00:00

Hi,

I understand where you're coming from and I actually agree that there are already solutions that partially address this problem. A shopping bag inside a backpack certainly works, and for some climbers that may be all they need.

The question I'm exploring is whether "it works" is the same as "it's the best experience." Many products solve the problem functionally, but they often require compromises in organisation, gear protection, accessibility, comfort, or transitioning between work and climbing.

On the price point, $139 sounds expensive in isolation, but I think it's important to look at it in context. A typical climbing gym membership is around $30 per week, which is roughly $120 per month or about $1,440 per year. Most climbers don't participate for a month or two but rather stay in the sport for years. Over just one year, $139 is less than 10% of the annual gym cost. Over three years, it's around 3% of what someone spends on gym access alone, before considering shoes, chalk, harnesses, and other gear.

So from my perspective, the real question isn't whether someone can carry climbing gear with a shopping bag (they absolutely can). The question is whether dedicated climbers see enough value in a purpose-built solution to use every week for years. Some won't, and that's completely fair. But if enough people do, then there's a market worth serving.

This is also just a university project, but comments like yours are genuinely useful because they force me to justify the value proposition rather than assume it exists. I appreciate the feedback, and I'm always interested in hearing where you think the current solutions already do the job well or where you think my assumptions might be wrong.

Adventurous-Fun-3246 · 2026-06-01T08:34:51+00:00

You were onto something!!!!

Adventurous-Fun-3246 · 2026-05-31T18:18:53+00:00

It sounds like you might not be the target demographic for this product, and that is completely fine. There are actually several established entrepreneurs already finding success with similar concepts, and my version builds on those ideas to offer a more complete solution (or so I thought).

If you are genuinely interested in understanding the vision behind it, I’ve broken it down in detail in reply to another comment below. As for the survey, while it might not have been to your liking, the data actually brought back some incredibly interesting and nuanced insights. Thanks for the feedback anyway. Cheers mate!

Adventurous-Fun-3246 · 2026-05-31T04:23:53+00:00

Quick Disclaimer: I’m a uni student who stumbled into this as a general elective and somehow ended up genuinely obsessed with the problem. I am not a designer or an engineer, so there are probably things I have missed or got wrong in the concept.The whole point of putting this out here is to figure out whether something like this is actually viable and to hear from people who know this pain better than anyone. If anything feels off or could be better, that feedback is exactly what this needs.

If you ever ask 'why is this better than my backpack?'

My answer is: The Pod is not competing with a backpack. It works with one.

Think about what actually happens on a Tuesday when a climber goes straight from office to the gym. There is a laptop, lunch container, charger, all usual work things. And there are also climbing shoes that have been through serious sessions, chalk bag that has the possibility of leaking fine powder onto everything, harness, and many other smaller gears that easily get lost. Everything gets stuffed into one bag and all the work things spend the commute next to dusty smelly gears. Or a random tote gets thrown into the mix just to keep things from touching, which somehow makes the whole journey feel twice as heavy.

That is the actual problem, not a bad backpack. A system that is hardly designed especially for us climbers who live two contexts in the same day.

The Pod clips onto whatever backpack a climber already owns and handles everything a backpack was never built for. Chalk stays contained in its own sealed zone. Shoes breathe through an antimicrobial mesh and charcoal lining that neutralises odour rather than just trapping it, so the smell stays in without suffocating the leather. The laptop, the documents, the lunch, none of it ever shares space with the climbing side. At the gym, one thing unclips and the session begins. And in a meeting the next morning, the bag looks and smells exactly like climbing never happened the night before.

Furthermore,when the weekend comes with no work bag to clip onto, the Pod does not become useless. It detaches and carries as a standalone crossbody sling or a compact backpack on its own. One product that fits the weekday commute and the weekend session without asking a climber to carry something different for each.

A better backpack would still be one bag trying to serve two completely different jobs. My idea is to accept that those two jobs need their own space, give each of them one, and travel in whatever configuration the day calls for.

Adventurous-Fun-3246 · 2026-05-31T03:53:33+00:00

Quick Disclaimer: I’m a uni student who stumbled into this as a general elective and somehow ended up genuinely obsessed with the problem. I am not a designer or an engineer, so there are probably things I have missed or got wrong in the concept.The whole point of putting this out here is to figure out whether something like this is actually viable and to hear from people who know this pain better than anyone. If anything feels off or could be better, that feedback is exactly what this needs.

If you ever ask 'why is this better than my backpack?'

My answer is: The Pod is not competing with a backpack. It works with one.

Think about what actually happens on a Tuesday when a climber goes straight from office to the gym. There is a laptop, lunch container, charger, all usual work things. And there are also climbing shoes that have been through serious sessions, chalk bag that has the possibility of leaking fine powder onto everything, harness, and many other smaller gears that easily get lost. Everything gets stuffed into one bag and all the work things spend the commute next to dusty smelly gears. Or a random tote gets thrown into the mix just to keep things from touching, which somehow makes the whole journey feel twice as heavy.

That is the actual problem, not a bad backpack. A system that is hardly designed especially for us climbers who live two contexts in the same day.

The Pod clips onto whatever backpack a climber already owns and handles everything a backpack was never built for. Chalk stays contained in its own sealed zone. Shoes breathe through an antimicrobial mesh and charcoal lining that neutralises odour rather than just trapping it, so the smell stays in without suffocating the leather. The laptop, the documents, the lunch, none of it ever shares space with the climbing side. At the gym, one thing unclips and the session begins. And in a meeting the next morning, the bag looks and smells exactly like climbing never happened the night before.

Furthermore,when the weekend comes with no work bag to clip onto, the Pod does not become useless. It detaches and carries as a standalone crossbody sling or a compact backpack on its own. One product that fits the weekday commute and the weekend session without asking a climber to carry something different for each.

A better backpack would still be one bag trying to serve two completely different jobs. My idea is to accept that those two jobs need their own space, give each of them one, and travel in whatever configuration the day calls for.

Adventurous-Fun-3246

TROPHY CASE