Karma Cup

One of my roommates in Mammoth, Blu (He used to say he rode so fast the 'e' fell off.  Funny dude.), used to talk a lot about his Karma Cup.  You do something bad and it emptied out.  As long as you kept it full good things came to you. 

I always liked the expression for some reason.  Just seemed funny to me.

Recently while doing my daily internet searching I came across Vikki Weldon's Blog.  She had an interesting post about Mad Rock and Climb X.  In short, Joe G. formerly from Mad Rock split off and made his own company called Climb X.  He made a reasonably big deal of it, as did Mad Rock, and they both had press releases about it.

For a while though nothing really came of it.  Then the Climb X website appeared.

Look at this.

Then look at this.

Kinda funny.  I've never seen anything to this level of copying.  Two things hit me.

First, it seriously looks like they've just photoshopped the Climb X logo over the Mad Rock one.  Hilarious.

Second, and my personal favorite, is that they're making identical copies of some of the absolute lowest quality products to ever hit the climbing world.  And I'm not just talking to you shoes, I'm talking to you Pads, Harnesses, Biners, Rope Bags and "Industrial Gear".  You suck too.

More than anything I think it's damn funny.  I also like that many of the products are the same damn thing just 5-10 dollars less with Climb X.  I don't even want to imagine those margins.

I truly enjoy the backstabbing involved here.  A good story of betrayal and behind the backerry is pretty fun to watch.  This is no different.

Rumors have it that Mad Rock was founded on the successes and stolen ideas of Five Ten, just with horrid quality standards and materials.  That's plainly evident in the Flash, a poor man's Anasazi Velcro, and the Maniac, a poor man's Mocassym.  

Now in a fairly obvious twist of irony Climb X has both of those styles with names like Redpoint instead of Flash and Rad Moc instead of the Maniac.  I like the latter as it's a nice dig on both Mad rock and Five Ten.  At least he's got a sense of humor, right?

Apparently when you pass along that type of heritage it bites you back a bit.  Should be fun to follow along with this one.

A couple Karma Cups have emptied recently.