HoldBreaker X, Climbing Bra Story
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The Idea
Emine (HoldBreaker's CEO and founder) started with a very strong idea as to what she was looking for in a climbing bra, and turned to an experienced and renowned Swedish outdoor clothing designer to make it happen. Emine wanted to create a climbing bra for female climbers who had developed upper body muscles. A climbing bra that was comfortable, looked great and gave a lot of support but didn't feel tight or pressed your back muscles and one that didn't leave a red shoulder strap mark. One that you could climb in all day without noticing that you were even wearing it.
At first some of the manufacturers we sent the pattern to were surprised at the unique V-shaped design and kept trying to straighten it out to look more like a "normal" sports bra. We just kept telling them to change it back because this is a rock climbing bra for climbers!! The V-shape is designed to allow for broad backs. There was a lot of backwards and forwards refining the design to ensure maximum comfort.
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Fabrics
Many long days and nights were spent stress-testing different fabrics. Rubbing it over and over again across – guess what? – rocks. Because, let's face it, that's exactly what you're going to be doing. The fabric we chose was so much better than the others – we couldn't believe it. For something so soft and smooth it was really difficult to damage! It was important to us that the fabric was produced using sustainable approaches and we were happy that the company we chose really excelled in this area.
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Making The Right Choice
Once the two fabrics were decided, we created and test-ran three different combinations of the fabrics to see which combination was superior. Thick/Thick, Thick/Thin, Thin/Thick. The thick/thin combo came out the winner and Emine has been wearing that combination for over a year now, and it hasn't lost any colour or shape at all.
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Beta Testing
Once we were confident in both the design and the materials, we turned to our wider climbing network – if you're going to make a rock climbing bra for climbers, it's important it really does work for them and we're not all exactly the same! So prototypes were sent far and wide to a selected focus group (consisting of female climbers) who tried the HoldBreaker X climbing bra, climbed in it, and gave feedback which was used to tweak and improve the final product. (Although, genuinely, we were delighted at how much they all loved it straight away!)
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Pre-Launch
Finally, we had a pre-launch event of the HoldBreaker X climbing bra at the Castle Climbing Centre in London where we let anyone come up and try it on. We were looking to use the feedback to make any final tweaks, but in fact the response we had was a resounding endorsement that this product really does work for climbers.
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Love It
We hope you love the HoldBreaker X as much as we do!
