CWA Blog Archive-Analyzing Climbing Industry Economic Data

Analyzing Climbing Industry Economic Data

Pdf Summary

In mid-2024 the CWA Summit Content Committee built what became one of the conference's most attended and highly reviewed sessions: Industry Economic and Market Conditions, hosted by Dr. Matt Roberts of the Kernmantle Group and drawing nearly a quarter of gym-based attendees. The session centered on a survey sent a month before the show to gauge the industry's economic outlook for 2025 and beyond, and this article discusses that survey and its resulting report. The survey was itself an experiment in data collection. The indoor climbing industry has shared data only in fits and starts, with the highest participation during the pandemic, so this survey was deliberately designed with very few questions that could be answered without extensive internal reporting. The tradeoff is candidly acknowledged: fewer, simpler questions mean less granular data and no exact answers to every question, a limitation detailed in the report itself. The methodology also broke from tradition on anonymity. Data has historically been collected completely anonymously, which produced longer surveys and worries about duplicate submissions from larger multi-location organizations. This time participants shared their gym name and email, which eliminated demographic questions like number of locations or years in business and let the CWA ensure the report reaches contributors for free. Everyone else can access the full report for $25, while contributing gyms get it at no cost. The article includes conversation with Dr. Roberts and with Michele Lang, CEO of Insight Climbing and a CWA Board member. The broader significance is methodological as much as economic: the CWA is testing how to get more gyms to share data by lowering the effort required, betting that easier participation yields more useful industry-wide insight over time.

Asset Caption

The CWA's Industry Economic and Market Conditions survey, behind a top-rated Summit session by Dr. Matt Roberts, tested a new approach: few, simple questions and named participation instead of full anonymity, trading granularity for higher response rates. The report is free to contributors, $25 to others.