the essential
It's been twelve years since Baptiste Lamare created 180° in Prayssac. In a small family workshop, this Lotois manufactures climbing supports sold all over the world. A look back at a success story.
This rural impasse of Prayssac hides its game well. There, Baptiste Lamare designs and manufactures climbing volumes sold all over the world.
A company born in 2012
180°, the company founded by this Lotois in 2012, is one of the pioneers in the field. We know the climbing holds, made of colored resin. There are also volumes – or supports – which imitate the relief. They are used to attach holds or to climb. “When I started, there were fifteen of us making supports in the world. Now, they are everywhere,” he exclaims. This does not prevent its order book from being full until the end of the year. In recent months, Baptiste Lamare has also won a large order in South Korea. And at the beginning of November, he is working hard to prepare for the show in Friedrichshafen, Germany. On November 22 and 23, on a stand shared with a colleague from Ariège, he will exhibit his products including new coatings. Suffice to say that the end of 2024 promises to be busy for this artisan who “claims made in France”.
“I grew up in the workshop”
However, Baptiste Lamare was not destined for craftsmanship. His studies? The Souillac hotel school. No connection “but it helped me: I like working hours and I like contact with the customer,” he emphasizes. Self-taught, the young man nevertheless confides that he “grew up in the workshop”. That of his father who was a cabinetmaker. And he discovered climbing at 14. This is also how he got started in the manufacturing of supports. “There were missing shapes, so I made stalactites, basic shapes…” he remembers. He spoke to a technical advisor about it. A visit to a socket manufacturer in Lyon did not convince him. “It’s a profession in its own right. I prefer wood, it’s what’s in the family,” he says.
From Portugal to Scandinavia, from France to Japan
So, he launched into the family workshop, with the support of his father. And pretty quickly, he made himself known. “I never needed to canvass,” he emphasizes, “it’s a small environment, everyone knows each other.” In 2016, it was the exclusive partner for the bouldering event at the world championships in Bercy. He also renovated the volumes of the federal hall of Fontainebleau. “It’s a sport that’s on the rise,” he says, “and I feel it.” And not just in France: international represents a third of its activity, a proportion that it wants to increase. Its distributors are placing it on calls for tender in Switzerland, Spain, Scandinavia, Portugal… and now South Korea. He also sold to Japan and “some products on the national training wall in China.”
“We imagine movements”
If his activity is operating at full capacity, he highlights the difficulties: charges and prices. That of wood has more than doubled, for example. All alone, Baptiste Lamare generates a turnover of €100,000 but at the cost of how many hours? The thirty-year-old is saddened: he hardly had time to climb, but has just taken a license again. Because, to design the supports, “you have to be a connoisseur and a climber. You imagine movements, shapes that are closer to nature. That bring something to climbing.” This is the case with dual texture volumes, that is to say with a grainy part and a smooth part. “I like to think about where to put the grain. There is a graphic aspect,” he says before adding with a little smile: “And always this desire to annoy the climber.”
Have more space
“Everyone asks me how long it takes me for a piece: I don’t know,” exclaims Baptiste Lamare. He estimates that around thirty pieces take him, on average, a week of work. Manufacturing a volume involves many stages: cutting the raw shape from plywood with a three-axis numerical control machine, passing it through the router machine to make the angles, assembling, drilling, painting, varnishing. Absolutely artisanal work. Even the washers he has to modify.
To save time, he would like to invest in a five-axis numerical control machine, but for this he would have to convince the banks and have more space. However, expanding looks complicated. Although he once looked for new premises, Baptiste Lamare nevertheless wanted to stay there, in the workshop where his father, who died three years ago, had his hand.
