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About us
Climb hard, have fun!
Hi and welcome to our neck of the woods! 9c Climbing is the online climbing playground of Ollie and Jacco. Our story starts in 2013, when Ollie started his webshop klimmen.be (based in Maastricht, the Netherlands 😉). By then he was already a well-known name in the Benelux climbing world. In the years that followed, Ollie and Jacco regularly bumped into each other – Ollie selling the occasional rope to Jacco whilst Jacco fixed some nitty gritty details on Ollie’s website – until we finally decided to officially join forces in 2020 (yes, in the middle of a global pandemic – nothing ventured, nothing gained 😂), when klimmen.be became 9c Climbing. We can honestly say that that was the best decision ever, since it turned out we complement each other wonderfully. We have come a long way since that decision but as of 2024, 9c Climbing is still a two-man team, with an occasional hand from friends. And ow, we pay the best photographer – who also happens to be a boulderer – to be found in a 50 mile radius to convince you of our top quality wares. However, other than taking pictures, we do everything ourselves: selecting the best products, making sure everything is available online, packing and shipping every individual order and answering all your emails. It’s a lot of hard work, and so far, we’ve still been eating survival biscuits to keep going, but it is tons of fun. Together we will do our utmost to provide you with the best gear possible to make your climbing experience unforgettable!
Who we are
Meet the people that make it happen.
Olivier 'Ollie' Coenen
Although the face of 9c Climbing, Ollie considers himself a reluctant businessman. Instead, every fibre of his being breaths climbing. He started with climbing when still in high school and he never quit. Being a professional climber was always the ultimate goal. With years of experience as a sales representative for major outdoor brands and with more than 200 grade 8 routes under his belt, it is safe to say climbing is the dominant part of his professional life. Thanks to Jacco his sales activities have now properly entered the 21st century digital world as well.
Jacco Vinke
Jacco has the heart of a climber and the soul of a software developer. After a trad course in Cornwall in his teenage years, he was hooked to climbing, but decided to dedicate his professional life to software development. He worked as information engineer, software architect and developer for several international companies, specialising in online retail. For years he divided his time between either climbing or programming until 9c Climbing finally allowed him to combine his two passions. Ollie has kicked his butt and by the end of 2022 he will climb a 7a.
Our Core Values
With 9c Climbing we want to combine our love for climbing and good gear with our love for planet Earth. We care for the Earth, we care for its People and we believe that everyone deserves a fair share. Preserve nature, buy local and support your local heroes!
Our Approach
Our primary aim is to offer you a wide selection of high-quality climbing gear, that will enrich your climbing experience. As seasoned climbers, we know what works and what doesn’t and we love to try out new gear and stay up to date with the newest developments. We want to offer you the best that is available.
But ‘best’ does not only refer to quality. As climbers, we spend a lot of our time outdoors, in nature, entrusting our lives to our gear. Both nature and gear are equally important to our survival. We strongly believe in supporting local economies and local heroes. Therefore, we try to select the best products that are locally – as in, European – produced in a sustainable ‘green’ way and under fair labour conditions. Unfortunately, we are just a small player in a big world and try as we might, we cannot dictate the world economy. This means that on this website you will also find products that are great for climbing, but not necessarily green or fair. However, we cannot sit back and ignore what is happening to our Planet and its People. We already said goodbye to some brands that really clashed with our core values. In every sales meeting we have, we bring up the issue of local, sustainable and fair production. Whenever there is a better (greener, fairer) alternative available, we’ll select that. But our own behaviour matters as well. Therefore, when sending your order, we will e.g. reuse as much packaging material as possible and our tape is carefully selected to be low-impact. Additionally, we want to ask you to be aware of your footprint as well, to purchase carefully and minimize waste.
To make sure that everyone gets a piece of the pie, we are working towards becoming part of the 1% for the Planet initiative. However, since we cannot fully make a living out of 9c Climbing ourselves yet (that remark about the survival biscuits is really not far from the truth!), we are unfortunately not yet able to fulfil that goal. Despite our best efforts, we simply cannot give up 1 % of our annual sales yet. However, we do what we can, and until we meet that destiny on the horizon, we will give – to our abilities – to local climbing communities and initiatives, environmental causes and charities. We want to be open and honest about this and we will keep you posted on the progress made.