Product Dev. If you're not ashamed of your first prototypes you're doing things wrong. Release early. Release often. Summer 2020. Glued together cardboard prototype ... #buildinpublic #climbing #bal

Product Dev. Small contributions can make a big difference to your motivation. One of the first things we did for the brand was ordering logo stickers. And it was so nice to see them show up on climber's vans. Even before we had product to sell. #climbing #buildinpublic

Product Dev. Shot from one of our earliest runs of climber's balm. Probably summer 2020. Our first batch of labels was bad actually, totally unreadable #buildinpublic #climbing #balm #skincare

Product Dev. This is how messy prototyping gets when you're mixing up your own chalk for prototyping. Summer 2020, still in lockdown. #climbing #buildinpublic

Product Dev. This silly little green measuring mat has turned out to be so useful in making the chalk rebels products. Here it's being used to measure the dimensions for a P.O.S. display #buildinpublic #climbing

Product Dev History. Turns out that showing up at a gym with samples & some info on the products works! Sometimes it's just an insta-buy. #sales #buildinpublic

Product Dev. Sometimes your best product shots come from the community. Another reasons to release early, often & be generous with the samples you send out! Picture is summer 2021... #buildinpublic #climbing #chalk

Product Dev. Early on in the Chalk Rebels journey I was obsessed with this type of tube. Turns out that they are lined with plastic or made from plastic, that the "green" solutions don't biodegrade well & that your cap is still going to be regular plastic. #buildinpublic

One of the first things we tried out at Chalk Rebels was to make liquid without magnesium carbonate We settled on modifying an anti-perspirant. We did many rounds of formulations until we ended up with Crystal Chalk. First samples looked like this #buildinpublic #climbing #chalk

Product Dev. Cheap-ass P.O.S. display prototyping. Cardboard & duct-tape to the rescue. Spring 2022. #buildinpublic #climbing

Product Dev. We wasted so much time early on designing cardboard boxes for our chalk products. In the end we just started shipping tubes without box at all. Box design printout, probably summer 2020. #buildinpublic #climbing #chalk

Product Dev. This is what happens when you have too much time on your hands because of COVID lockdowns. You end up imagining all kinds of products for climbers. Including this ill-fated soap. Summer 2020. We have a lifetime supply of these ... #buildinpublic #climbing

Product Dev. Made in China vs. Made in EU. In the summer of 2020 we ordered a batch from China and one from Europe. Pic from summer 2020 comparing EU vs. CN. Turns out that manufacturing close to home & keeping control of the formula was the way to do! #climbing #buildinpublic

Chalk Rebels Flashback. This is how chalk gets shipped at scale. It comes in 25kg bags before we process them into liquid chalk. This one is from summer 2021. #buildinpublic #climbing #chalk

Be our hero. Help us switch to Upsalite®. It's a magic kind of chalk that performs 10 times better than regular chalk. Today we already use Upsalite®. But only for liquid chalk. And you can HELP US BRING UPSALITE® TO CHALK POWDER. #buildinpublic #upsalite #climbing #chalk

Product Dev. Sharing a company secret here. Our first instinct was to order liquid chalk from China. Never again. Quality was horrible. In a way I'm happy we did that. The experience reinforced our commitment to produce in Europe like nothing else! #buildinpublic #climbing

Product Dev. It felt really weird to go back to dry chalk when I started to test our latest product line in Autumn 2022. Tested about a dozen different blends before setting on two awesome formulas with Upsalite®: smooth & chunky #buildinpublic #climbing #chalk

Product Dev. That smile of satisfaction on your face when it's all coming together. September 2021. Our first hands-on photoshoot with all products coming straight from the production line instead of hacking together prototypes #climbing #buildinpublic

Product Dev. Getting early feedback on your products is so crucial. It's pretty easy to do in software but for something that is a physical good with production cycles of 3 months it's tough. So it was great to see our products in use by Font locals. 2020 #buildinpublic #climbing

Product Dev. We ordered tons of these boxes for our first production run and ended up discarding lots of them because guess what? Turns out retailers don't want boxes, they suck for shipping. Chalk is about putting tubes on shelves. Much easier! #buildinpublic #chalk #climbing