UKH

Hi Everyone, I would like to know what everyone's views on Simond's Climbing gear? it just seems to be so much cheaper than other gear. 

I'm sure it's absolutely fine just ask yourself why, even thought it is so much cheaper, you still see more DMM, WC, BD etc.

Not had any problems myself. My 10mm rope's held up well - will buy again

The difference is that it is heavier. Those lightweight materials and components with comparable durability are just expensive. It’s not a conspiracy or crazy marketing scam on the part of other brands. You’ll find Simond gear to be on the whole bulkier (crampons), quicker to wear (dynamic rope sheath), heavy (carabiners, quickdraws, shoes), and hard to pack down small (down jackets). Sometimes these exchanges are worth it (for me, I don’t need my puffer jacket to be light, just warm, and at 40% of the price of the Patagonia or mammut version I think they’re a great product), sometimes not (I need my crampons to be easy and smooth to install with cold gloved hands, so I use the petzl ones). Definitely worth considering your personal priority constellation. 

In general it works fine; hardware is not as nicely made. No fancy hot forge, but that doesn't make them less functional. Actually they are one of the few that still have carabiners with the big round stocks (less friction, but more weight. depends on your prefenence).

Hardware is French made, with UIAA and CE certification. (these days pricer BD skips the UIAA certification and they are partially outsourced).

Depending on specific items; i just look at what works well for that application. Sometimes it's Simond, sometimes it's something different. My gear selection is giant mix of different brands.

It's perfectly fine. Slightly more industrial than more expensive brands but perfectly functional and most importantly meets all the required safety criteria. 

Certified, safe, budget kit - What's not to like? (..as part of your rack, it has its place)

I have not had a poor piece of simond kit, you can get better but return on investment wise you could be paying twice the price for a 10% improvement.

In some cases this may be worth it but mainly it is not.

Take their belay glasses for example. £15 vs £100 for a top end pair. The top end ones are better but nowhere near 7x better. 

Nothing wrong with it.  It's good value kit.

As others have said it lacks the finess of premium brands, but meets all the required CE safety standards. 

Depending on your budget it is a great way to build up an affordable rack. The compromise will usually be in weight/longevity, which may or not be a concern for you. Products may also look a little dated as they stick to tried and tested designs, rather than constantly innovating.

Bahahaha as a distributor for Wild Country you should understand their business model better than most...

To the OP: Simond are owned by Decathlon, they only supply through Decathlon and there is no mark up due to third party selling. In addition they are a large multinational corporation which allows them to bulk buy. Their kit (especially their hardware) does not change much from year to year, so all they have to do is replace die tools and carry on manufacturing - no R&D required, no recertification, no requirement for new assembly tooling etc. Is it fancy? No. Does it work? Yes. Is it safe? Yes, as much as any other CEW certified product (which doesn't necessarily mean anything other than on a particular day that model of kit made it through the tests). Why do you see more DMM and WC? Because people like something which is light, shiny and has a high level of finish. If all you are looking for is quickdraws that work but don't have the more advanced features because you're on a budget, Simond will do the job... just understand that the price reflects heavier weight and less slickness...

The very definition of herd mentality.

I use a lot of Simond and other budget brand gear, as well as brands that are more R&D intensive and have been marketed more heavily. The top-end brands often have the edge performance-wise, though often with a much higher price that needs to be justified in terms of advantage to me rather than in marketing spiel. In some cases I actually prefer the budget gear.

Climbing hardware is workmanlike, rather than cutting edge. As others have said, it lacks the finesse of the more expensive brands.

The Simond Mountaineering Trousers are excellent. An affordable price in relation to similar things by, e.g. Rab or ME. Reasonable colour (not red or yellow or something bizarre). Slightly water- and wind-resistant, quick-drying, hardwearing, light, breathable, warm enough for winter climbing, cool enough for summer climbing, very stretchy. The only annoyances are that they keep slightly altering the cut and that the pocket zips always break after 6 months or so.

The carabiners seem a bit heavy and crude. 

In case you are unaware, the Simond brand has a very long and storied history.

I have a Simond Bouldering pad, for the size it was by far the most reasonable in price and it has done me very well. It is slightly heavier than similar sized pads of other brands but for a solo pad? I don't mind at all.

As many have said over all good stuff. but I would say are you asking in general or about a specific item? 

Some of their kit is great value for money and works well compared to kit 2 or 3 times as much, which is just a bit more shinny. Other kit you would be better to spending a bit more if you can and get a better product.

If its specific then worth asking on here and getting some feed back on that product.

Yes, I've often wondered if a lot of folk on here, who ask what Simond gear is like, realise that they've been making climbing hardware in Chamonix for 150 years. And that's why Decathlon bought them.

Though I have plenty of Simond hardware and I'm very happy with it for the price, I think that the greatest strength of the current Simond range is actually their clothing and bags, which I believe only started after Decathlon bought them, which is presumably closely related to their other clothing brands.

Off the top of my head, I have three Simond backpacks, a down jacket, a softshell, mountaineering trousers, jeans, and several pairs of gloves. I wear through clothing fast no matter the manufacturer, so I'm happy with the low prices, but I think the build quality on all of these things is excellent, which is why I keep going back for more.

If true, that's a bit naughty...

Simond are an old Chamonix family who have been making good equipment for a long time. In 2008 Simond became part of the Decathlon group and enjoy all the advantages found with economy of scale. In my opinion there are no downsides, buy their kit and enjoy it.

Like most Decathlon kit it's quite cheap and generally of reasonable quality and design, though may not last quite as long as more expensive kit.

No particular reason to avoid it.  If it's got a genuine CE mark on it it meets safety requirements.

The problem is not with Simond kit but with the label obsessed British climbers of today. Simond are one of the oldest most respected brands in mountaineering. But because its sold in Decathlon it is looked down on by those who dont know better. 

.

Anyone who started winter climbing even into the 90s will know the Chacal and Barracuda - because that was what was being wielded by the climber on just about every hard route that made it into a guide book or magazine photo! I started just as the Chacal/Barracuda era was coming to an end and Piranahas (or Vertiges if you wanted to buy British rather than French) were taking over among the the Scottish winter cognoscenti. But I owned a Chacal for a bit; someone in our uni club (I think it might have been your now fellow guide Bruce Goodlad!) was buying cheap from the factory in Chamonix and selling to us lot in a pub in Glasgow a bit later. No one in the pub seemed to mind this possibly slightly illicit trade in grey market winter weaponry! I sold it to a bloke from Newcastle via the Climber mag classifieds slightly later when I was upgrading to Charlet Moser Pulsars - we both took a train to Edinburgh to swap ice tools for cash! Weird thinking back to how much hassle these things were then. The world has definitely moved on, at least in terms of flogging second hand ice tools!

Though brands can gain and lose value.  I'm not saying Simond has (I don't think there's anything wrong with it), but Karrimor is a great example of a once-highly-respected brand reduced to dross by Mike Ashley.  And Berghaus, while still reasonably OK, isn't anything like what it was.

Not really just that is it. As others have said, previously front runner brands have been toppled from their thrones when taken over by multi nationals. 

As mentioned they don’t update or change their stuff so it can look cheap and naff to everyone else, when it comes to life saving equipment if you see something that looks a bit behind the times and you know it’s cheap you naturally might think it’s not as safe. If they cared enough they would combat that with style updates and marketing but they don’t need to So it is what it is. 

One thing I would add to everything that has been said already is that Decathlon has a tendency to cheaply mass produce their kit in factories that are ahem... not all that nice. 

This might not extend to the Simond hardwear as someone mentioned that it is made in France, but does to their clothing. Also, a zipper breaking within six months is the epitome of cutting corners. 

Not to say I don't own anything made by Decathlon but I do think there is merit to investing in slightly more expensive gear with a bit more ethical credibility and durability in the materials used (YKK zips?)

In reply to McKEuan:

Bahahaha as a distributor for Wild Country you should understand their business model better than most...
To the OP: Simond are owned by Decathlon, they only supply through Decathlon and there is no mark up due to third party selling.

This is not generally how intracompany selling works for retailers like this. The manufacturer will have its margin and the retailer will have its own separate margin as well. Decathlon's purchasing prices might be lower than with general resellers but I think their products do have a markup from wholesale to retail. Then again, they might be the exception to the rule. 

Is this documented anywhere?

They use the same YKK zips as almost every other manufacturer.

https://directory.goodonyou.eco/brand/decathlon

https://www.outdoorjournal.com/featured/decathlon-sustainability-review/

I mean, it's already a tiny bit better than it was a couple of years ago so it's a start, but they still have a long way to go compared to more expensive brands. I know that expensive doesn't equal sustainable in all regards but there is a reason Decathlon is so damn cheap. 

It's not unreasonable to question whether a change of ownership = change in quality.

Most people seem to think that 5.10 is not what it was post Adidas.

In my experience Decathlon have been excellent at replacing kit which I felt had worn out too quickly. I had a pair of Simond climbing jeans which wore through at the knee after about 18 months and they simply gave me a new pair. Same thing happened again and I got a third new pair. It seems daft to spend twice as much on something which one gnarly grit off-width could leave as tattered as your pride.

The Good On You score is the same as Salewa (Oberalp) and Arc'teryx, slightly worse than TNF and obviously worse than Patagonia, hardly damning!

The outdoor journal seems to be a lot of speculation and not a lot of fact. I'm all for increasing ethical and environmental standards and that influences my spending, but also I'm not going to make those decisions based on idle speculation.

And YKK produce a massive range of zips at all levels of cost and quality.

True, hence my comment about price not equaling sustainability. There are quite a lot of high quality brands that still have a long way to go. 

Well I wouldn't say it's all speculation. There are number of links to documented cases, albeit a bit out of date now, hence the Good On You score showing a slight improvement over the years. 

https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/2017-12/decathlon-working-condit...

Off on a bit of a tangent to that, I think it would arguably be dishonest for a larger company to buy out a smaller one and continue to point to the 'heritage' of the brand in their marketing despite having closed the factory, made everyone redundant, outsourced the manufacturing somewhere cheaper and jettisoned everything but the name, the logo and a few bits of 'intellectual property'.  I honestly have no idea, is there any suggestion that that's what Decathlon have done with Simond?

It's not. Simond is still based in Chamonix and their still have a factory there for their hardware manufacture.

That description does seem to describe the demise and rebirth of a certain UK hardware brand though......

Simond climbing hardware hasn't changed much. Looks a lot like it was, still made in france.

Simond branded clothing/packs and such; those used to be branded Quechua. Now they use the Simond brand to seperate it climbing from the outdoor focused stuff. Like most brands, lots are made in the far east.

Hardly,

I wasn't saying Simond was bad just remarking that even though pound for pound it's cheaper than it's competitors people (majority) still buy the more expensive options over a cheaper brand.

Perhaps it's the perception of it being in Decathlon, much like North ridge in Go Outdoors.

I agree with you that there's absolutely no problem with Simond kit, but I'd say there is a tangible difference between some of their products and more expensive one offered by DMM, WC, BD etc...

If you look at the DMM draws I have and compare them to some Simond ones, even's Simond's biggest fan would have to concede that there is a difference in the feel and finesse of the two.

However, of course, some people may actually prefer the feel of the Simond ones, which is great as they're the cheaper!

I think Simond is great for some things - belay jackets, bags and jackets have been mentioned, but for others, perhaps where the feel is important, like a rope or draws I'd tend to go for a different brand.  If I'm panic clipping and get the rope stuck on the nose of a gate and fluff a clip, I don't want to be left wishing I'd spent a bit more on my draw!  

Each to their own though, it's good, totally safe gear with a long history and is at a very reasonable price point.

Eh hem... Session carabiners? Cheap historically sells far more than expensive... certainly in quantities... 

So buying open mould carabiners and rebranding them should be considered a bad thing? I mean the North Ridge biners are rebranded Grivel (which is rebranded from a far eastern manufacturer). Sessions are I believe rebranded CT. At least Simond are manufacturing in France in their own facility... I'd be interested to see the sales figures on worldwide sales for Simond biners vs WC biners... I'm sure there is a reason they decided to buy in a base range carabiner for the WC range...

For what it's worth I've been well impressed with my simond rope (the 8.9mm 80m pink sport one). It lasted 2 years of fairly heavy use (~300 routes and plenty of dogging) before needing to be chopped. 2 years later and I've chopped it  a couple of times (down to 60m) and still use it regularly. It's lasted better than thicker, more expensive ropes from other brands that I've also been using in the same period. 

It's interesting to what extent this is actually psychological once products are essentially the same size and very similar design - i.e. keylock nose and plain/bent gates over wire gates. 

I like my DMM Shadows because of things like that they look burly and strong and I've had most of them a long time so am very familiar with them https://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/climbing/quickdraws/dmm_shadow_quickdraws-1..., but I've also got a few DMM Aero and Alpha quickdraws that DMM were nice enough to send me when they were new http://lightfromthenorth.blogspot.com/2013/10/dmm-shadow-dmm-alpha-and-dmm-... I know the Aero was their cheaper alternative to the Alphas and Shadows and I don't like them as much I think purely as a result of "knowing" that.  - when I'm desperately clipping on a hard-for-me-route I don't think I have any more trouble clipping them than the others! 

I've never has a Simond rope, but I've heard they're decent.  Certainly can't be any worse than the horrible, stiff, kinked, plaisticy feeling one I bought as my first 60m rope from a much higher priced retailer!

100% 

It's definitely psychological all in our heads!  Most of my draws are DMM Aeros (felt they had a nicer feel compared to the Alphas, but it's all subjective!) but I've also got a few Black Diamond ones I added later. 

Although they're all good quality, nice draws, I haaaaate the Black Diamond ones and only put them on my harness if it's a really long route where I'm going to need all my draws and even then I'll use them as soon as possible from a position it's really easy to clip from.

Of course, there's absolutely nowt wrong with them at all, they're good draws, it's all in my head as I'm just really used to the feel of the Aeros!

Edit: Bit of a thread hijack but have the Aeros been discontinued?  Just looked on DMM's site and they're not there.  Wouldn't surprise me, rarely see other people using them!

Oddly, I was also just looking at the DMM website, then more worryingly moving over to Rock and Run to see if they had deals on new quickdraw slings and maybe even a 6 pack of DMM spectres so that my trad quickdraw rack wasn't made up of quite so many odds and sods rope end krabs that of course make absolutely no difference to my climbing performance but make me feel very slightly uneasy when I look at them and fail to see order and repetition! Yes, it does appear the Aeros are no more - if you want to climb on DMM plain gate krabs, then the Shadows are now the cheapest option. Bringing it back to thread, you wonder if DMM's lower end sports draws failed to compete with the bargains like Simond ones or whatever GO Outdoors has on offer. Then again GO seems to flog a lot of DMM anyway.

The Shadows are a lovely sport draw* and a quid cheaper than the equivalent, "edge" draw from Simond.

*Much prefer them to the alpha sport. Having dug out my "fat tape" draws and realised they were approx '96 vintage and half the krabs had been pilfered for other uses, I invested in some shadows this summer for a short summer sport season.

Alpha Sport, Petzl Spirit. 

Still more popular I would imagine.

Yeah looks like they're no more.  No biggie, I'm sure I learn to love whatever I replace mine with when it becomes time!

They better not replace discontinue Phantom screwgates though, love me a teeny screwgate!

If my memory serves me right I seem to remember that Wildwires and Heliums were the two sellers of the range and wildwire sales were several times that of the Helium. If we were to extrapolate to DMM, whilst I am sure that Alphas sell in massive quantities, I'm also pretty sure that the Shadow will outsell them. As much as gear nerds like us would like to think that the braying masses appreciate all the features I'm not sure they care as much as we do. I like o think of it like wine at a restaurant. there's 10% of us who go into a restaurant and who know our way around a wine menu and appreciate the intricacies. The rest of us choose the wine that's not quite the cheapest, then sniff it when it comes to the table not really knowing whether it's corked or not and then sit around the table drinking it like we are connoisseurs. The reality is we're faking it and we don't have a clue whether it's full bodied, what we DO know though is it has a pleasant effect on our brains and tastes nice with our steak, i.e. it serves the purpose. 

The 3C, 5C and 7C coil series are the most commonly used, along with Vislon moulded teeth. The pulls and nubbins might be marginally different, to suit application, but those series are all the same basic quality.

YKK don't make shit zips; if you want a cheap zip, you go elsewhere for a cheap, no brand copy.

Decathlon could use a coil zip of inappropriately light weight for the application, which would save cost marginally, bur i can't say that I've seen that done.

I'm sure back when you where involved with WC and the UK industry that was true.

Times have changed.

Although there's the person up thread complaining that te zips on more than one pair of Decathlon  trousers failed within 6 months.

My point is that they are the same zips almost everyone uses. There aren't 'shit YKK zips' used by Decathlon, and 'great YKK zips' used by expensive brands, there are just YKK zips, used by everyone.

I don't know what C Witter is doing to break his pocket zips; I've not had a problem with any of mine.

I started wearing out the righthand pocket zip on my five or 6 year old MTB baggies-over shorts from Decathlon. I use them a lot both commuting and MTB- and gravel-bike rides at weekends/holidays. The left zip pocket is fine, but I tend to put my phone that I use for mapping and photos in the right so it gets used a lot.

I carefully cleaned the zip itself with an old tooth brush and squeezed the puller gently with some pliers - and what do you know? Working perfectly again!

Maybe Mr Witter should try similar?

Whit.....Piranhas were an upgrade from Pulsars! 

After experiencing wobbly heads each season, for 3 seasons in a row (CM fixed them twice, before refusing 3rd time), enough was enough! 

Piranhas had the easiest picks to change, bolts you could tighten with another tool, the best adze to grace any tool. Picks would flex when torqued and a beautiful swing, no wonder they dominated Scotland for years! Then a whole bunch of us snapped shafts, top hole in recessed grips, more or less the same season.

To my knowledge, everyone who returned them to Simond, received as new pair of 'bent Scottish Mixed ones'....I still own this pair!

I currently have a Simond 8.6mm rope, great value for the price.

Stuart

You mean 'Barracuda.' (The Simond Chacal was the matching hammer.)

My personal experience.

When I wanted helmets for the children, I got Wild Country ones as its a brand I trusted. However, they are useless and can't be adjusted to fit on their heads without falling off all the time. I would say not fit for purpose.

Got the same sized Simonds ones are they are great, straps and adjustments do just what they need to, and they were cheaper.

I'd forgotten about the bolts shearing, did that myself once, they were a soft alloy or something. I just swapped it and had one bolt in hammer, figured that would be used the least.

Loving the extra bag of chips story, brilliant!

I had purple, tortoise print Pulsars, straight shafts and way cooler than Jeff's yellow ones....

I once broke original adze on Buachaille, just pinged off back when I swung at something. Replaced it with a Quasar one, much steeper, bigger than stock adze. Pick bolts sheared through alloy head, Dr Janis with Andy Clark. It's fun to reminisce......

Regards

Stuart

Cousin I think.