This project is born out of the desire of one man, one regular dude, to do something cool with his passion for climbing.
That dude, if you wanna know, is me, Flavio Martines.

I am a regular guy (Italian expat living in Berlin) and an average climber who at some point decided to invest his savings (which was not much really) and have, for the first time in his life, his own project.
So I won’t lie about it: I didn't start this just for altruistic reasons. I wanted something mine, I wanted to build something, I wanted to be the one making the decisions and not be responsible to anyone else but myself.
Since climbing is my biggest passion, I wanted to do something with, and about it.
So I put some thought into it and asked myself what I could do. I didn’t want to start just another climbing company as there are already tons out there, and the market is really competitive.
So I wanted to do something different.. but I didn’t know exactly what. And then the idea just popped up in my mind.

I had always told myself that at some point in my life I would have to give back, I would have to do something good.
I have been, all in all, a lucky guy. There have been ups and downs, of course, but I was born in the right part of the planet, never suffered poverty or hunger, never had to worry for my safety, or the safety of my loved ones.
I am an average first-world lucky bastard.
And a part of me always felt guilty about it.
So I always thought: when I am “successful” in life I’ll give back. I’ll do something good.
But it was a pretty vague idea, also because you have to define “being successful in life” first. It was something in the back of my mind, something I was thinking about doing… during retirement maybe?

But this idea popped back up when I was thinking about what project I could start.
What if I could do something with climbing AND do something good at the same time?
That was it. That was the idea I was looking for.

So I looked at it from my perspective as a climber, and it was clear to me: as climbers we are going to spend money to cultivate our passion. We are going to buy new equipment and accessories. We are going to train and travel. I know a lot of us are trying to do it in a sustainable way (as much as possible anyway).
But what if at the same time, the money we spend on climbing, could do something good as well?

If you had a choice between a product from one company and a product from another company that donates its profits to charity, which would you choose?
I would choose the latter. I would choose the latter even if it was a bit more expensive.
I think a lot of climbers and outdoor lovers see it the way I do.

So that’s the whole point, a really simple idea: keep climbing AND do something good with it.

And so I founded this project: I want to offer climbers the opportunity to buy a product that they were going to buy anyway and at the same time do something helpful.

I want to turn our consumption into a donation. I want to create a win-win situation.

I want to climb. And I want to make this world a better place (even if just a little). Hopefully you want it too.

Let’s climb for a better future.

If you read the first part, you now know that I, Flavio, started all this. But Skalo isn't just me anymore! Luckily.

I actually never wanted to do this alone, but at the beginning I couldn't convince anyone else to join me.
I asked my best friends in Berlin, but mine was just a vague idea, starting a company is risky, and everyone has their own problems in life already.
So I started alone.. but those friends helped me A LOT.
Just because they are good friends, and good people... and because I was annoying.

With their help I was able to lay the foundations of the project in place, and things started taking a form, having a shape.
And after a couple of years of doing everything alone, as a second job, and constantly asking for help, I was finally able to convince those same friends, who were helping me anyway, to put up a company together.

Again: Luckily. Cause I could never have done this alone.

So we are a team now. Four friends, all Italian, all expats in Berlin for over 10 years.
Flavio, Tommaso, Carlotta and Giacomo.
Sharing the dream of owning something, working together, using our passion for climbing to make a positive difference in the world.

Now, before you think that starting a business with your friend is the greatest thing in the world, we invite you to think again.
You see, doing a project with your friends that you are passionate about may sound amazing.
But the reality is: it's full of challenges, it's super stressful, and there's a good chance you'll end up screwing things up.

The biggest challenge is trying not to ruin your friendship in the process.
You need to make agreements and take decisions, decisions that involve money that you have put in, energy that you have invested.
And guess what: you will rarely agree on everything.
So working together requires patience, good communication, compromises... It is exhausting.

We argue a lot. We have different opinions and different attitudes, but we have one thing in common: we are all very, very stubborn.
To make things spicier, we all also have a temper... a recipe for disaster, you might say.
But two things save us: honesty and trust.

Being good friends means that we trust each other.
Being good friends means that we are not afraid to be brutally honest with each other.
So we may fight and we may scream at each other (we are Italian after all), but we never doubt each other's intentions.
So it is working. For now at least.

So now we ALL do this as a second job, annoying our friends, asking them for help. We share the effort.
Yes, just to be clear: we are still not making any money for us, and we all have another job. Of course, our goal is that working for Skalo will be our job, that will pay our salary. But we are not there yet.

You know.. you could help us reaching this goal!
We would be very very veeeeery grateful :)
With Love,
Flavio, Tommaso, Carlotta, Giacomo.

How it works:

We are still at the very beginning. We have sustained and are sustaining a lot of costs. The money we receive through the sale of our products helps us cover these costs, but we still have to reinvest everything in order to keep growing and expand our offer.
At the moment, we are still investing money in this project and far from the tipping point where our income exceeds our costs. So, as a “business”, for the moment, we are “not profitable”.
That means there are actually no profits to be donated at the moment.

BUT!
…but we don’t want to wait until we are profitable to start donating!
It could take years for us to reach the point where we are profitable. And let’s face it: we might also never succeed. We don’t want to fool anybody, and we don’t want all the effort we are putting into this project to be for nothing.
So we have already started donating.

How? We decided to collect a small part of our total income as a donation.
How much exactly are we collecting? Well, that depends.
We collect 20% from the sales of our Webshop, but most of our income actually comes from the orders placed by our partners.

So besides the sales from the webshop, we have to look at the end of the year to see how much money we have left (if any) and how much of it is reasonable to donate without jeopardizing the survival of the company.
So we can't tell you an exact number or percentage. But we will make a donation (or more than one) every year, no matter what.
Even if it is just a couple of hundred euros, it will never be nothing.
We’ll keep doing this until we are actually making real profits. At that point, we will donate all of them!
For the sake of transparency, every donation is published: date, sum, and receiver. You can find the updated list here.

Who gets the Money:

We are free to choose where the money goes. So, along with projects that help people in need, we would like to sustain projects and organizations that protect nature and/or fight climate change. We want to be sure that our donations don’t go to waste, that’s why we personally get to know the founders of each project or the people who work on them before we choose one to support.

For now, we are starting with just a few projects (check out the “donations” section to learn about them) but we would like to help out and collaborate with more along the way.
But for that, we need to grow first. The more we grow, the more we generate money, and the more we can donate!

The intent of this company is to produce all kinds of accessories for climbers and outdoor lovers and devolve all the profits to projects that aim to preserve nature, fight climate change, and help people.

We are choosing to do everything right: we want high quality for our products and we want to produce (or buy) things that are sustainable, local, fair and whenever possible vegan too. It would be kinda contradictory for us to exploit nature and people during the production process, and then donate those profits to fight the exploitation of nature and people.. wouldn’t it? ;)

Also, we don’t want to create goods that only the elite can afford. We would like our products to be affordable for all.

So we would like to produce and offer good and affordable products that will last. Products that are made in a sustainable way without the exploitation of nature or people.

And we want to donate the profits we’ll make!

Sounds good right? Too good. We are not sure if this is even possible.. without going bankrupt. At least for a small company without huge capital to invest.

We’ll try though. Step by step. And if we don’t succeed we will have done something good in the process.

There isn’t much to lose anyway.. besides money. But money is overrated. It isn’t worth much if you don’t use it to fulfill your dreams.

If we had billions we would cultivate our own bio cotton (or maybe hemp?) and own our sewing factories. All powered from clean energy. We would offer respectable well-paid jobs to people in need (refugees, poor people, and so on..).

With the profits we would buy pieces of rainforest ensuring that stay untouched from human greed. We would fund schools and hospitals. We would support all the cool people and projects out there who struggle to make this world a better place for all.

But we don’t have billions, not millions, not even hundreds of thousands. In fact all of this started with 10.000€ (which are already gone). So we’ll try with one or two products first and then see how it goes.

This could become a little company that donates a few thousand euros per year. Or this could become something bigger and, who knows, maybe have a real impact in changing things for the better.

We could also fail. But not without having done a few donations first ;)