Shop for Climing Gear around Christchurch
10 October 2011 - 8:24pm
Hi,
my girlfriend and I will spent 6 weeks in New Zealand. We have planned to do some sport climbing but as we are on a longer trip we didn't take all our staff from Austria.
Our tour starts in Christchurch and we'd like to buy everything you need (rope, harness, ....). Therefore it would be nice if someone could adivce us some good and cheap shops in the area around Christchurch.
Thanks a lot
Patrick
Patrick, unfortunately you're out of luck, the prices of climbing eq is well known to be expensive compared with Europe and the US in NZ and it probably would have been far cheaper to send some gear over using some freighting method. I have some friends from Spain who did this.
My advice is to pick a common item like a grigri, and then find all the shops that sell it. Find the cheapest shop that sells it and use the prices at that shop for a baseline. If you are paying $179.90 for a grigri 2 your paying full retail you should be able to get it for $152. Prices are often the same however from shop to shop - as they buy from the same supplier and use the same RRP :( I think the best prices in NZ probably come from "Internet Shopping" but you probably don't have an address to mail too...
http://www.bivouac.co.nz/ (shop in Christchurch) 15% Discount for NZAC members.
I find I can get 15% off most items at outdoors shops, so check RRP and then hit them for 15% off. If you want to get name brand items cheaper than -15% off you will be doing really well. The market is pretty much tied up by 3 importers, Mavelox, Spelean and Southern Approach. These 3 importers cover nearly all the major brands, and so the market is pretty tight. It's standard for these three importers to put 100% on items above there break evens for a lot of climbing brands as RRP.
There are many many other climbing gear resellers online in NZ, not too many have shop fronts, so you will need to get items sent to an address. Still realistically you only stand to save %15 from RRP unless you get a true special - which mainly only happens with clothing.
Second hand might be an option... http://www.trademe.co.nz