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How it began My father took me trekking by since I was little. At 6 years old, I was hiking on mountain trails along serious trekkers, enjoying the views, the fresh air and the small victories of reaching cabins, plateaus and summits. It was my life style and it started since I was very young. I took it for granted as it became more and more natural for me to spend each fraction of spare time outdoors, hiking, observing wildlife or practicing mountain sports. Between weekends, I would normally plan my next trip, advertising it to my friends and colleagues, persuading them to come along. They came and they did not seem to regret it! I grew up in an urban environment, which has the power to corrupt people, especially kids. Quite a few young men from my neighborhood were gangsters, inspiring children who were wannabe hooligans. I was a part of this world for a while and it almost caught me until I discovered reading. Since, for the beginning, most of my readings consisted of adventure books (Mark Twain, Jack London), I got even more stirred for exploration. During this teenage period, I became a leader when it came to adventure trips. Some of our tours were on the edge of lawbreaking: traveling with freight trains on the platforms between container cars - trying to break into underground tunnels, which proved to belong to the military - climbing on the top of a commercial bank’s building on the exterior fire stairs, etc. As time passed, I became more interested in outdoor adventure sports and I engaged almost simultaneously into climbing, caving, mountaineering, skiing and later, mountain biking, snowboarding, paragliding, rope jumping. However, climbing, mountaineering and mountain biking remained my heart’s passions and, consequently, I started regular specific training. Cycling to the crags and having climbing sessions, combined with weekends dedicated to multi pitch climbing, sport climbing and mountain biking, is part of my everyday life now and I cannot imagine it otherwise. This is how Highball was born – out of passion for outdoors and adventure. At first, it started from my idea of printing funny climbing-related drawings and messages on t-shirts. Later, it developed into an independent outdoor apparel brand concept. The brand name was suggested by my friends, after the name of a bouldering sweater that I had printed. I loved it and all my friends seemed to like it more than the old name, which was the name of the company itself. I even got a birthday present, which indicated that I should go with "Highball" for future trading. As for the meaning of the word, I have written a blog post where I tried to reveal the relation between “highball” as slang and outdoor action sports. Core philosophy We believe it is never too late to do something new and exciting, as most of outdoor extreme sports are. Each second spent out there is more valuable and brings so much more benefits than a sedentary spare time occupation. This is why we encourage people of all ages to explore nature in any suitable way for them, not fearing for the lack of experience or ability. We all started knowing nothing about anything but we gathered knowledge and experience anyway, either by simply doing things or by courtesy of people who shared their expertise with us. Thus, in this highly interconnected world of internet, social networks, blogs and mobile communication, the chance of finding people with similar interests is definitely higher. After all, friendship, respect for the nature, camaraderie and good will are the essential values people exchange when doing sporting activities together, all this accounting more than the actual physical performance of the participants. There will always be someone to belay you on your first top-rope climb or someone to adjust your brakes for your new mountainbike. Therefore, being together with fellow athletes and having fun is of utmost importance, this leading to strong friendships backed by pleasant memories. What about fear of pushing the limits when doing extreme sports? In essence, fear brings audacity into existence, which only makes us go further…
Business philosophy
Paying attention to customer feedback is of paramount importance and it makes us continuously improve our service and products. As we concentrate on manufacturing apparel that communicates about the wearer, we take into account suggestions about new designs, fabrics and features, which could materialize into new or better products. Fell free to contact us for sending any information in this regard. For your convenience, we will ship all items to you free of charge. The price displayed for any certain product is the only price you will ever pay! When buying multiple items, discounts will automatically apply as to deduct the shipping cost for each additional item. We hope you will have a nice shopping experience at Highball store! Constantin Gabor Founder of Highball – action sportswear
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