Our quest for performance has led us to create. This innovation has since been taken up by the entire sector.
This innovation, which has become a must-have today, originated in CiLAO labs.
This functional innovation allows a wide access to the volume of the bag.
Understanding the needs to offer an adapted solution has always been the expertise of Marc Menetrier, founder of CiLAO. This is how innovations were born that revolutionized their market.
In 2003, the harness without buckle offered guides and ski-mountaineering competitors an innovative response to their needs for lightness and safety.
And then there is this vision: that the body should not adapt to the material but rather the reverse. CiLAO bags respect humans in their anatomy and morphology.
This is how the double-strand® straps were born, then the Moov® belt to offer comfortable carrying and release performance.
At the same time, CiLAO has equipped its bags with innovations to facilitate practices such as ice ax holders allowing the grip of the ice ax without removing its bag. So many essential elements today that have been widely adopted by the biggest brands.
CiLAO is also a story of Men and meetings. The brand was first born from the association of Marc and Gilles POSSOZ. While one listens to the expectations of mountain professionals and shapes the bag of tomorrow in his workshop, the other crosses mountains and valleys to develop the brand.
It was also the meeting with Ludovic Challeat, in a refuge assaulting the summit of Mont-Blanc, that CiLAO took a new turn. Ludovic is a mountain guide and specialist in the Himalayas. It is a close collaboration which is born between the two men in order to cross the needs of the professionals and the creative genius of the founder… From this meeting are born beautiful innovations to preserve the man, and facilitate and secure the practices.
Finally, the name CiLAO became established during a trip to Reunion Island. It is a tribute to the grandiose beauty of these unique places where the wild forest borders the arid peaks, an infinite playground for sports enthusiasts. And as on purpose, cilaos comes from the Malagasy Tsilaosa: “that we always keep”. A predestined name, right?
Your passion is also ours. We are working to allow you to enjoy it as long as possible, in the distance as in life.
Whether it’s traveling the world, climbing the highest peaks, or winning the next race, we develop the right products every day.
Because the comfort of the bag is not judged in the store but on arrival. These are all the details that make it possible to gain the precious second, the last meter…
And it is because they have understood that we work with the most demanding professionals: special forces (Darwin expedition 2015, GMHM), assistance and rescue in the high mountains and industrialists to workers on ropes.
Since its creation, the brand has not stopped growing, while remaining faithful to its initial values: listening, pragmatism, preservation of health … without compromise!
PRAGMATISM
Pragmatic (n.m.): person capable of adapting to the constraints of reality who favors the effectiveness of the practice over theoretical considerations.
For CiLAO, it’s not just a definition. This is both our ambition and our know-how. Our entire range is designed without artifice or concession. We aim for comfort and optimal equipment for each practice. No more no less. Because if weight is often a factor of success, it is by preserving the man that we achieve performance.
HEALTH THROUGH BIOMECHANICS
Since its creation in 2003, the purpose of CILAO is the creation and manufacture of products dedicated to sports performance that adapt as closely as possible to the mechanisms and morphology of everyone.
It is this detail requirement that makes the difference.
In a race, every gram, every superfluous gesture has its importance. But we also strive to ensure that our bags offer unequaled comfort to preserve the wearer. Because less fatigue, less stress makes all the difference on the last meters.
NO CONCESSIONS
Like their founder, CiLAO products are uncompromising. Comfort to preserve the wearer in the long term as in the distance, robustness for flawless security, minimalist equipment for an optimized weight…
We have also chosen to preserve the Made in France since our beginnings. Because designing, testing and manufacturing our products here in Annecy seems to us the best way to guarantee full traceability, and beyond that, flawless quality. It is both an ethical commitment, a vision of the world, a desire to reduce the ecological footprint of our bags… but it is also to preserve real flexibility in our manufacturing and a means of guaranteeing reactivity which is dear to us in the development of prototypes and the production of small specific series.
CiLAO is a French brand of equipment dedicated to mountain sports: backpacks, harnesses, lanyards, etc.
We seek performance in our products and favor health and comfort through biomechanics.
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Made in Savoie |