I Tested 3M Gripping Material For 2 Years And Here’s What I Found!

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So, if you get into this video, I hope what you’ll find is a fairly balanced take on a piece of gear. My experience was that the second option (yes, there was a first option - watch the video) was actually pretty good… not Earth shattering, but good. The problem is the price relative to other “good options.”

I’m not going to unwind the tape from my tools. It’s not like the second version of the grip tape is a liability. I actually like climbing with it the wraps. But I don’t think I can recommend them to others when there are more cost effective options that are comparable in performance - or maybe better performance given whatever glove choices the climber is making.

I may even buy the material, again. I honestly like the tape. If the cost doesn’t turn you off, you can find the 3M 641 Gripping Material for purchase, here.

In my day-job, I run an analytics team that looks at the development of healthcare digital products that are supposed to help people check lab results, renew prescriptions, schedule appointments, etc. What my team of great analysts do is determine if those products actually make a difference. If we send out a message through an app to remind people to get a cancer screening, was it the message in the app that got someone into the screening, or were they the kind of person who was always up on their preventative medicine and were going to do it anyway? Or maybe it was also breast cancer awareness month and so a woman went in for a mammogram because she was reminded by a radio add while driving in the car?

Statisticians and other data professionals talk about “correlation not being causation.” Just because we sent out a mammogram reminder and the person went in for a mammogram doesn’t mean the message caused the mammogram.

Okay, yeah. I get that. What does this have to do with ice tool wraps?

Well, my analytics team is trying to first determine if there is a causal inference. Can we find control groups or run other statistical tests to see if it really was the message that made the difference? Let’s assume we do find that the messages are “working.” That still doesn’t mean they are “worth it.” Is there another alternative that is either cheaper for a similar level of effectiveness or an alternative that is near the same cost with even better effectiveness?

Our team is called the “Value Management” team.

“Value” is one of those words that gets tossed around in business a lot. It means different things to different people, and maybe it has been used to the point of being nonsensical, like “synergy,” just another buzz word.

But when we narrow our definition, maybe the term becomes useful. There are certainly lots of concepts of “value” that extend beyond a cost/benefit analysis. We can have valuable experiences. We certainly have valuable relationships. We find value in many things hard to quantify. However, the more narrow concept of value can be much more easily applied (so long as we don’t outright ignore these more expansive notions of value). Did we get more out of the thing than we would have using some other thing?

That’s why I can’t recommend this material, uniformly. It’s a very good product, but is it a more valuable product?