A distribution deal that fell through, and a shoe of their own.

Red Chili is a German climbing-shoe brand founded in 1996 by two climbers, Stefan Glowacz and Uwe Hofstädter. That date comes from Edelrid, the brand’s owner, which gave it in a press release of February 2023; when the two companies announced their merger in 2017, the climbing press described the founders as having started the brand “over 20 years” earlier.

Glowacz told the story of the start in an interview with the German retailer Bergzeit’s magazine, published in November 2019. He and Hofstädter, he said, had first tried to take over the distribution of La Sportiva, the Italian shoe maker, and that had not worked out. Then the two of them were climbing together in Yosemite and told each other: now we will do it ourselves. In 1997, he said, they cobbled together two or three pairs of climbing shoes and drove to Belluno, which he described as one of the centres of the Italian shoe industry.

The name came quickly. Because both men were fans of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Glowacz said in the same interview, the name was soon found. He gave the brand’s motto from those early days as “Only climbers know what climbers need!”. He also told Bergzeit that, at Red Chili, they had tried to move production from the Far East to Europe.

A climbing-shoe specialist, with clothing alongside.

Red Chili has always been known first for shoes. When FashionUnited reported the Edelrid deal in 2017, it described Red Chili’s range as including clothing and climbing shoes. According to the merger announcement, as reported by the German climbing site via-ferrata.de on 22 May 2017, Edelrid would give up its own climbing-shoe collection, while the clothing lines of both brands would continue to be offered to specialist retailers side by side. The UK magazine Climber added in June 2017 that Edelrid would keep one children’s shoe, the Crocy, from its old range.

Edelrid’s press materials end with the line that Red Chili is a brand of Edelrid GmbH & Co. KG, and in its February 2023 release the company said that the Red Chili collection is developed by a dedicated team at Edelrid’s headquarters in Isny im Allgäu, where the prototypes are made by hand and then tested and revised with Red Chili athletes.

The range is built around named models. In May 2025 Edelrid announced a reworked version of the VOLTAGE, a high-end, strongly downturned and asymmetric shoe on a Vibram XS Grip sole, for the 2026 season, and in a release of the same month it added a laced version of the MAGNET, which it calls a specialist for small edges, alongside the existing hook-and-loop model. The VOLTAGE press release describes a broad anatomical last with room for the toes, an RC-Tension midsole for standing on small holds, an anatomically shaped heel for heel hooks, a double hook-and-loop closure and a large toe patch. The MAGNET LACE release, for its part, calls Red Chili the Allgäu climbing-shoe maker.

That owner is an old company. The boilerplate on Edelrid’s 2025 releases says it was founded in 1863, that it specialises in developing and making ropes, that all of its product development takes place at its headquarters in Isny, and that about 60 per cent of all its products are made there in its own rope works.

A red name in a technical category.

The seven brands in this group all make equipment or clothing for climbing: Evolv, Mad Rock, Edelweiss, So iLL, E9, Red Chili and AustriAlpin. They cover shoes, ropes, holds, apparel and metal hardware such as carabiners and buckles, and they range from small founder-led workshops to names that now sit inside larger outdoor companies.

A climbing brand’s identity is usually carried by a logo stamped on a shoe heel, printed on a rope bag or engraved into a piece of metal, more than by any single advertisement. The company behind that mark may have changed owners, moved its factories or grown well beyond the town where it started, so the plain questions are worth asking for each name: who founded it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where it makes its products and how its marks have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word. None of these guides assesses how any product performs or how safe it is; that is a matter for the relevant standards and testing bodies, not a design guide.

Edelrid has owned Red Chili since 2017.

Red Chili stopped being independent in 2017. On 19 May 2017 the two German climbing brands announced that they were joining together, via-ferrata.de reported, citing Edelrid’s press office; FashionUnited called it a takeover and described Edelrid as the climbing brand of the VAUDE Group, adding that Edelrid had bought the climbing-clothing brand Monkee a few years earlier. Red Chili kept its own brand identity under Edelrid, and the founders stayed on to lead the brand, its apparel and its shoe development, with that work moving to Edelrid’s site in Isny. Edelrid has owned Red Chili since 2017; in May 2025 it still described the brand as part of its portfolio since that year, and noted that the avalanche-equipment maker ABS had joined the Edelrid group in 2022.

The founders’ era ended five years later. In its press release of 2 February 2023, headed as a move to strengthen the climbing-shoe brand, Edelrid said that Glowacz and Hofstädter had said goodbye at the end of 2022 to turn to new tasks, and that a dedicated team in Isny had taken over the development of the collection. The release quoted Edelrid’s managing director, Vitus Wuhrer, on continuing the brand’s legacy.

For a design guide, Red Chili shows how a name taken from a rock band and a two-founder origin story can survive a change of owner, as long as the new parent keeps the brand separate. Compare it with its owner in our Edelrid guide and with the Czech maker in the Ocún guide. For this guide we use chili red, rubber black and pepper gold with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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