Omega Roc, the company

Freelancers until 2019, we (Thierry and Bertrand) have now created the simplified joint-stock company Omega Roc (“société par actions simplifiée” under French law) to give more structure to our professional activities.
Since the start of our business activity (in 2005), we have chosen to take a transparent and responsible approach by allocating part of our profit to maintaining and developing climbing sites in Corsica. Find out more.

Omega Roc’s activities:

Creation, graphics and layout, publication and distribution of climbing guidebooks
Development and release of digital tools
Outdoor activities (mountain walking guide, and climbing and canyoning leader)

Creation, graphics and layout, publication and distribution of climbing guidebooks

Since 2005, we have been involved in all stages of creating and marketing climbing guidebooks about Corsica.

– Gathering information: We have been to all the sites we include in our guidebooks to take photos of the rockface and draw the routes onto these. This work would be impossible without the help of local climbers who provide us with all the necessary information, and above all ensure the guide stays up to date by telling us about any changes.

– Photos: we take many of the photos in our guidebooks ourselves. Nevertheless, several photos have kindly been given to us by amateur or professional photographers.

– Graphics and layout: we do all the graphic design and page makeup work for our publications ourselves.

– Translation: since we don’t have all the skills for this, Hilary Dyer at SETS has been doing our translations for us since 2017.

– Printing: our inkjet printer is a little slow, so our books have always been printed by a French printing press. Since 2017, all our books have been printed by SEPEC .

– Publication and distribution: we publish all our books using our own funds and organise distribution to our sales points all over Europe.

Development and marketing of digital tools used by climbers

The primary role of a climbing guidebook is to provide reliable and up-to-date information. To do this, we have always used the digital tools available to us. In the first few years, we shared new information on a Forum then via .pdf downloads. Later, we used QR codes to keep our readers informed. Lastly, four years ago we made a digital version of our guidebooks available on the apps Vertical Life and Climbing Away. These tools were partially satisfactory for us in terms of responsiveness to updates, and we were unable to include multi-pitch routes, so we decided to develop our own app. We didn’t have the right skills to create this ourselves so we asked for help from Arnaud Schaeffer and Thomas Stocker, two freelance developers who have been building and improving from one version to the next to create a tool that is ever more polished, complete and efficient. Currently, the app is dedicated entirely to our guidebooks on Corsica, but we hope that in the future other guidebook authors involved in bolting and maintaining sites in their own regions will be inspired to add their routes and sites.

Outdoor activities

Holders of the French state diploma as a mountain walking guide (Bertrand since 2003) and a climbing instructor (Thierry since 2010), accompanying outings on paths, rockfaces or in rivers was our main activity for a long time. Today, with most of our time taken up by creating guidebooks and developing the digital tools, this side of our activity is either on hold (Bertrand) or vastly reduced (Thierry). Thierry leads canyoning groups or multi-pitch climbing outings for several weeks each year to keep his hand in.

SAS Omega Roc
SIRET no. : 851 961 789 00019 R.C.S. Ajaccio
APE code: : 7410 Z APRM : 1813 ZB
Intracom. VAT no. : FR 78 851961789
Head office : 8 rue 1er bataillon de choc 20090 Ajaccio
Contact : omegaroc.sas@gmail.com

Bank branch : Crédit Agricole Ajaccio Rocade
IBAN : FR76 1200 6000 1782 1041 3822 159
BIC : AGRIFRPP820