Florian Olivier — CIMALP — Preserving the Rope-Team Spirit in Professional Trail Running

Florian Olivier

CIMALP is a long-established outdoor equipment brand. It was founded in 1964 by a mountain enthusiast. After going through different periods of growth and decline, CIMALP was taken over in 2008 by Lionel Marsanne, its current director, who succeeded his father.

A visionary who was ahead of his time, he quickly saw the momentum trail running was gaining in the early 2010s. That led him to develop the brand’s first trail-running products in 2014, a range that has continued to evolve ever since.

For my part, I had started working with Lionel and the brand in 2012, and I fairly quickly became an ambassador for this segment. To strengthen the brand’s credibility and reputation in the field, I felt it was essential to build on a collective of athletes who could raise CIMALP’s profile. Back then, CIMALP was mainly known for hiking and mountaineering. Competing brands were already setting up their first teams.

But it was not easy to establish a place in an already competitive market. So, together with Marie Mathias, the marketing director, we launched a recruitment campaign on social media, welcomed the brand’s first twelve athletes and, at the same time, created a trail product-testing programme.

Ten years later, that collective comprises more than thirty athletes across three divisions—adventure, mountaineering and trail running—and its members are among the world’s elite in their disciplines.

Florian Olivier

All ‘my’ athletes can testify to how much importance I place on people and the values they uphold. Trust and personal relationships matter enormously to me. In business, people often talk about ‘soft skills’, and I think I have those qualities.

Every recruitment is different. I spend a lot of time talking with athletes who join us, and also with those who do not. Over ten years of recruitment, I have rarely got it wrong.

For me, it is important to understand the person before judging the athlete: their background, their story, their deeper motivations and their goals.

Each individual in the collective is unique, but they also need to fit naturally into the group. That is essential to me, coming as I do from team sports.

I think that is probably why this story is such a positive one, and why it works so well.

Florian Olivier

I have loved competitive sport and taken part in it since I was very young. First came team sports—basketball, football and then ten years of volleyball at national level—followed by individual sports, particularly trail running and ultrarunning.

I have been running since 2011 and have been fortunate enough to compete in all the races I dreamed of doing (top 100 at the UTMB, top 50 at the Diagonale des Fous, and so on). That hands-on experience helps me understand our athletes’ expectations and needs, both in their day-to-day support and during a race.

The most recent example was supporting four athletes, and Théo Le Boudec in particular, in the lead-up to and completion of his 2026 UTMB. I was able to be alongside him throughout the final month before the race and until he completed it, helping him as effectively as possible in his attempt to achieve his goals (Théo finished 22nd).

I think I now get more excitement from my athletes’ races and results than from my own.

Competing at a high level involves considerable sacrifices and commitments—financial, family-related and sporting. Being an athlete myself also helps me defend their interests within the brand when I feel they need greater recognition or support.

Florian Olivier

I think I operate a great deal on instinct and gut feeling. There is no denying that the growth of the brand’s reputation now allows us to recruit athletes at a very high level. But I can name numerous athletes with whom we have grown together, in both directions:

Rémy Brassac joined us as a good regional-level runner and, in 2026, had an incredible season: selection for the French national team, a European team title and victory at the TDS;

Ilona Serrar joined us as a promising climber at the age of 17 and, four years later, is on the French dry-tooling team, has won European Cup events in 2026 and is taking part in her first World Cup events;

And Kilian Moni, whom I trusted with a project to cross the Écrins massif with his climbing partner and who is now part of the next generation of world-class mountaineers, with major achievements such as opening a new route on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses.

I see myself as a passionate person. Beyond values—which remain crucial when choosing an athlete and must align with the brand’s own values—I believe passionate people understand one another. Birds of a feather flock together, don’t they?

Florian Olivier

It is always difficult to assess the impact of sports sponsorship. With advertising campaigns, we can measure KPIs and return on investment fairly easily; assessing the effect of a victory or a major achievement by one of our athletes is different.

Media coverage is the first thing we notice, but it is also the least revealing. A spike in visibility fades after a few days. For me, a victory creates value when it brings about lasting changes in behaviour: among runners, partners and our own teams, and in the athlete’s career trajectory.

This major victory, like other achievements by our athletes, helps build our recognition and credibility in our areas of expertise, such as mountaineering and trail running. And there is an indicator we struggle to measure, but one that I consider essential: pride within the company. When employees take ownership of a victory, the brand and its athletes become one. That is our rope-team spirit!

Florian Olivier

Because we are almost entirely an online-only brand, it is essential for us to be present on the ground and meet our customers directly. They get to feel the materials, try different cuts and find the right size, which they really appreciate.

Despite being firmly rooted in digital commerce, we want to remain a human brand that stays close to its customers, and attending events helps us achieve that.

It also allows us to continue building brand awareness and to meet people who do not yet know us.

Finally, the teams attending trade shows come from our offices: customer service, product managers, quality engineers and the marketing team. These occasions help us pick up weak signals directly from the field, so that we can adapt our operations and future product development accordingly.

Florian Olivier

Over ten years of sponsorship and developing Team CIMALP, our resources have grown, but we are clearly not playing in the same league as the sector’s giants. Even so, we try to make the most of our strengths, especially our closeness to athletes and our human approach. We rely on that closeness. I am in very regular contact with our athletes—sometimes daily with some of them. I know ultrarunning from the inside and the challenges they can face. They play a real role in developing products alongside our teams, and they belong to a collective built around healthy mutual encouragement, sharing and passing on experience. All our athletes know the company’s employees, and vice versa. The best illustration is when these two worlds meet at our annual gathering. This year, for example, there were 65 people.

But year after year, competition is increasing and we have to adapt as best we can to retain our strongest athletes. It is never easy, and discussions have been intense again this year.

We support projects just as much as results. Accompanying Aurélien Sanchez at the Barkley and then during his record-setting Pacific Crest Trail effort are precisely the kinds of adventures where a brand like ours has a place, and where human commitment matters as much as, if not more than, the size of a contract. We are also exploring other ways of giving our athletes better support. One idea is to bring in additional partners alongside CIMALP who believe in this adventure and can help our athletes achieve their goals.

Ultimately, we will not win every negotiation, and that is not the point. The goal is to recruit athletes for whom this model makes sense. And when one of them moves on to something bigger, I want them to be able to say that CIMALP helped them grow.

Florian Olivier

2030 is practically tomorrow!

I think this conversation has shown that the values I care about, defend and want to instil in this collective are simple ones: hard work, passion, commitment and humility. That is what we have managed to build and pass on over the years. As long as I am given the means to do so, I will continue working in that direction. In a world where appearances, communication and marketing matter more and more, I believe it is essential to build on things that are simple and genuine.