paul
Moderator
In his slightly irrelevant way, mountaineer / climber Andy Kirkpatrick has a take on equipment manufacturers catering for cavers from a point of view of the number of participants:
From: https://www.andy-kirkpatrick.com/blog/view/bottom
And finally, you have a sport like caving, or cave diving (the BASE jumping of caving... just far more dangerous), where much of their gear is piggybacked off other sports, or industry, and where innovation only comes from the inside, where the user has to innovate - or make do - in order to serve a need or purpose or trip, and will generally manufacture at cost to their friends, the kind of old school activists who can only dream of companies considering them worth a punt, manufacturing fancy dayglow organic plastic over suits, Gortex wellies, or phones you could stick up your bum
From: https://www.andy-kirkpatrick.com/blog/view/bottom