Andrew Landenberger started building sails in Australia under his own label in 1987. The first sails were produce on his parents living room floor with a sewing machine he bought for $50.
By 1989 he claimed his first clean sweep winning the State, National and World Championships in the International Moth Class. Despite spending several years obtaining a Bachelor of Economics Degree, Andrew’s desire to build fast sails always drove him to devote full attention to sailing and the technology side of sail making.
By 1996 Andrew had won an Olympic Silver Medal in the Tornado Class together with Mitch Booth. Since then the full energy has been devoted to sail making.
In 2001 Andrew made the decision to move with his family to Germany.
Landenberger One Design has developed into a business of 8 staff specializing mostly in One Design Classes.
The production is headed up by Felix Egner who has been with the company since 2004. Despite little time for sailing Andrew and Felix have sailed two regattas together in the past two years "Just for Fun" but managed to finish 1st in the 2005 Topcat K1 World Championships and 3rd in the 2006 F18 World Championships. Andrew is currently spending time sailing in the Star class to develop a new range of sail for the loft.
Both the development process and the production techniques are heavily orientated around computer software. Sail making has moved on from an art to an exact science. On average the process we adopt to develop sails in new classes brings us to a very competitive product within three prototypes. This is far quicker than most other One Design lofts can manage who often make a not stop progression of random changes searching for any hint of improvement in performance.
Our sails are cut by a CAD plotter/cutter and with our procedure for regular calibration and accuracy checks we can guarantee the sails are built with precise accuracy.
An achievement which not many other lofts can claim.
The loft is designed with a series of large tables up to 20 m long which are set up to manage each specific part of the production. Only the highest quality of machinery is used.
The range of sewing machines include only Adler, Bernina, and Jentschmann specialized sail making machines. To produce the highest quality product you need to have the highest quality of machines.