Since then, the art of tanning has been handed down from father to son. And the second generation, with Franz Perwanger, was already exporting the leather to Northern Europe to manufacture shoes and to make harnesses for horses and cowbells. Josef Perwanger purchased some obsolete tanning machinery in 1960, and laid the foundation for the industrialisation of the artisan tannery.
Josef Perwanger subsequently met Francesco Delladio, the founder of the brand ‘La Sportiva’. Their shared enthusiasm for the mountain world gave rise to the idea of developing a waterproof mountain boot. A third person appeared on the scene just four years later. This was Georg Plotnikov, a respected German chemist originally from Russia. This inventor helped Josef to make a breakthrough in the development of new technologies for the tanning process. In the early 1970s, Josef Perwanger launched a leather with water-repellent properties on the market.
His son Lorenz developed this leather into the unique ‘Nepal Perwanger’, a leather that is also suitable for the addition of a rubber rand to the boot. The modern mountain boot was born.