PD Origins: Optimum Reserve

Meet: Performance Designs

OUR DREAM OF FLIGHT
We are dreamers, creators, testers, and producers.  Driven by a true love for skydiving and an insatiable curiosity for possibility in parachute design, we’ve delivered revolutionary canopies and unrivaled customer service for over 30 years.  Our sport will never stop evolving. Neither will we.

OUR HISTORY
Combine one man, one skydive, and boundless ambition and you end up with one of the most successful companies in the skydiving industry to date. Founded in 1982, Performance Designs is the realization of Bill Coe’s dream to deliver improved performance of ram-air parachutes to the sport of skydiving. Bill’s passion ignited following his first jump at the age of 18 in 1976 and burned fiercely. He relocated to chase year-round jumping, but was dissatisfied with the canopies he encountered. First modifying, then building new designs from the ground up (all self-funded), he set out to revolutionize the sport and did so with the release of an early version of the PD 9-cell from his shop in DeLand, FL. Bill’s friend and also ardent skydiver, John LeBlanc, matched Bill’s passion and drive for modernized designs and joined PD as VP. With their combined efforts, the company thrived, yielding cutting-edge developments such as Microline, cross-bracing, and zero porosity fabric, all of which endure as standards in today’s parachute industry. Today Performance Designs calls DeLand, FL home, where Bill and John continue to lead and inspire their team to create progressive designs, and still encourage lunch break skydives.