Photo by Zach Lewis

What’s YOUR Story?

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Are you ready to share YOUR story?

Performance Designs wants to get to know you…

What’s PD’s Story?

After forty years in the sport Performance Designs has discovered a few things:

  • Skydiving and Canopies are the two most fun things in the world. Any day that we get to spend skydiving and flying our canopies is a day well spent. This will always be at the heart of Performance Designs.
  • We believe that there’s a canopy for every skydive and every skydiver. It’s why we make canopies for each stage of your journey.
  • That your safety and ongoing education is our number one concern. It’s why we’re always focused above and beyond on our R&D, fabric, testing, quality control, and ongoing education. We believe that there’s always more we can do.
  • That our culture is worth safeguarding. All skydivers know there’s an intangible element of the sport that we keep coming back for (it’s not just the jumping out of planes part), it’s our community, our DZ life, and the connections that we make through this sport.

We understand that though some of the reasons you purchase a PD canopy is because of our R&D, testing, quality control, safety, etc. – the truth is you’re in it for that moment; your skydive. 

So, while you may know a lot about PD – we want to know more about you!

What’s your story?

  • Why did you get into the sport?
  • What keeps you coming back?
  • What do you love?
  • What don’t you love?
  • Where do you think you’ll take our sport next?

Submit your story here: WhatsYourStory

​PD will be featuring these stories on our social media channels, youtube, blogs, and more. So, let’s huddle around this virtual bonfire and start sharing some stories! 

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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.

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