We are Anton, Christopher and Mario, three enthusiastic windsurfers (sometimes also wingfoilers) who founded Wind Lounge together in 2021.
We are probably the youngest surf store and that is exactly what we embody. We want to bring a breath of fresh air to our beloved surf scene and give our customers what we ourselves want on the water and on land.
Before we tell you how Wind Lounge came to be founded, we would like to briefly introduce ourselves. Because even though we all come from a windsurfing background, our stories couldn't be more different.
Anton is 25 years young, comes from Hamburg and taught himself to windsurf. After his first gliding experiences in Denmark, he quickly moved on to the rough North Sea with his waveboard. In addition to his steep career in the waves, Anton trained as a media designer and worked for many years as a graphic designer, cameraman and editor.
We not only owe our entire backend to these skills, but also our beautiful website with all its features!
Christopher is the oldest of the three founding members and already has 28 years under his belt.
He learned to windsurf on the Baltic Sea together with Mario, who we'll get to in a moment. Christopher prefers to ride a freerace board, he hasn't had much to do with waves yet. Which is probably better for his health.
At Wind Lounge , Christopher is responsible for finances, logistics and service. With his calm manner, he knows how to handle any situation and pretty much everything that comes up crosses his desk!
It all started with the idea of abandoning his studies in favor of his YouTube channel. The foundation he laid not only brought thousands of windsurfers together, but also the founders of Wind Lounge.
In terms of age, Mario is in the middle of the pack at 27 years old, mentally fluctuating between 14 and 75. He has already tried his hand at all disciplines on the water. However, as he has failed miserably at freestyle and wave surfing so far, he is content with fins, slalom and race foiling!
Mario takes care of the marketing, consulting and new ideas that drive Wind Lounge forward.
The idea for Wind Lounge was born out of a series of coincidences. Originally, we wanted to get our own fashion label Jibe Wear up and running. Fashion for windsurfers - nobody had done that since Chiemsee and we were up for it. In contact with all the customers who bought a sweater or a shirt from us, we realized that we could just as easily sell mast extensions and mast feet. The target group would be the same as for Jibe Wear and through Mario's YouTube channel we could also communicate this very well.
But simply selling a few mast feet ... it's not that easy. You need contacts to manufacturers, you have to have goods in stock and you have to make a completely different logistical effort than with "just a few T-shirts".
But then something happened that we hadn't expected. Mario lost his sponsors Avanti-Sails and Future Fly, as they had also lost their importers for the German market due to the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, Joki, a passionate windsurfer from the Frankfurt area, contacted us. He wanted to support Mario financially with his YouTube projects and so Mario naturally also told us about his sponsorship problems.
That's when Joki came up with the idea that ultimately led to the founding of Wind Lounge : "Why don't you just make Avanti-Sails and Future Fly yourselves in Germany?".
These were dimensions we had never thought of before. How do you import sails from China? Or boards from Vietnam? Are we going to set up a surf store? Do we also need accessories now? How much money do we need for the start-up and where does it come from?
To answer all these questions here would go beyond the scope of this article. But together, with the help of Joki, we not only took the first steps, but also brought Wind Lounge to life.
A few months after the idea was born, Anton finished building the first website, Christopher had figured out how to import sails & boards and Mario was bubbling over with ideas for marketing and was constantly looking for new suppliers. All of this took on such proportions that after the first year of founding the company we were completely exhausted, but we had also achieved a lot. We were actually selling fewer and fewer T-shirts and more and more windsurfing equipment.
The Wind Lounge came to life, we were overwhelmed by the feedback from our customers and we gradually fulfilled our dream of turning our hobby into a profession. You'll find out everything that followed in another post!
