The Founding Phase: LANZ on the Road to International Fame

The LANZ annals go back to the year 1922. Almost coinciding with the advent of the Salzburg Festival, two mountaineering friends Josef LANZ and Fritz Mahler set up a sports retail shop in Salzburg City Center where, in addition to a wide variety of sports goods, they also sold Austrian traditional costume.

The original aim was to bring traditional rural clothing „to town” as it were. The range extended from „Höttl” material from Saalfelden to a Henndorf janker-style cardigan and encountered a ready market, being bought up above all by guests arriving from abroad to attend the Salzburg International Festival.