It is a friend who comes up to Andreas Thilo in the 1970s and says: Why don’t you come with us to Freiburg? It is the years shortly after the energy crisis, the architect Thilo, previously involved in large projects such as Olympic buildings or school centers in Munich, currently has no employment. And he comes. Friends had started making sandals at a farm not far from the city. The next step is the White Shop in Freiburg, which Thilo helps to establish. Sandals and bags are made there, yet on only a small scale. The simple models are called Mexico and Sahara. Thilo tries his hand at the sandals, develops a routine, gets better and better, and soon is the driving force behind the development of the sandals. Maybe it is the systematic approach of the architect, who will soon be overseeing smaller and larger construction projects in his new home, that comes in helpful. Eventually, he decides to set up his own workshop. It is 1980, he moves to a new location, Kirchstrasse, works with his own tools. Thilo is not alone, the coworkers change, men and women, some are quite committed, some are only around for a short time. In the early 1980s, the Freiburg sandal makers take over the workshop of a bespoke shoemaker in Berlin, and Andreas Thilo works in turns in Freiburg and Berlin. And it is in Berlin that he meets one of many advisors from whom he learns over the years, an Israeli shoemaker who shows him how to make his first simple shoes. At the same time, the sandals are becoming more and more sophisticated and well-developed. Originally very simple models get a footbed, which is constantly refined, the small series manufacturing gets abandoned, from now on it is all about bespoke sandals.