From the top: Helly Hansen

fresh thinking

How does a 129-year-old company set about rejuvenating its brand? For survival and sports wear firm Helly Hansen, a rugged ‘live the lifestyle’ ethos has delivered a breath of fresh air. Employees take kite-surfing breaks, execs are competitive mountain bikers and fashion shows even take place in the pouring rain. Here’s how it’s done the Helly way

words by C.A. Ferro

Whether gleaming in the sun on a pristine slope at Klosters or covered with oil and grime on a North Sea oil platform, it’s the performance of the clothing that’s been the key to success for Helly Hansen. But it doesn’t stop there – these togs would also be right at home on a Milan runway.

The Norwegian company achieves this crucial balance by recruiting employees who excel in disciplines outside the boardroom (as well as in it) – whether it be an ‘old salt’ who knows about survival in cold seas or a former Olympic sailor who understands the imperative of functional clothing in competition. Trendspotters and designers are also on the corporate roster, along with athletic execs who perform wacko sports that mere mortals sit in armchairs dreaming about. The company is young and hip, and its employees live their jobs.

“It’s the atmosphere that creates the drive and inspiration, rather than any company directive,” says global brand manager Hans Gunleiksrud. “So 12-hour-plus days are not uncommon. It’s more of a lifestyle than a job.”

Gunleiksrud, 39, has been with HH for three years, after stints at Nike, Coca-Cola and the Norwegian Olympic planning organisation. Almost half of the company’s upper management comes from major players in the sports industry, most notably Adidas and Nike. With trophies for World, European and North American championships in Alpine and Telemark skiing, Gunleiksrud recently took up mountain bike competition and freeride skiing – basically, hiking to the top of a mountain and barrelling down an impossibly steep slope.

But his main responsibility is “rejuvenating the brand”, a task HH has been working on for around four years. “We’re setting up a new direction for a company brand platform, goals for the future based on a 10-year perspective, and developing tools to get us there,” he says.

Downhill and uphill

HH has seen positive growth for most of the period since the 1970s, but business stagnated in the late ’90s. At around that time, London-based Investcorp bought a majority stake from the Norwegian company Orkla. Heavy investment in building stocks resulted in a bottleneck of goods and the company struggled, but things reversed around the turn of the century. “For the past five years we’ve been stable, with steady growth,” Gunleiksrud says.

The recent news that the company is to be acquired by Altor has created a new buzz. Announcing the plans, Jan Valdmaa, CEO of HH, said that with Altor as the new owner he sees Helly Hansen as having a strong partner with the financial resources to support future growth and unlock the potential of the brand.

In 2005, HH reported a pretax profit of around NOK65 million (approximately US$10 million) from total revenues of NOK1.35 billion (US$200 million). Five years ago, they reported break-even figures. With three divisions, the Sport segment accounts for nearly three-quarters of annual revenues, while Survival brings in 12% and Work 15%. The company employs 271 people at HQ in Moss, on the shore of Oslo Fjord about 50 kilometres south of the capital. Some 125 employees work in production, mainly for the Survival division. All design, R&D and administration is centralised at Moss. Foreign offices in nearly two dozen countries handle sales and marketing tasks, and some sourcing.

“We used to hire a lot of external designers, but now we do more internally; you stay firm in your direction and control unity,” Gunleiksrud notes. “Most of our designers practise the sports they design for. In the past we’ve been good on quality and function, but not on fashion, so we’ve brought in people for the style angle.”

While the clothing could easily be trotted down a runway at a fashion capital, HH takes a different path when presenting seasonal ranges. Around a year ago, they held a fashion show at a castle in Austria. Models walked across a catwalk stretched between two towers – in the pouring rain. “We try to blend rough and glamorous, the new and the heritage in a Helly way,” says Gunleiksrud. Launching new products is tough work, but it helps when there’s a well established brand to lean on.

Pioneer in outdoor clothing

A seaman for two decades starting when he was 15, Helly Juell Hansen knew how it felt to be shivering, miserable and soaked to the bone on the deck of a ship. In his mid-30s he devised a way to stay dry as a bone. His wife did the sewing and Hansen experimented with ways of impregnating fabric with oil. Word got around that his ‘oil clothing’ kept the wearer dry, and suddenly there was demand for the oilskins. Gunleiksrud believes this was the birth of waterproof clothing.

On July 1, 1877, Helly founded his company. Ten years later it nabbed an award for excellence at the Paris Expo, and continued making oiled garments until 1952 when plastics took over.

Innovation spurred by necessity has remained a cornerstone of corporate success. During World War II, HH began weaving synthetic wool. In 1961, it collaborated with a manufacturer of fibre pile fabric. HH could see the sales potential of its wicking, lightness and warm-when-wet properties. Nowadays it’s known as fleece.

In 1970 HH launched the three-layer system that has become the outdoor-clothing industry standard and virtually the only way outdoor sportsmen dress in cold weather. The same decade presented another milestone: the Norwegian North Sea oil industry was born and HH became a prime supplier of work clothes and survival gear. “That part of the business is small, but profitable, and has been booming from the 70s until today,” Gunleiksrud says.

The Work and Survival divisions have added loads of other customers to their order logs, from the carpenter up the road to major organisations such as NATO, various armed forces, the FBI, Shell and Greenpeace.

A whole globe to play on

Gunleiksrud points out that, unlike most outdoor clothing businesses, HH is a global company pitted against a lot of country-specific outfits, such as Peak Performance in Sweden and Patagonia in the US, UK and Ireland – as opposed to other international players (North Face is the only real global competitor). So markets need to be pinpointed. “First we launch the new range to a select number of retailers around the world, together with our local and corporate sales people,” he says. “This is normally done in inspiring locations – on snow, on water, at sea, in dirt, in rivers.”

What he tells about corporate teambuilding, strategy planning or brainstorming sessions sounds similar: “We travel to stimulating locations, bring athletes or other people who inspire us, then we play and get ideas flowing.”

A similar tack is taken when HH courts the press. In the autumn they invited several employees and around a dozen journalists from key markets to Norway for an active weekend – decked out in HH gear for various activities. Along with helicopter rides, kayaking, sailing and jumping into the North Sea in a survival suit, the hacks chose between mountain biking down a zigzag of steep switchbacks paved with rocks the size of bowling balls, or the option to “take the train back down”. The weekend was capped off with a traditional dinner, home brew and sheep’s head served on the half-skull.

It may sound like unorthodox corporate management, but then isn’t the butcher proud of his meat, won’t the baker break bread with you and doesn’t the candlestick maker share his light? By wearing product and practising an outdoor activity, HH employees are doing the best kind of product testing. Each season the employees order in clothing, see how it works in action and provide feedback to designers and technical engineers. “Everybody here plays a sport,” says project marketing manager Camilla Ringvold, 26, a competitive skier and kite surfer. “If I see wind outside my window and know it’s going to be a long day, I might go out and kite surf for a couple of hours.”

In addition to being equipped with a new gym, a gaming area and a healthy cafeteria, the Moss HQ is just a few steps away from the water on one side and a forest on the other. “Some people go for a run in the woods or maybe kayaking in the fjord,” says Gunleiksrud. “It’s all there so employees can chill for a bit on long days.” The chilling evidently helps. His department will get an incentive trip – a weekend skiing and snowboarding – if they meet sales goals. And they’re already planning for it.