I’ll start by sharing Helly Hansen’s new manifesto. They’ve been around since 1877, but this is something new for them.
Here are a couple of jackets for Fall 2016 you may be interested in. I’ll provide more info as these get closer to release.
Odin Vertical Jacket in Rock
Universal Moto Insulated Jacket in Rock
www.hellyhansen.com
Tags: Helly Hansen
This entry was posted
on Saturday, January 9th, 2016 at 21:30 and is filed under Clothing, Outdoor Retailer.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
If only they(or most brands)could live up to their marketing dept’s tall promises and venerated product names.
you don’t stay in business for 140 years if you’re bad at what you’re doing…
It’s called milking a brand name for all it’s worth and I don’t see even 10 more years if they keep making kit in China (not that I fault them for learning all of the west’s trade secrets/techniques and taking us to the cleaners). The quality has dropped off. Fjallraven too and there are others. The style is there. The performance? Not so much. I’d pay extra for scandi-built but HH and others are bought by the polluted masses for the brand name more than the top performance in the cold parts of the world.
Oh you’d pay extra for Scandinavian built for sure. An high sewer salary in Vietnam is ~$2/hr, for the same skilled labor in Norway would probably be at $40/hr. Let’s just say that most consumers aren’t willing to pay 300% of what a Helly Hansen product costs just because it’s made locally.
Not to mention that we do not have this type of skilled labor available to us… Would importing Asians still count as locally made? Cause that’s what you’ll see when you take a look into a US or Canadian based textile factory.
In Europe you can probably count on 1 hand the factories that are capable of producing Gore-Tex products.
Hell, I’ve been in long discussions with customers about how much of a POS I am for asking for ~175 nok/hr (that’s roughly $20 today…) when I had a business in Norway.
As for those trade secrets, you’d be surprised about how much R&D is actually done in Asia, often by the Asian branch of a US/Euro company or by a manufacturer.
I am a huge fan of locally built, but unless you manage to change the mind of the consumer or come up with tech that does the job for you, I don’t really see it happening.
Now I’m like, well duh! Truly thunfkal for your help.