Helly Hansen

Helly Hansen was founded in 1877 in Moss, Norway by Helly Juell Hansen and his wife Margrethe as a small workshop producing oilskins and tarpaulins for Norwegian fishermen and sailors operating in the harsh North Atlantic and Arctic conditions. The brand's foundational thesis was specific and survival-driven: produce the most-waterproof outerwear technically possible at the time — linseed-oil-treated canvas oilskins, then rubberised cotton, then PVC-bonded fabrics, then proprietary breathable-waterproof membranes — for working maritime and outdoor populations. The Helly Hansen vocabulary expanded across 150 years from working-mariner gear into a broader outdoor-and-ski outerwear vocabulary: the iconic Helly Hansen H/H Workwear Mountain Jacket, the Skagen Offshore sailing jacket (designed for the maritime racing community), the Alpha 4.0 ski jacket (the brand's defining alpine-ski product), the Helly Tech proprietary waterproof membrane, the Lifa base-layer system (a fibre technology Helly Hansen pioneered in 1970), and a colour palette anchored to Norwegian maritime navy, red, yellow (for sea-visibility), and the brand's recurring black-and-white logo combinations. Helly Hansen was acquired by Canadian Tire Corporation in 2018 for approximately C$985M. The brand operates as a major workwear and outdoor outerwear supplier — providing technical gear to the US Ski Team, Norwegian and Swedish ski-patrol teams, Mountain Rescue New Zealand, and numerous maritime professional organisations — alongside a substantial consumer-outdoor retail business. The brand operates approximately 1,000 retail-and-wholesale locations globally, plus the Helly Hansen flagships in Oslo (Karl Johans Gate), Bergen, Stockholm, Copenhagen, London, Munich, Geneva, plus Helly Hansen Mountain Service centres at major ski-and-mountain destinations.