“At some point, you start connecting the dots of your life and they align perfectly together.” 66North’s Helgi Oskarsson on building the first Icelandic global brand of the future.
As someone who has devoted his life to pushing the boundaries of expansion, Helgi Oskarsson is no stranger to jumping into where his intuition takes him. Born in Iceland and a son to a hard-working mother who redefined societal norms by owning her own business in the 1960s, he embodied a spirit of creating opportunities into businesses that transpire into what people want. Moving to San Diego in his early twenties to study his entrepreneurial intuition, and understand further his goals in life, Oskarsson came back to Europe moving to Denmark and started introducing new ideas to markets - his first venture introducing food chain Subway into Denmark.
Five years later, he made the decision to come back to his native Iceland, taking on a bright new challenge of acquiring the American personal development and training company Dale Carnegie, and develop it across Iceland. Selling this venture in 2006, he immersed himself into finance becoming the Director of Human Resources for one of the biggest financial institutions across the region. As the 2008 Financial Crash shook up global markets and traditional banking institutions collapsed, Helgi saw this as an opportunity to really dig deeper into moves him creatively, and what he wanted to change across the landscape.
During this time of research, it was Helgi’s wife, Bjarney Harðardóttir, who led him to finding the missing puzzle piece of his life’s calling. Suggesting he takes a further look into Iceland’s biggest fashion brand, 66North, it was an immediate connection to the historical importance of how the brand began in an attempt to save fishermen from freezing across the harsh climate of Iceland. In this, Helgi also saw the lifetime opportunity of creating the very first global Icelandic brand, and create fashion opportunities for the creatives living across the small Icelandic landscape, looking out into a future filled with innovation, sustainability and technology-focused clothing that gives you exactly what you didn’t know you needed.
Speaking to Perfect about his limitless creativity, and boundary-pushing vision, Oskarsson looks back on almost 13 years of bravery and hard work, building 66North into one of fashion’s most exciting and innovative brands that reflects an open future for how technology and purpose can meet individuality and style into a perfect marriage.
Angel: Helgi, coming into this industry and business, what expectations did you have? How did you make the decision to go into fashion?
Helgi: This is actually an interesting story, because I've been running my own company since I was 28 years old. I am 56 now, and back in 2009, when the financial crisis hit Iceland, I had been working in finance for two years. And as I said, with the exception of these two years, I had always ran my own businesses. When all major banks in Iceland went under, and new banks became established, I was offered to stay on with one of the new packs, but I knew that I wanted to do something again on my own.
My wife had been in branding and marketing for 20 years, and she also had an additional job teaching at the University of Reykjavik. Interestingly enough, I had a conversation with her about what the next venture should be, and she suggested that I should look into 66North, because she was researching and working on case studies with interesting, disruptive brands, both from Europe and North America. In her work, she never felt like she could dive into an Icelandic brand, beacuse we simply didn’t have a global consumer brand coming from Iceland that has longevity across markets.
The history and heritage of this company has been so amazing to discover, so I believed that his company could be the first global Icelandic consumer brand, specifically in fashion. Interestingly enough as I began researching more and more, the previous owner announced he wanted to sell it, so I I teamed up with a private equity fund here in Iceland and we bought a majority stake in 2011.
In just two years, we also bought out the private equity fund and the rest of the 49%. I became very interested in 66North, because I've always been very interested in clothing and fashion myself. I grew up fascinated by the underground subcultures in British fashion and music, and specifically so many of my favourite artists came from London’s studios, so I always admired how fashion and music go together.
As an Icelander myself, I spend quite a lot of time out in nature, hiking, jogging, on my bike, and so on. So, I guess it's kind of liek what Steve Jobs said, that at some point in your life, you start connecting the dots, and it all comes together. So you know, when I look at my other ventures, and also my interests, and so on, it was the perfect match for me to join 66 North and develop it into what it is today.
Angel: Mentioning the time of the 2008 financial crisis and the economic effect in the years following, how did that navigate you coming into this business? Would you say you were very cautious?
Helgi: Absolutely, I would consider myself to be a rather cautious businessman. But, people who watch it from the outside might disagree. In 2008 and after, you had to navigate quite carefully, with liquidity, financing the company and so on, so I tried to be quite careful with each step that I took. At the same time, you also have to be courageous. And one of the things that we decided to do, and I say we, because my wife joined me in the business right from the beginning, was that we backed out of almost all of the wholesale accounts we were in, because we didn't feel that they were the right accounts for us to build the brand long-term.
That was a difficult decision, and you could argue maybe not the wisest financial decision at the time, because when you have revenue coming through wholesale it's difficult to cut it out. But I had to always think about long-term. When you're building a global brand, it takes time, and you have to believe in the journey and the vision that you have. It is a balancing act at the end of the day, with a good level of courageous risk.
Angel: Looking back at those 12 years of continuous growth, how would you describe them? Have they flown by? What have you learned since then?
Helgi: Well, I'm not sure we would have enough time to tell you everything that I learned during the last 12 years! Back in 2011, we knew that we would never build this into a global brand, unless it was Iceland's favourite brand. And so we spent the first years reinvesting in the market in Iceland, building new stores, and we relocating others. We began investing a lot in design, and the new design team, marketing, branding, and so on. We wanted to step into the new chapter of the brand, looking out into the future and honouring the history.
We looked back at the first years of 66North’s creation in 1926, saving lives of Icelandic fishermen. When the company was first created, the mission of its founder was to create clothing for the intense conditions in Iceland, protecting its people. Soon after, we started making clothing for everyday life, educated and inspired by what Icelanders want to wear, and how it protects them from the weather. When you aim to dress up the whole nation, you can't just dress them up in outdoor gear, you have to dress them up in something they like to wear every day, with many fashion elements coming into it. The design also needs to be durable, classic, alongside the quality being the number one priority, because you can't go out and make clothing to save lives of fishermen in the harshest conditions in the world with poor quality.
Angel: You have created a special collaborative culture in recent seasons, partnering with other fashion brands like Ganni and artists like Charlie Constantinou. Most recently, you announced Kei Toyoshima as the new Creative Director of the brand. What does this signify for the next steps of the creative development?
Helgi: When we think about collaboration, one of the things that both my wife and I are very passionate about, is working with young and upcoming designers, as we already work with a lot of independent artists and creatives here in Iceland. When we opened our first physical store outside of Iceland in Copenhagen back in 2014, we wanted to work with a local brand, so we teamed up with SOULLAND. After the three seasons with them, we wanted to put a focus on womenswear, so this is where Ganni came into our mind. We did two collaborations with them in 2017 and 2018, and last year we came back to do two more with them! For us, collaborations have a different purpose depending on whom we were working with. Sometimes, we're simply out there to support young artists, emerging brands and independent creatives.
From a business point of view, it also kind of opens up new opportunities in terms of markets and distribution channels. When we decided to open a flagship store on Regent Street we wanted to work with a local brand and in the UK and we thought about teaming up with someone who we believe could be a potential star in the future. When I was introduced to Charlie Constantinou, I felt I had met a gentleman who was amazingly talented and also extremely interested in 66North, so we ended up doing a collaboration together. I'm very proud of it, because it does not only look great, but it has a fantastic sustainability aspect as well. Charlie came to our factories, and we began using leftover fabrics, just as we had done with Ganni, and we ended up using only leftover fabrics from from our factory for the collection. Working with him was amazingly rewarding for us, because he brought out a very unique creative angle. It’s been very fun.
Angel: And how did you meet with Kei Toyoshima? What led you to selecting him to be your very first Creative Director?
Helgi: Like so many things in life, this happened by coincidence, because Kei was coming to Iceland to celebrate his birthday. He contacted the only Icelander he knew, who was someone on my design team, and he then called me saying "Would you like to meet the head of menswear at Bottega Veneta?" and I immediately said yes.
We met for lunch and and then I invited him to our store to have a look at the collection. And then, I just saw him basically fall in love with the brand. We started talking and, and then the discussion and position developed over a few months time. I shared my vision with Kei for the brand and what we were doing, and interestingly enough, I discovered there are a lot of similarities between Japan and Iceland, believe it or not. When we started talking about the creative angle and design, we also noticed that we had a lot in common and, I felt a speciall feeling as Kei really understood the DNA of the company and the strong heritage of our story. It was a discussion and a dialogue that evolved over several months, leading up to us announcing him as a creative director in November, same year. It was a very kind of a natural progression throughout.
Angel: Looking out into the future, what do you look forward to both professionally, and personally?
Helgi: It is full force ahead for us already, and we are not going to slow down. We want to continue expanding throughout the UK, and also in North America, starting to grow the team there as well.We are currently further developing the retail network through selling in South Korea and a couple of stores in Japan, whilst in discussion with with with other Asian countries as well, so it truly is full steam ahead. Our aim since we took over the company is to make sure that we strengthen the brand, putting our focus on sustainability and is investing a lot in it, as we became B Corp certified in 2022.
We really aim to improve the operations of the company, and keep on pushing and improving our sustainability angle even further. When you come from a small country that only counts like 370,000 inhabitants, it's limited how far you can come, so we also aim to expand and open offices outside of Iceland and take 66North into the next chapter of its history.