Helly Hansen
Helly Hansen sells a sailing and skiing story that begins on the Norwegian coast in 1877. Anyone buying the brand today buys from a company in North Carolina: Kontoor Brands, the group behind Wrangler and Lee, acquired Helly Hansen in June 2025 for roughly 960 million US dollars from the Canadian retailer Canadian Tire. That changes nothing about the jacket, but a lot about who decides on production and disclosure.
Helly Hansen
- Origin
- NO
- Founded
- 1877
- Group
- Kontoor Brands
- Production
- Supplier list published
- Core materials
- Polyester, nylon, polypropylene
- Price level
- 3/4
How much this brand discloses, and how much of it we could verify. It is not a quality rating — a composition line cannot tell you how good a fabric is. How we calculate it
- Production disclosure 25/25
- Linked sources 20/20
- Own material check 0/15
- Fabric weight stated 0/12
- Country stated per product 0/10
- Construction detail stated 0/10
- Cost breakdown published 0/8
Evidence for the price About what this price band usually documents
Who the brand is for
Sailors, skiers and anyone who wants a weather jacket with a visible logo and a maritime look. Alongside that, Helly Hansen runs a workwear line which, according to its owner, is worn by more than 55,000 professionals, and says it supplies ski and rescue organisations. The brand is sold in more than 40 countries.
Who owns it
Founded in 1877 in Norway by the sea captain Helly Juell Hansen, the brand was an independent Norwegian company for a long time. In 2018 the Canadian retailer Canadian Tire Corporation acquired Helly Hansen for 985 million Canadian dollars. In February 2025 Kontoor Brands announced the purchase; on 2 June 2025 Kontoor reported completion, and its quarterly report puts the price at 1.3 billion Canadian dollars, roughly 960 million US dollars.
Kontoor Brands is a listed group from Greensboro, North Carolina, which owns the denim brands Wrangler and Lee. Helly Hansen is therefore the third brand of a company whose core is denim. What that means for the brand cannot be said yet; Kontoor itself names broader diversification by category, channel and region as the goal.
An origin story belongs to the brand. Decisions about factories, prices and disclosure belong to the owner, and since 2025 that owner sits in North Carolina.
Where it is made
Helly Hansen itself publishes no factory list that we could find. The new owner does: on its supply chain page, Kontoor Brands maintains a quarterly updated map of all owned and directly sourced tier-1 and subcontractor factories. Whether Helly Hansen's factories are already included we have not checked; the acquisition is only months old. Neither site names production countries per product line.
What the price buys — our view
This section is an assessment. Helly Hansen sits above Columbia and below the alpine specialists in price, with polyester and nylon shells and polypropylene base layers, the material the brand has advertised since the 1970s. For per-item material declarations we refer to the product pages; we have not yet run our own audit. Anyone who wants to know where a particular jacket was made currently has to ask the parent group, not the brand.
Verifiable statements with a source, not a rating. We publish no ethics score of our own — for that, follow the external link.
- Supplier list published
- View the list
What we can document
- Founded 1877 in Norway (brand page of owner Kontoor Brands)
- Acquired by Canadian Tire in 2018 for CAD 985 million (Canadian Tire press release)
- Acquired by Kontoor Brands, completed 2 June 2025, price about CAD 1.3 billion (Kontoor press release and quarterly report)
- Group factory map of the owner, updated quarterly (Kontoor Brands)
What we cannot
- Whether Helly Hansen factories are already on the Kontoor map — not checked
- Production countries per line — the brand names none
- Material composition of individual items — product pages not yet audited
- Unit costs and wages — not public
Sources
5 in total · archived internally- Markenseite Helly Hansen beim Eigentümer — Gründung 1877 in Norwegen, Kategorien, über 40 Länder — Kontoor Brands Read 13 September 2026
- Pressemitteilung zum Abschluss der Übernahme, 2. Juni 2025 — Kontoor Brands Read 13 September 2026
- Quartalsbericht 10-Q vom 7. August 2025 — Kaufpreis 1,3 Mrd. CAD (rund 960 Mio. USD), Abschluss 31. Mai 2025 — Kontoor Brands / SEC Read 13 September 2026
- Pressemitteilung Canadian Tire zur Übernahme 2018 — 985 Mio. CAD — Canadian Tire Corporation Read 13 September 2026
- Lieferkette des Eigentümers — Fabrikkarte, vierteljährlich aktualisiert — Kontoor Brands Read 13 September 2026
Reader reviews of Helly Hansen
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Read on
A garment is made across several countries. The label almost always names only one of them. Which one, and what falls away in the process.
We asked twenty brands across four groups the same question: does the product page say where the item was made? The answer has nothing to do with price — and that is the real story.
Questions readers ask
Who owns Helly Hansen?
Since 2 June 2025, Kontoor Brands of Greensboro, North Carolina, the group behind Wrangler and Lee. From 2018 to 2025 the brand belonged to Canada's Canadian Tire Corporation.
Is Helly Hansen still Norwegian?
The brand comes from Norway and was founded there in 1877. Since 2025 the owner is a US group; before that a Canadian one. Norwegian is the origin, not the ownership.
Where is Helly Hansen made?
The brand names no countries. Its owner Kontoor Brands publishes a map of its factories; whether Helly Hansen's plants are already included we have not checked.
What did Kontoor Brands pay for Helly Hansen?
According to Kontoor's quarterly report of August 2025, about 1.3 billion Canadian dollars, roughly 960 million US dollars. Canadian Tire had paid 985 million Canadian dollars in 2018.
Does Helly Hansen make workwear?
Yes. According to its owner Kontoor Brands, the workwear line is worn by more than 55,000 professionals; the brand also says it supplies ski and rescue organisations.