Hestra

Hestra is a Swedish glove maker from the town of Hestra in Småland in southern Sweden. In the 1930s Martin Magnusson settled there with his family and set up a workshop in a farmhouse in the timber forests. The first gloves he made were for local lumberjacks. When a ski slope was built nearby and tourists arrived, he realised that more people could use durable gloves. Martin Magnusson & Co is today run by the fourth generation of the Magnusson family.

Features

• Design and development at the headquarters in Hestra, production in the company's own factories, with leather, fabrics and linings sourced by Hestra itself.
• Several models are still handmade by experienced glove makers in Europe.
• More than 2.2 million pairs of gloves a year, according to the company.
• About 65 employees in Sweden, subsidiaries in the USA and Germany and retailers in more than 40 countries.

Range and limits

Hestra makes gloves and nothing else, so it covers only one part of a ski outfit. The brand began with gloves for lumberjacks and later widened to skiing, but it is not a full ski equipment maker.