Jöttnar, the first new British technical outdoor brand to be launched in more than two decades, has secured a six-figure investment from a business angel to develop its range and drive growth.
The new investor, a co-founder and financial director of a FTSE 250 company, has backed the brand.
Founded in 2011 by Steve Howarth and Tommy Kelly – former British Marine Commandos – Cardiff-based Jöttnar manufactures premium technical clothing for skiers, climbers and mountaineers.
After strong sales and rapid growth in its first year, this latest round of funding will see Jöttnar broaden its product range while expanding its retail footprint throughout the UK as well as Europe and ultimately North America.
“There has been a marked commoditisation of the outdoor sector in recent years,” says Kelly. “In pursuit of increasingly peripheral consumers, many brands once renowned for specialist, technical gear, have increasingly diluted their product offering whilst dramatically widening their ranges. This practice alienates the core customer and the net result is a loss of brand integrity.”
It remains a highly competitive market space and the barriers to entry are high.
“Jöttnar’s design approach is streamlined, functional and technically innovative without gimmicks while remaining aesthetically thrilling in fit and finish. It’s a marriage of form and function,” says Howarth. “Getting the end product right is only half the battle though and the similarities between climbing and starting a new business are uncanny. There are those things you can control; technique or process, and those that you can’t – rock-fall, avalanche, exchange rate fluctuations and supplier behaviour.
“Strategic planning, operations management and relationship building have all proved vital skills. Happily these have transferred readily from our time in the Marines and growth has been rapid, but to realise the brand’s full potential further investment was required.”
Investment terms were reached earlier in the year following a series of presentations detailing financial forecasts as well as operational and strategic plans.
Howarth adds: “The investor approached Jöttnar after using the company’s corporate supply service to equip staff and VIP clients on a Swiss ski trip. Immediately impressed by the product quality, dedication and competence of the founders, discussions to explore investment options soon followed.
“It was a reasonably straightforward process largely because Tommy and I had put the work in up-front to define the brand’s future path and its requisite resources but also because of the investor’s experience of buying and selling companies and his capacity for strategic vision.”
