Mats-Hakån Lundhag: True North
Long-lasting, high-shafted shell boots helped Swedish outdoor footwear brand Lundhags make its name. More recently, it decided to give a fresh start to lower-cut, lighter boots for walking and hiking, calling this range Omni. It has used the skills and know-how that it has built up in a history spanning nearly 90 years to make sure the footwear in the Omni range has the “instant comfort” that consumers want these days, but without any compromise on the Nordic authenticity that the brand has in its DNA. Here, the company’s product manager for footwear, and the grandson of its founder, Mats-Hakån Lundhag, explains how it managed to achieve both aims.
What is ‘Nordic authenticity’ and why is it important to Lundhags and to its customers?
Yes, it’s probably easier to write it down than to say what it means. In Sweden, people have good knowledge of the type of boots we do. Shell boots, we call them today. They have developed over the years for the climate we have here. It’s wet and cold here and, in the past, boots that were made almost entirely from leather would wear out quite quickly when they got wet, especially in the bottom part. Our shell boots have a long shaft made from leather but with protection in the lower part from cellular rubber for insulation and water-proofness. Until the mid-1960s, there were lots of different shoe factories making this type of boot here; now we are practically the only ones left. We want these boots to be life-long companions for people, or at least to last them for many years in the type of climate we have here. We do not want to make a product that people will just buy and throw away. Not only do we want them to work well, at least for several years, we also want the customer to want to use them for many years. That means not just choosing high-quality materials, but also thinking about aspects such as colour, choosing colours that are not so linked to the fashion of a particular moment. There is no point making a product that will last a lifetime if the customer will only want to wear it for one, two or three seasons. All of this is Nordic authenticity. We are in Jämtland [a wilderness-rich region in the west-central part of Sweden] and we are surrounded by outdoor and skiwear brands that share the same passion. Outdoor stove company Trangia is 40 kilometres away and tent manufacturer Hilleberg is just around the corner as well. So it’s not just us. We work together in marketing and in helping customers enjoy the mountains. We share this concept that it’s important to make good things that will last and will offer customers value.
Why do today’s customers expect instant comfort and what are the most difficult challenges that a serious outdoor footwear brand or manufacturer must address in providing it without compromising on function and quality?
Every generation has its own ideas of what’s important. When I entered the company full time in 1990 and started to learn how we made our boots, I remember that there were changes I wanted to make from the time of my grandfather, who founded Lundhags, and my father, who also ran the company. They had other problems to solve. I wanted to know why we were doing some things the way we were doing them. One thing was fit. And compared to other brands from other countries, I thought we could step up on comfort and take a look at how all the pieces fit together. We didn’t make a lot of new styles every year — we still don’t — and production continued in the same way for a long time. I was the one who started to use a computer to design and specify the construction of our footwear. Then it was clear that any tolerance had to be much smaller; you had to decide if it was eight millimetres or ten because it couldn’t be between eight and ten. Our Forest II shell boot today looks the same as the original Forest boot that came onto the market 20 years ago, but it is not the same. We have added a lot of comfort, through the leather and other material we choose, through the addition of a footbed and so on.
What has Lundhags built into the Omni range of boots and shoes for light hikes and everyday use to deliver Nordic authenticity and instant comfort?
We have made the lighter, mid-cut and low-cut boots that are in our Omni range in the past, but we wanted to make a fresh start with them. We wanted to bring in some Nordic authenticity and to make them comfortable because most people want to go outside and wear them immediately. It’s not that easy because we are smaller than a lot of our competitors and it’s hard for us to compete price-wise. We started designing the type of boot we have in the range now, choosing the materials, adding some of the same looks as we have in the shell boots but also making them differently from the shell boots, and a little bit more regular, perhaps, than the competition out there. We still wanted to choose construction and materials that will make them last longer and also make them repairable.
Does this apply to all Lundhags footwear?
The more fabric you put in and the more you add different things, the more complicated it becomes to repair footwear. We always have the wish to be able to repair boots when they need it, even if sometimes it would be so much easier sometimes to give the customer a new pair instead. We’d rather repair them, even if they are quite new. This comes quite high up in the process of our product development. If you make things too quickly in production, it’s often much more difficult to repair them. We’ve worked hard on this. For example, the outsoles in many of our products contain open-cell EVA foams. We now have good knowledge of what to do to repair that material effectively and make it long-lasting too. Maybe our products are not for everyone, because there are clearly people for whom they would be very expensive at, say, €200 per pair when you can buy two pairs of a competitor’s product for €190. This is something we have to accept, but our goal is that people should buy more sustainable things and keep them for longer.
It is interesting and encouraging that you have been committed to using Terracare leather from German tanner Josef Heinen for so many years now. What benefits does Lundhags receive from this commitment to leather that produces lower carbon emissions, less waste and uses 40% less water than the industry standard? Do your customers understand and value this label?
We’ve learned a lot about leather in the years that we’ve been using Terracare. Leather is complicated. It’s an old, traditional business and the tanneries themselves are often very old buildings and often that’s the image people might have in their minds. I respect that some people don’t agree with the use of animal hides, but as things stand the hides would be there anyway [as a by-product of the meat industry] so to use the hides is to stop that material from going to waste. But you can really see the difference between this traditional image and Terracare. Aspects of this, such as the use of much less water to make each square-metre of leather, are quite easy to understand. What Terracare does is give us a much more interesting story to tell our customers and we take a lot of benefit from trying to explain that story.
