So, how was your year?
That will no doubt be the question all of our families ask us as we sit down for food together over the holidays. My usual response in years like this is something along the lines of, “Yeah, really good, busy, like really busy, but really fun, and so I guess that means it was a good year.” Hardly the Queen’s Speech in terms of eloquence, but I think it sums up what was a pretty wild year. And as has now become tradition, the team asked me to try and distill it down to something we can look back and reflect on. So with only 25% battery left, a guy sleeping next to me on the plane, and no charger to hand, let’s see how far we get.
We started the year with a trip and a launch that, to be honest, I felt like a passenger on. Unfortunately, not a passenger who gets to go on the trip, but in the footballing sense of a passenger — someone who doesn’t do much to contribute. This was a case of the team, led by William, Ebba, and Lasse, saying, “We are going to launch Weigh Lighter by going to Nordkapp, with this group of people, and it will be amazing.” That’s kind of usually all I need to sign off — that someone believes in themselves enough to bring it to life.
That coincided with them showing me a map to somewhere I had never heard of before and telling me there is no airport close by, and that they wanted to drive the 12 hours or so — and wanted to do it in Ineos Grenadiers, no doubt just to make things even more authentic.
So I watched in awe as they assembled an amazing group of creatives and media and headed off on their trip. It wasn’t until a drunken dinner in summer that anyone told me that Tova (new to the team in 2024) had rolled her vehicle on the way up there and was upside down in the Grenadier for an hour as the team turned around to come and roll her back on her wheels and keep on moving. When the campaign came out, it worked out really well, with some great pick-up from EyeC Mag, Hypebeast, T3, Peakmag and more.
I guess the theme of road trips was fresh in everyone’s mind when we sat down and asked ourselves what we wanted our summer campaign to be. The year before, we rented an airport, you’ll remember, but for this year we decided we wanted a real adventure, so we called our friends at Wasted Talent with a very loose brief.
Alexei from WT pretty quickly, in similar vein, came to the conclusion that the best way to celebrate summer travel would be to create a unique trip across Scandinavia. They created two teams, including invitees Juliette Lacome and Luis Medearis, getting them to meet in Helsinki and giving them a challenge: get to Stockholm (hello overnight party boat ferry), then to Oslo (cue buying cars from the ’90s, one of which we/the Stockholm office/William have commandeered), and then on to Copenhagen. Oh, and we took away their phones on day one. That was Ragnarök.
So they got to experience using a real-life map for the first time, tried hitchhiking, had cars break down, took seaplanes, and sprinted across cities to reach the destination first. Top Gear meets Anthony Bourdain, led by the one and only Alexei from Wasted Talent, who, as testament to the man, has created a WhatsApp group where, between all members, they are trying to drink one million beers before Christmas. You do the maths, but it’s a very noble effort from an upstanding Brit.
As we headed into spring/summer and the days grew longer, we continued our push (get it) into skate. There has always been something unique and slightly mystical about the CPH Open, it’s one of those events that feels less like a contest and more like a moving city, and for our partnership with CPH Open 2024 in Athens, we decided to cook up something special.
The pitch was made, bags were packed, and we headed off for an unforgettable trip to the gritty and charming streets of Athens, with, of course, none other than Sam Moody behind the camera, rec button firmly pressed. Fast forward to mid-January 2025 and we found ourselves in Berlin for the first premiere, hosted with Civilist skate shop. Around a hundred people showed up to watch the madness unfold. From there, the film took on a life of its own, with close to ten screenings around the world at key accounts like Slam City, Lobby, Arrow, and Beast, to name a few. In true skate spirit, we tried to make sure everyone had a drink in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other while watching the CPH Open documentary.
Off the back of that, we doubled down on skate with the launch of our new skate carrier built for skaters who live in cities where rain is less of a surprise and more of a constant companion. Which, realistically, is most of us who don’t want to soak a seven-ply. We headed to the UK with Beatrice, linking up with Bubble and photographer Felix Adler for an epic trip through some of the country’s most iconic spots. Along the way, we partnered with some of the best skate stores around the world, marking the launch the only way that really made sense: pizza, beers, and good people in good spaces.
One of the pieces of work I was proudest of this year was our summer campaign, “What the fuck happened to being excited about the future?” Very different, very on the nose, definitely not with our usual fun vibes, and more pointed towards the challenges we see the world — and especially young creatives — facing today. We live in a world where bad news drives clicks, where people live in their own algorithm-created echo chambers, and where, if you look at the numbers, there is a real problem about the future in terms of affordability, climate change, and the jobs market — but many of the politicians in leading economies seem oblivious to them. It’s one of those campaigns we have spoken about for a while, and honestly, we are thankful to work at a company where this kind of work is encouraged.
We played this at a creative exchange at Hyper Island, a creative college in Stockholm, and it was amazing to see the positive reaction to it by the students there. For me, if they like what we are doing, then we are doing our job.
Sometimes in Marketing we talk about inspiring others to become advocates for us. So seeing this piece created by Giuli at Eden films with her own version of the Summer Campaign through her eyes (and then learning about her own journey of moving continents) really makes these things worthwhile.
From there, in the background, me — who by this point didn’t get to go to Nordkapp or the Wasted Talent trip or on the skate trip — decided the best thing to do was to keep myself busy with Hallvard and get to work on something we have spoken about for years: making our first book. With three seasons of Pack Heavy, Chase Light in our back pocket, including newly released episodes with Ishod Wair, skate boarding royalty amoungst others, we knew we had everything we needed to bring this to life, and so we enlisted Nick Baines as editor and set about curating the thing. Five hundred pages later and numerous rewrites, Hallvard said, “How big should this thing be?” “Erm, I don’t know. Maybe the size of Lucas’ book Heart,” I replied, without really looking at it.
Before you know it, two months later we get a few pallets of the most beautiful expression of the brand, which weigh over four kilos each, so serve as the best gift ever but also definitely push you overweight, so keep them on those coffee tables.
To celebrate the book, in time-honoured tradition, we came up with a last-minute idea that we would need an event — maybe a creative exchange — to launch the book. That then became, “Why don’t we rent a space?”, which soon became, “Hey, let’s do a pop-up,” and in about a month Michael pulled together an amazing set-up in Grünerløkka, where we had a bunch of friends of the brand show up for runs, yoga, to launch the book, and yes, the creative exchange with photographer Maja Moan, artist Guttestreker & local legend Michael Ray.
As our first foray into what this could look like, we were really happy to meet people in real life and learn about how this could work in future.
An idea that has been floated for a while is to create some limited-run art editions of Huggers. So when we had the pop-up, we asked Lucas to bring his kit, and he promptly started what is now an ongoing project with his edition. We followed that up in December with Aaron Schwarz, the creative director of Korua Snowboards, who spent a couple of days with us making some beautiful iterations of our best-selling backpack.
Around the same time, we launched our collection with our favourite Dutch surf brethren, Paul and the crew at New Amsterdam Surf Association. We loved the direction they took with our sling and coffin, giving it a really unique feel. And can you guess how we launched it? Well, of course, they asked for a pop-up too, so we headed off to London, found an epic corner spot on Brick Lane, and invited the great and the good for an epic few days of riding Boris bikes, meeting the local constabulary, dancing, street drinking, and celebrating our launch together. And of course, Tin organised a run. You get the theme here — this lot are sporty.
In June, following the minority investment of LVMH Luxury Ventures in 2024, that we also announced the news of strategic investment from two of Norways most notable people Erling Haaland, footballing superstar and Gustav Magnar Witsøe, an investor, model who would both come in to help us on both awareness and connections to help us grow the business along with the strategic goals of the company. These really are those pinch me moments for both the brand and for all of us personally.
As always, after fashion week in June, everyone set their collective emails to “Let’s talk in August” and headed off to explore the world. It’s funny — as a Brit, I always thought it was only Italians and French who had the whole “taking a month off in August” down to a fine art, but it seems the Scandinavians have got it really dialled, because it all happens quite low-key, like a secret everyone knows but they don’t tell the rest of the world about. Kudos on that one. The world can learn a lot from this.
When we came back sun-kissed and drunk on lack of responsibilities, we went headfirst into back-to-routines with our Coffee Colours campaign before diving into some content we had shot the season before in Andermatt, Coral Flash. Working with Swiss photography demigod and Laax marketing guru Doosli, we found some epic old bunkers in the hills of Switzerland and took a very different approach to shooting in the snow. Yep, I didn’t get to go there either. I assume Tin organised a run in the snow too.
Around this time, much like London buses, we had a whole world of retail executions land on our table at the same time, which meant some headaches, some stress, and a lot of hands being needed on deck. Some went off to New York to prep our space at the tm:rw space, where we have a NY taxi-inspired set-up, whilst others went to De Bijenkorf in Rotterdam for a shop-in-shop, and then we got ourselves set up in Illum in Copenhagen, a retailer we have been looking to open for a while. On each of these, we are always thankful for all the great partners we meet along the way at the retailers who help us with the set-ups, along with the teams who help us, from One More to WRKS, and of course our mobile tradesman Bram, along with whoever is around and good with a spanner — which this year seems to have been Ole.
In October, with the nights drawing in and the team growing, we moved offices in Oslo. Our old office had been with us since we were around 15 people. When we left, we were at around 45 people, and so there weren’t enough desks, definitely not enough meeting rooms, and so the call was made for Benedict and Christine to move us. So, much like any young family moving up, we tried to look busy, but if we’re honest, there were a few superstars who made the move happen.
To celebrate, we held our sales meeting in the new office, which also includes a proper showroom and event space, which was inaugurated by none other than Tim and Gendle from Famous First Words. The premise is simple: they play the opening line of a song, and you then have to get your hand up, get on stage, and sing the first line. You would think it’s easy, but it leads to some amazing moments of chaos as people can’t remember the words to “Sk8er Boi” by Avril Lavigne. It also brought to the fore some amazing musical talents we have in our ranks who know every line to Taylor Swift, and of course Arthur who knows everyword of Genuine and his classic “pony”. Instant status.
Of course, whilst the days are drawing in up in Scandinavia, down in Portugal you can still find sun-drenched evenings, waves, and good times, so we teamed up with our friends at La Point Surf Camps and hosted our biggest student meet-up so far. Fifty-two students from 40 countries, with some travelling from the US and New Zealand to be with us. Getting to experience this was one of the highlights of the year, between hosting creative exchanges, surfing in the mornings, yes running, a few late nights, and the second Db tattoo of all time. We’ll let you figure out who has the first.
What I love about the student community is that it’s fully organic, so much so that Tin has kind of been running this on his own outside his day job and one day, in his lovable Slovenian accent, says, “Yes, now I have 350 students on WhatsApp group,” haha. So good, Mr Tin. We will be doing more of these next year, with a potential Costa Rica and US-based trip already on the cards. Sign up for details here.
As we rounded out the year, we had our largest campaign to date in terms of reach: our holiday campaign, “It’s Just Db,” featuring Erling Haaland. Yes, it still feels weird to even write that, but yes, Erling is part of the brand as an investor and ambassador, and so when we first heard of the chance to work with him, we couldn’t start drawing up storyboards quickly enough. So back in October, after lots of planning and prepping from the entire team, we welcomed Erling to a studio in Oslo, where, along with our friends at Super Studio, we captured the whole thing.
It’s amazing getting to meet people like Erling, as on the pitch he is such a formidable force, with a will to win that few can match and a physique that intimidates others, with skill that enables him to dominate games. But off the pitch, he is super down-to-earth, very easy to work with, and a really good role model for kids in terms of how he shows up. It’s easy to forget sometimes that if you step foot on a pitch with him, he would take you to the cleaners.
For the campaign, we were inspired by the classic National Lampoon’s road trip scene (if you haven’t seen it, go find it this holiday season), and so with Erling we had an amazing central character but still wanted a couple of Easter eggs for the audience. So we teased our aluminium luggage dropping in ’26, whilst also pulling in one of the most iconic vehicles of all time in the DeLorean used in Back to the Future. We’ll be working more with Erling in the future, and we couldn’t be prouder to see him with our luggage, especially given the form he is in at Man City and that he, along with the rest of the Norwegian team, propelled them to their first World Cup in 28 years.
In terms of the marketing crew, Lasse ran his first ultramarathon. Hallvard rode 30,000 km on Strava this year. We welcomed new team members, and of course we welcomed three more babies (congrats, Jesper and Simon). We said goodbye to our longest-standing marketing person, Marcus Olson, who has been instrumental in everything from rooftop tents, igloos, and bakeries to iconic trips. Vincent also went off to follow his creative passion, designing furniture and creating amazing experiences. As a brand who prides ourselves on being here for the creative community, I love to see it when people follow their passion — even if I wish they still worked with us. But I guess that’s the way I have always wanted a brand to work: to work with people so passionate about what they do that at some point they chase their next dream.
So… how was our year?
Busy. Fun. A lot of good time.
We wouldn’t change it for the world.
See you next year. 2% left.
2% left. Challenge completed.
About to land — physically and metaphorically.
