ROCHESTER — Bringing Norway to the Midwest is a labor of love for Walter and Louisa Hanson.
Saturday, they'll take yet another step as they help unveil the new summer collection of Oleana, a Norway-based knitwear company, to the United States.
The Hansons own The Nordic Shop in the Galleria Mall, which sells imported Scandinavian goods and has been a popular downtown Rochester stop since 1974.
The Hansons went out on a whim when they opened a store in Rochester, supposedly only staying a year before moving on to Chicago where Walter had a job lined up. What was supposed to be a one-year experiment has turned into a lifelong project supplying Rochester with unique Scandinavian clothing.
“It's been our one year that's lasted for almost 50,” Hanson said.
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The Hansons have made a lot of contacts and strong bonds with the companies they sell online and in stores. The couple tries to go back to Scandinavia once or twice a year to look for new items for their store and see the companies they have built a solid relationship with.
They are the largest provider of Dale of Norway, a clothing company known for their traditional hand-knit sweaters, in the U.S. They are also Oleana’s top sellers in the U.S. and the company was founded by former Dale of Norway employees who had retired and began their own business.
When the Hansons found Oleana, the company was a kiosk in Oslo, still in the process of starting the company up.
“We were in Oslo on a buying trip and it was a rainy evening,” Louisa Hanson said. “We were out for a walk after dinner and we walked around the city hall and there were some kiosks there with sweaters. It looked like it was some sort of exhibition.”
They walked up to see a vaguely familiar face. After some discussion, they realized they had met before through Dale of Norway. Their partnership began right then and there.
Oleana went through some changes as the company was passed down to the founder's daughter. The style changed from the classic Scandinavian look to more of a high fashion take. However, this collection is all about Oleana going back to its roots, which is exciting for the Hansons.
The new collection will be unveiled in store and over Facebook live at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 13, 2023. A representative from Oleana will be there to explain the colors, patterns and meaning behind the collection.
This is the second time The Nordic Shop has unveiled a new product. The first time was a special sweater by Dale of Norway.
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“We had the store packed,” Hanson said. "The phones were nonstop, the website was going nuts. We actually had a call from the people that we have our website through to check to see if what they were seeing on the web was an attack on the site. Or if it was real, because everybody went to one page, which was the page that had the sweater on it.”
They cleared up the misunderstanding with the website but Walter Hanson describes that day as “the day we broke the internet.”
The Hansons have similar hopes as they have covered the new collection in layers of tulle that will be untied to reveal the new designs underneath.
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