Hestra was founded in 1936 in the eponymous town in Smaland, Sweden, by the Magnusson family, making leather gloves with metal rivets for all the local lumberjacks.  In 1937 a ski run was developed in the area and the Magnusson family moved into the production of specialist ski gloves for the new attraction. The business now encompasses gloves for all manner of specialist and generalist uses. They are durable, functional, practical and extremely cosy (good enough for the Swedish and Norwegian national ski teams and they probably have quite exacting requirements).  It's not so chilly in SO23 and we may not be hurling ourselves down mountains so we're focussing on the Basic wool gloves, the classic Deerskin and Wool, the Fred leather gloves and the techy Taifun in Gore-Tex and Primaloft.