A Finnish word for hound.

Hurtta takes its name from Finnish. “Hurtta is the Finnish word for hound, or more specifically, a lovable mutt,” the company says on its website. The brand describes itself as Finnish and its home as “the wild North,” and it says its founders were clothing-industry professionals who began by making gear for their own dogs because they wanted to protect them from the cold. It does not name them.

Sources give two starting dates. The company says “The very first products we made way back in 1997 were collars and leashes.” A June 2014 report in the trade magazine Pet Worldwide said the Hurtta brand “was founded in 2001” and supported about 40 jobs at its parent company.

The brand was on the web early. The Internet Archive holds a copy of hurtta.com from March 2001: a Finnish page titled “Hurtta-tuote,” or Hurtta product, set on a red background, which opened with the line that even a dog needs clothes. It said that when rain and sleet fall, dogs also need protection from cold, damp and dirt, and that Hurtta’s dog suits were already well known in their field. It credited their success to well-fitting, purposeful patterns, functional materials and “laadukas kotimainen työ” — quality Finnish workmanship. Beyond the suits, it listed padded harnesses and collars, textile leads and collars, protective pants for female dogs, high-visibility products and life jackets.

Best Friend Group of Kuopio.

Hurtta grew up inside a larger Finnish pet business. By 2013 it was part of Best Friend Group, which Pet Worldwide described in October that year as a Nordic pet-business supplier that expected its export business with Hurtta to grow quickly; the same report named Caspar Berntzen as the group’s new chief executive. In October 2014 the magazine called Hurtta a main brand of Best Friend Group Oy and said it exported to 30 countries. The group is based in Kuopio, in eastern Finland, and trade-fair listings place Hurtta Global Oy there; the Hurtta website’s footer still lists Best Friend and Racinel as sister brands under Best Friend Group.

Design was the theme of its 2014 coverage. In June, Pet Worldwide reported the company as saying design was part of its product development from the start. The same report said Hurtta had built its own system for measuring dogs, which underpinned all of its product development. In October 2014 the magazine reported that Jukka Puljujärvi, a long-time fashion designer at the Helsinki label Ivana Helsinki, had joined Hurtta’s design team to work on dog outerwear.

The range today is broad. The company says that, having begun with collars and leashes, it now makes “everything that dogs need to play, explore, train, and work in every kind of weather.” Its Finnish online shop lists winter coats in the Expedition line, the Extreme Warmer jacket, Monsoon rain coats and the Weekend Warrior harnesses and leads, alongside cooling wraps, life jackets, a sleeping bag and reflective Razzle-Dazzle pieces. Its website now describes Hurtta as a brand that “designs and manufactures” weatherproof, well-fitting gear for dogs of all breeds and sizes, and offers XS sizes for dachshunds and other long-bodied dogs and the Rover harness for bigger dogs.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all sell to people who keep pets: Hurtta, LickiMat, ORIJEN, Tiki Cat, Wellness, Stella & Chewy’s and Frisco. Some make food and treats, some make the gear around the bowl — coats, mats, crates and toys — and they reach owners through very different routes, from specialist pet shops to large online retailers.

They also sit at different points in the trade, and two examples show the range. ORIJEN is made by Champion Petfoods, which Mars Petcare has owned since 2023, when the closing of its purchase from an investor group was announced. Frisco is not a separate company at all but an own label of the online retailer Chewy, which says it launched the brand in 2016 as its first private brand for durable goods.

A pet brand’s identity is usually carried by its packaging, its name and the story it tells about where its products come from, and those can stay the same while the company behind them changes hands or moves production. That makes the plain questions worth asking: who started the brand, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging and marks have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word. None of these guides makes any claim about the health effects of a product.

“Let’s go.”

The ownership chain has moved up a level since then. In August 2019 the trade site Global Pet Industry reported that Best Friend Group and the pet-food division of Vital Petfood Group were merging into Nordic Pet Care, and that Mika Holappa had been appointed chief executive of Nordic Pet Care A/S while remaining chief executive of Best Friend Group. In a press release for the Interzoo trade fair in Nuremberg in May 2026, Hurtta named Nordic Petcare Group as its parent company, said the brand was returning to the fair after eight years away and that its sales had expanded to 47 countries, and said that Sanna Laaksonen, previously at Fiskars Group, had joined as chief commercial officer at the beginning of 2026.

The 2026 release says Hurtta products are “Designed in Finland,” built for year-round outdoor use in demanding conditions, with a focus on fit, protection, durability and freedom of movement, and that the company has invested in B2B e-commerce, brand tools and clearer brand assets for its retailers. It also says Germany is a particularly important market for the brand’s next phase.

Hurtta has also set out an environmental programme. It says it took part in a circular-design training programme funded by Finland’s Ministry of the Environment, aims to become a circular company that depends less on landfill, and lists three values: “For the dogs,” “For the elements” and “For the planet.” A UK retailer’s brand feature carries the company’s goal of becoming a fully sustainable brand by 2030. Its sign-off is short: “Let’s go.”

For a design guide, Hurtta shows how a brand built on fit and weather can keep a plain national identity — a Finnish word, a Finnish workshop story and a short call to go outside. Compare Ruffwear, the American outdoor dog-gear maker, and Kurgo, another dog-gear brand that grew from one practical product. For this guide we use a forest green, snow white and a signal red with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Hurtta’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.