In the village of Nedre Vats, on the edge of a 700m-deep fjord in the west of Norway, there is a white wooden house with a small red barn. This is the home of the Hattelands, village merchants since the 19th century and builders of a warehouse that sits nearby.
It was in the red barn 40 years ago that Jakob Hatteland, the scion of the family, started a television repair business and expanded into selling electrical components. It became the largest parts supplier in Scandinavia and in the mid-1990s grew too big for the warehouse. Then Ingvar Hognaland, Hatteland’s first, most creative, most determined employee, had an idea.
