Interview: Marine turned businessman Tommy Kelly on taking climbing and skiing brand Jöttnar to the next level

It’s nearly five years now since I first interviewed Royal Marine-turned-businessman Tommy Kelly for The Scotsman. The former Stewart’s Melville and Napier University student had just started a company called Jöttnar, working in partnership with his friend and fellow Marine Steve Howarth – an experience he described as “building the plane while you’re flying it.” Their plan, cooked up while out on manoeuvres together in Arctic Norway in 2005, was to launch a range of high-end outdoors gear that would function more effectively than the MOD-issued kit they were wearing at the time, and which would appeal to people who – like them – took their climbing and ski mountaineering seriously.