Inspiring Conversations with Erin Eriksson of Hedgehog Dryer

Today we’d like to introduce you to Erin Eriksson.

Hi Erin, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I grew up in Santa Clarita, California, in a Swedish-American household. My Scandinavian heritage was an important part of our family identity: joining monthly dinners with Swedish families, memorizing lyrics to the entire ABBA collection, and dressing up as Lucia for our annual Christmas party. We also spent summers piling into a Volvo station wagon and driving up and down Sweden to visit relatives and friends. I didn’t know it then, but those trips helped prepare me for the life I have now, split between Norway and California.

I’m a proud double Bruin. I double majored at UCLA in Poli Sci and Geography/Environmental Studies, then came back for a joint MBA and Master of Public Policy. That combination of business and public good became the thread through my career. Some of my favorite roles have been working in global corporate philanthropy at Johnson & Johnson and at the M·A·C AIDS Fund, funding innovative programs around the world. I still meet monthly with a cohort of CEOs and COOs in the UCLA Anderson CEO Forum, an invaluable resource with support and business insights.

While living in NYC, one day I had lunch in SoHo with Bjørn, a Norwegian entrepreneur and widower with three kids who was about to move back to Norway. He had a broad smile and contagious energy. That summer, while traveling solo in Scandinavia, I reconnected with Bjørn, met his kids (then ages 2, 4, and 6), and life has never been quite the same. I relocated to Norway the next year, essentially became a mom overnight, and we married the following year. One of the biggest changes was the location – Hemsedal, Norway is a charming little ski town, nestled in the mountains. Fortunately, my Swedish background helped prepare me for the language, the culture, the lifestyle…and the weather. Today we’re a bustling, active blended family of seven, with two more kids added along the way.

In a house like ours, wet boots and gear are a constant. Norwegian kids play outside every day, rain or snow or shine. Norwegians also have all sorts of winter gear: cross-country skiing, downhill skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, and more. We deal with an extreme amount of cold, wet, smelly boots, gloves and gear, and it can take forever to dry. My husband and I decided to fix that. In 2019, we started Hedgehog Dryer as a family company. Our goal was to create drying solutions that work super-fast (for mornings when we forgot to dry the gloves, or for the next snowball fight) so that people can spend more time doing what they love with the people they love.

As co-founder and COO, I’ve spent the past seven years building that idea into a business, with a team, a US company, and families using our dryers for everything from ski boots to hockey skates to soccer cleats. They work for almost any sport or outdoor gear, drying fast and removing odor. We’ve been recognized with TIME’s Best Inventions, a Newsweek Readers’ Choice Award, Red Dot, iF and A’ Design awards, and two Tokyo Design Awards this year. For a small family company from a Norwegian ski village, that still feels surreal.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Progress is rarely linear. We received our first large container order during Covid. We grappled with the container crisis of 2021, where our (very reasonable) assumptions about prices and shipping times were way off. We know that shoe and boot dryers are household staples in Scandinavia – there, our challenge is to encourage people to purchase a faster, higher quality product. By contrast, in the US, where dryers are less common, we need to do more product education before people will give our products a try. We are growing quickly and work hard to keep up with demand. We learn something new every single day.

Add to that the challenges of operating a family business with a spouse, all while raising five kids. Summer vacations get complicated, while we try to balance family travel with team meetings and deadlines – I have plenty of Zoom meetings with kids climbing on my head or across my lap. Bjørn and I problem-solve about work all the time and have to make a huge effort to hold boundaries between work and personal time. Fortunately, we have very complementary skill-sets and work styles, as well as incredible support from our team, friends, and families.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Hedgehog Dryer?
We have developed an award-winning series of dryers for sports and outdoor gear. Using proprietary technology and Scandinavian design, our products are versatile, practical and dry extremely fast.

Neither my husband nor I have a background in consumer electronic products, but I think that is a huge asset – we bring different perspectives and ways of doing things to our work. Most shoe dryers use low-pressure airflow and dry wet items overnight. In contrast, we partnered with fluid dynamics engineers from the Water Power Laboratory at NTNU, a university in Norway, to help revolutionize the industry. Together we adapted hydropower turbine principles to airflow dynamics to drastically reduce drying time in our products. In contrast to traditional dryers, our products can dry wet items in as little as 15-30 minutes.

Our dryer series is highly versatile. We have:
-hanging, wall-mounted and portable drying options,
-multiple heat settings: room temperature for sensitive materials to 140F for faster drying,
-multiple airflow/power settings, from quiet to tornado mode,
-ionic technology to remove odor and smell,
-fire-resistant ceramic heating element and gel-coated electronics for increased safety, and
-a modular system and replacement parts program to reduce electronic waste and improve sustainability.

We initially shared our products with the Norwegian snowboarding team, which loved them and suggested we make a smaller, more portable version they could take on the road. We took this to heart and created the Hedgehog GO, a dual-purpose travel dryer for footwear and hair, which won TIME´s Best Inventions in 2025. We were the drying supplier for the Natural Selection Tour this year and were super excited to share the the GO with their athletes.

If you are looking for a unique holiday gift, we have something for almost everyone, including our premium dryer series, travel dryers, portable car vacuums, and high-powered cordless blowers. They are great for parents of active kids, athletes (soccer, biking, skiing, snowboarding, sailing, ice hockey, soccer, boxing, the list goes on), and people in wet climates…including SoCal in an El Niño year!

Any big plans?
We are always iterating and coming up with new ideas, as well as fun partnerships with athletes, brands and sports teams. We have some exciting collabs and product launches in the coming months…follow us at @hedgehogdryer for updates!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hedgehogdryer.com/
• Instagram: @hedgehogdryer
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hedgehogdryer/

Image Credits
Kalle Hagglund