Zero
ClothingRetailRestaurants and cafés
Clothes shop in Rådhusgata in Vadsø town centre, with a coffee bar that makes shopping a social occasion. Started in Vadsø in 1983 and now a chain of nine shops in Northern Norway, still run by the same family.
The story
Zero was founded in Vadsø in 1983 by Hege Johnsen, then aged 19. Today the company is a clothing chain with around 40 employees across several shops in Northern Norway — most of them part-time staff and school pupils, eleven of them full-time.
After 20 years in Vadsø, the chain opened a branch in Vardø, and seven years later one in Tana. The shop in Vadsø now covers more than 400 square metres. When a friend of Hege’s was closing her clothes shop in Kirkenes, Zero took over the premises — and the following year came another Kirkenes shop, in Handelsparken. Those shops are now run by Hege’s children and their partners. The chain has since grown further to Alta, Hammerfest and, in 2024, Tromsø — its first step outside Finnmark.
The shop in Vadsø
The shop sells clothes for both men and women, of all ages and styles. The coffee bar in the shop makes a shopping trip into something more sociable, and is one of the reasons the shop does well amid the lively Saturday shopping in Vadsø town centre. Events such as Varangerfestivalen bring extra life to the shop and to the town centre as a whole.