Blivakker

Blivakker is a Norwegian online beauty retailer and house brand based in Kristiansand, on Norway's southern coast. It describes itself as the country's largest online beauty store [1], and is part of Brandsdal Group AS, the family-owned company built by founder Einar Øgrey Brandsdal [7]. Alongside the third-party brands it sells, Blivakker markets a small own-label range of everyday beauty accessories.

The business began in 2007 as a beauty-focused department inside Brandsdal's existing online-retail company, Netthandelen.no, and was spun out as a separate company, Blivakker.no AS, in 2009 [8]. Both dates appear in the group's own account of its history; sources that cite a single founding year, including the company's about page and LinkedIn, use 2007 [2].

Blivakker grew out of the early Norwegian e-commerce wave. Its founder, Einar Øgrey Brandsdal, born in 1975 near Kristiansand, had launched the auction site Netthandelen.no in 1999 with a friend, when only around ten online shops existed in the country. The beauty department added in 2007 grew quickly enough to become its own company two years later, and went on to become the group's flagship operation.

The company remained rooted in Kristiansand, where Brandsdal Group is headquartered in the Mjåvann industrial area. According to the group, the move into a roughly 19,000-square-metre headquarters across two buildings came in 2017.

Blivakker.no AS operates as part of Brandsdal Group AS, the holding company for Brandsdal's retail interests [7]. The group also runs Cocopanda, which carries the same retail concept into other markets — Denmark (2012), Sweden (2014), Finland and Germany (2016), Austria (2018) and Poland (2019) [8] — and Netthandelen.no, the original auction site. The shared own-label accessories line appears across both the Blivakker and Cocopanda storefronts.

In 2024, Blivakker.no AS became the parent company behind a separate haircare label, MANDA of Scandinavia, founded by Cecilie Maria Torvik [19].

Blivakker presents itself under the tagline "Norges største skjønnhetsbutikk på nett" — Norway's largest online beauty store. The company says it is passionate about beauty and that everyone has their own form of it, and it lists engagement, innovation, entrepreneurial spirit and integrity among its stated values. As a value-oriented retailer, it positions established prestige brands — the homepage names labels such as COSRX, Olaplex, Lancôme and Tom Ford — at what it markets as reduced prices, with the own-label range filling out the everyday-essentials end of the catalogue.

The retailer's catalogue spans haircare, skincare, makeup and fragrance, drawn largely from third-party brands. The own-label products carried under the Blivakker name are a focused set of beauty accessories rather than cosmetics: round cotton pads, bamboo cotton buds, cosmetic and travel bags in several sizes, and a headband. These sit at the budget end of the catalogue.

Blivakker has been a frequent winner of Norwegian retail and customer-service awards. Its homepage advertises "Årets Nettbutikk" (Online Store of the Year) for both 2025 and 2026, and the company also cites the Netthandelensprisen for 2025, repeated "Folkets nettfavoritt" (People's online favourite) recognition over four consecutive years, a best-customer-service award, and several "Årets butikk" wins from the price-comparison site Prisjakt between 2016 and 2024. Statista ranked it Norway's leading online beauty store in 2023, with online sales of roughly 70.4 million US dollars [18].

Blivakker is active. The company continues daily retail operations and an active product catalogue, and has been expanding from a purely online model into physical stores. The number of stores is reported inconsistently: editorial coverage of the June 2025 Stavanger opening described it as around the eighth or ninth store [13][15], while the group's own store directory lists ten locations across Norway plus one in Helsinki operating under the Cocopanda name [5]. According to that coverage, founder Brandsdal had initially opposed opening physical shops [13].

Revenue figures also vary by year and source. The parent group's about page gives 791 million Norwegian kroner for 2023 [7], while its history page reports 499 million kroner for 2019; a B2B directory lists the 2019 figure as 44.9 million euros [12]. The founder has separately stepped back from his roles in the group after relocating with his family to the United States [21].