Bender Inc. is celebrating 40 years since the first subsidiary of the German parent group, Bender GmbH, was established in Pennsylvania to meet the need for electrical safety equipment across the whole of North America.
Establishing a permanent base with the creation of Bender Inc., headquartered in Exton, PA in 1983 signaled that Bender was going to be a leading global player in providing innovative electrical safety solutions.
The business began with just four employees with a primary focus on healthcare. That rapidly expanded into other areas, including mines & quarries, ships & harbors, and power generation & distribution.
The company’s distinctive culture thrives on developing innovative electrical safety solutions for a huge variety of complex applications. Bender solutions identify risks before they occur and alert users, so that man and machine are protected, preventing power failures and eliminating downtime by undertaking proactive preventive maintenance.
The United States was recognized as a key market with huge potential for growth, and that is still true today with opportunities for using Bender products emerging to meet the need for new applications of the technology, particularly in building the electric vehicle charging infrastructure and for the manufacture of electric cars, buses, and trucks.
Milestones in the growth of Bender Inc. over the last four decades have been accompanied by significant new product developments and seizing market opportunities.
For example, in 1987 Bender Inc.’s main customer, ISOTROL, moved from California, leaving behind most of the workers. Bender Medical Products was created as a division of Bender Inc. to manufacture isolated power panels with previous ISOTROL workers. In 1995, Bender Inc. acquired ISOTROL and Isolation Systems Products in Ontario, Canada.
In 1993, just 10 years after the foundation of Bender Inc., the EDS series (ground-fault location system) saw the first installation of fault detection for unearthed systems. After another decade of growth, in 2003, Bender developed fault current and residual current monitoring systems for grounded power systems.
More acquisitions followed in key market sectors, and in 2004, Bender Inc. also entered the movie business in California with Bender Entertainment Systems, which rented ground fault circuit interrupters (GFCIs) to the movie industry, to protect production crews during filming.
In 2009, Bender introduced the ISOMETER® product line for electric vehicles, followed by the iso-F1 developed for the Formula 1-KERS-systems (Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems), recovering kinetic energy created by the car's braking process and using it to boost acceleration). This laid the foundations for what promises to be one of the biggest future markets in electric vehicles.
Bender Inc. now enjoys nationwide success from its impressive Exton headquarters on Eagleview Blvd., with dynamic regional representatives and distributors covering the entire US and maintaining significant market share.
Walther Bender‘s original vision 80 years ago of comprehensive protection against the dangers of electrical current is the big idea that still drives the company today. In 1939, Walter Bender developed the first insulation monitoring device to deliver electrical safety in mines to protect man and machine against the hazards of electrical faults, at the same time ensuring an uninterrupted power supply.
Bender worldwide now employs over 1,200 people, with more than 500 of them working internationally and around 15% of the workforce specifically dedicated to R&D. Annual sales total $220 million with locations in 14 countries and representation in more than 70 countries.
An enduring characteristic of Bender Inc. is the provision of electrical safety solutions that deliver exceptional performance driven by expert knowledge and outstanding expertise. It reflects the dynamic energy and customer-focused flexibility of Bender GmbH, which is owned and managed by the third generation of the Bender family, and which continues to support markets worldwide from its global headquarters in Grünberg, Germany.
Bender Inc. has 40 years of success behind it and is now looking forward to many more decades of growth driven by innovation, extraordinary customer focus, and the energy to help set safety standards in new and existing markets – in fact wherever people need power. Bender’s global purpose and what drives us every day is to lead the way to design the future of energy, and Bender Inc. is proud to continue to contribute to that mission.