Harken
Pewaukee, Wisconsin, since 1968 — two brothers, a plastic ball-bearing block, an Olympic sailing habit, and the employee-owned company that now owns SMC.
Peter and Olaf Harken started building sailboat hardware in Wisconsin in 1968 and solved a problem the whole rigging world had: how to make a block spin under load. Recirculating ball bearings did it, and half a century later Harken winches and blocks are on boats that have no other brand in common. This page exists for the other half of the company. Harken Industrial builds winches, rope-handling systems and rescue hardware for work at height — and Harken owns SMC, which means the name has been quietly behind two entries on this roster since before it had one of its own.
- 1968Founded by brothers Peter and Olaf Harken in Wisconsin
- 2020The year Harken became employee-owned
- 48Countries Harken distributes to, from plants in Wisconsin and Italy
What we'd reach for
- Harken Industrial rescue winchesLoad handling from a company that spent fifty years learning what a loaded line does — now pointed at rescue instead of a racing deck.
- CLUTCH by HarkenThe descent-control device engineered with CMC — sailing-hardware pedigree applied to a rescue problem.
- SMC carabiners and pulleysNot Harken-branded, but Harken-owned: the UL-certified NFPA hardware bin has been in the family for years.
- Ball-bearing blocksThe founding product. Recirculating bearings, and the reason a loaded block still turns.
- Radial and Performa winchesThe deck winches that made the name on the water.
- Powered and industrial access equipmentThe industrial line's climbing side — check the specific product's certification, because sailing hardware and life-safety hardware are not the same paperwork.
Two entries on this roster have been quietly pointing at the same Wisconsin company for months. CMC’s CLUTCH descent-control device was engineered with Harken. SMC — the Ferndale rescue-hardware house with the UL-certified NFPA paperwork — is owned by Harken. It was time the name had a page of its own.
Peter and Olaf Harken started building sailboat hardware in 1968, coming out of Olympic-class dinghy development, and made their reputation on an unglamorous problem: a block under load stops turning. Their answer was recirculating ball bearings in a plastic housing, and it worked well enough that half a century later the deck of almost any serious sailboat has their name on it somewhere.
The half of the company this site cares about
Harken Industrial points the same engineering at people instead of sails: winches and rope-handling systems for work at height, rescue hardware, and — through SMC — a full American life-safety metal catalog.
The logic is less of a leap than it sounds. A sailing winch and a rescue winch are both answers to the question how do you control a line with tons on it and let a human modulate the load. The Harkens spent fifty years on the first version of that question.
And here is the sentence a catalog would never print: sailing hardware is not life-safety equipment. A deck block rated for rig loads is not rated for a human being, the standards are different documents — EN, ANSI, NFPA, CE and lifting standards all apply to different products — and the rating belongs to the specific model, not to the logo on it. If you are building a rescue system, buy from the industrial and rescue line and read that product’s certification. Do not improvise off a boat.
Employee-owned since 2020
In 2020 Harken became employee-owned, with roughly four hundred people worldwide taking ownership of the company the brothers built.
That puts it in good company on this roster. Black Diamond exists because employees bought Chouinard Equipment’s assets out of a liability collapse in 1989. Vortex describes itself as employee-owned. Sterling has stayed independent through the same decades of consolidation that swallowed most of this industry. In a catalog where we keep having to write acquired by private equity in — see Pelican, Bushnell, Silva — a company whose owners answer the phones is worth naming.
We could not find a primary source dating the SMC acquisition, so this page doesn’t give one, the same way SMC’s own page doesn’t. What is established is the present: SMC is part of Harken, and the paperwork discipline SMC is known for now sits inside an employee-owned company.
Where Harken fits
Rescue teams and rope-access crews. Harken Industrial winches and rope-handling systems, plus the SMC hardware most American teams already carry.
The CMC connection. If your kit has a CLUTCH in it, Harken helped build it — worth knowing where the engineering came from.
Boats. The original business, still the largest one, and the reason everything else works.
Not for: anyone tempted to use marine deck hardware in a life-safety system. Read the paragraph above twice. Not for buyers who need a published certification matrix per SKU — SMC is the side of the family with that documentation.
Why we rate them
A real manufacturing company with two plants and a founding invention. Wisconsin and Italy, ball bearings, and fifty-seven years of iteration.
Employee-owned, and it shows in the continuity. No exit clock, no strategic review in the footnotes.
It already owns the most procurement-friendly hardware brand we cover. SMC’s paperwork and Harken’s engineering are the same company, which is better news for rescue teams than either fact alone.
When the load is heavy and someone has to control it by hand, we reach for Harken.