Ergodyne
The St. Paul outfit that started with one back support in 1983, named its own category — Tenacious Work Gear — and has answered to Klein Tools since 2018.
Radians
Memphis PPE house with its own eyewear, hearing and glove lines sitting beside licensed DEWALT and Ducks Unlimited shelves — and two of its own about pages giving two different ages and no founding year.
Radians runs a broad industrial-and-retail PPE catalog out of Memphis, Tennessee — protective eyewear, hearing protection, gloves, head protection, hi-vis and heated gear — alongside licensed lines carrying the DEWALT, Ducks Unlimited, Bellingham and Stanley marks. The company publishes no founding year and two different statements of its own age, which is a fair warning about how much weight to put on brand-level copy here. The claims worth anything are the ones printed against a model number, and Radians does print those.
- 48Countries on six continents Radians says it distributes to
- Type IIClass E rating claimed for the DPG22 hard hat; the vented DPG22 is Class C
- Z87.1+The marking claimed for DPG22-SH visors — a model claim, not a brand claim
What we'd reach for
- DPG22 hard hatClaimed as "Type II Class E," with the vented version claimed as "Type II Class C." Two versions of one helmet with two different electrical classes is exactly why head protection is bought by model number.
- DPG22-SH visor systemThe face-shield attachment for that helmet family, which Radians says "Meets ANSI Z87.1+" — the plus being the high-impact designation, claimed for the visor rather than for the company.
- Made-in-USA retractable tethersOne of only two lines Radians names as domestically made, the other being custom safety apparel. Neither claim reaches the eyewear, gloves, helmets or licensed shelves.
Radians’ street address is the least ambiguous thing about it: 5305 Distriplex Farms Drive, Memphis, Tennessee, per the company’s own about page. The founding year is not there. That page says Radians has been doing this “over 25 years”; the about page on radiansworldwide.com says “In over 20 years, Radians has become a major leader in the safety industry.” Two of the company’s own pages, two different ages, no date on either. So this page carries no founding year, and no ownership history — where a figure isn’t published, we don’t supply one.
What Radians makes, and what it rents
The catalog splits in a way the marketing does not. Radians-branded lines cover protective eyewear, hearing protection, gloves, head protection, hi-vis and heated gear. Alongside them sit licensed shelves: radians.com markets DEWALT hard hats, earmuffs and heated gear, Ducks Unlimited eye and hearing protection, Bellingham Glove, and a Stanley PPE catalog for Europe.
The four category chips on this page belong to the Radians-branded side. That distinction is not pedantry: it decides who answers the phone about a warranty, and the mark on the box is not always the company behind it.
The claims that are worth anything are model-level
Radians does the thing this site keeps asking for — it prints designations against specific products. On its own site, the DPG22 helmet is claimed as “Type II Class E” and the vented DPG22 as “Type II Class C.” The DPG22-SH visors are claimed to meet “ANSI Z87.1+.”
Read that pair carefully, because it is the whole argument in miniature: one helmet family, two versions, two different electrical classes. A buyer who standardizes on “the Radians hard hat” has not specified anything. A buyer who writes DPG22 or DPG22 vented has.
The standards behind those markings — Z89.1 for head protection, Z87.1 for eye and face — are paywalled documents. Nobody quoting them at you for free is quoting the text, this page included. What is checkable is whether the exact model you are buying carries the exact marking, so check exactly that, on the current spec sheet rather than a catalog page.
Made in the USA, twice, specifically
Radians names domestic manufacturing for two things and two things only: “Made-in-USA custom safety apparel” and “MADE-IN-USA RETRACTABLE TETHERS,” listed as capabilities. That claim does not travel to eyewear, gloves, helmets or the licensed lines, and the site’s “Made in the USA Products” entry is a catalog number rather than a published SKU list. The custom side also advertises a “7 DAY TURNAROUND On CUSTOM-IMPRINTED PROTECTIVE GEAR,” which is an operations claim, not a safety one.
Where they fall down
The brand-level copy has gone stale. The same about page that supplies the country count also calls Radians an “ISO 9001:2008 registered company” — a revision superseded by ISO 9001:2015. A quality registration cited against a withdrawn revision tells you when the paragraph was written, not what the factory is doing now.
The corporate map isn’t published. Two Radians about pages exist: the .com one gives Memphis, while the radiansworldwide.com one carried a UK contact address when we read it. Whether that is a subsidiary, a distributor or a regional site, the company does not say, and no ownership or founding record was published on either.
Licensed lines blur the picture. DEWALT, Ducks Unlimited, Stanley and Bellingham shelves make the catalog look larger and make sourcing questions harder. Ask which entity holds the certification file for a given SKU before assuming the answer is the same one printed on the temple arm.
Against Ergodyne on gloves and eyewear, Sellstrom on face protection and Howard Leight on hearing, Radians competes on breadth and price. On the documented record: a wide, cheap, four-department PPE wall that does publish model-level markings — and a company that publishes very little about itself.
More in Work at height
All brands →The nearest neighbors on the shelf — same categories first, same department after that.
Gateway Safety
Cleveland's above-the-shoulders PPE maker, family-owned since 1944 — and an unintentional lesson in why a standard number on an about page is worth less than the same number on a product page.
Sellstrom
Illinois eye, face and welding protection dating to 1923 — now a SureWerx brand filed under Jackson Safety, with its own century-old domain redirecting to a sibling's site.
Black Diamond
Salt Lake City, since 1989 — the company its own employees bought out of a bankruptcy caused by lawsuits over climbing gear.