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.
SureWerx, the current owner, dates Sellstrom to 1923 in Illinois and calls it one of the oldest American brands of safety products — their words. The catalog today is welding helmets, face shields, sealed safety glasses, earmuffs, knee pads and germicidal cabinets. The brand was acquired by SureWerx in 2015, is now presented as "a Jackson Safety brand," and sellstrom.com itself redirects to jacksonsafety.com — a century-old name becoming a product line, which a buyer should understand before caring about the heritage.
- 1923Founding year, per current owner SureWerx's own history page
- 2015SureWerx acquires Sellstrom Manufacturing
- 2023Partners Group buys SureWerx, the parent, from The Riverside Company
What we'd reach for
- Advantage Plus series welding helmetsThe current flagship welding helmet line — shade and switching specs are per model, which is where welding-eye claims belong.
- XPS530 series sealed safety glassesGasketed eyewear for dust and debris work — the sealed middle ground between spectacles and goggles.
- HP427 earmuffsThe hearing side of the catalog. As with every hearing product, the attenuation rating is a per-model laboratory figure, not a promise.
The most load-bearing sentence about Sellstrom today is on its owner’s website, not its own — because it no longer really has its own. SureWerx’s history page records the 2015 acquisition this way: “Founded in 1923 and based in Illinois, U.S., Sellstrom Manufacturing is one of the oldest American brands of safety products.” That is the current owner’s claim, and on this site it stays attributed — but 1923 is the year they publish, so 1923 is the year in the header.
What a century of eye protection looks like now
The current Sellstrom range runs “welding and head protection to hearing protection and knee protection,” in SureWerx’s words: Advantage Plus welding helmets, face shields, XPS530 sealed safety glasses, HP427 earmuffs, KneePro Ultra Flex III knee pads, and — the catalog’s odd survivor — germicidal UV cabinets.
The buying discipline for all of it is the one this site repeats until it sticks. ANSI/ISEA Z87.1 belongs to the model, not the brand: impact rating, splash rating and welding shades are claimed SKU by SKU, the standard’s text is paywalled, and what any retailer shows you — including the manufacturer — is self-reported compliance for that item. A 1923 founding date certifies nothing about the glasses in your hand; the marking on the lens does.
Three sets of hands in ten years
The modern ownership chain runs entirely through SureWerx’s own telling. SureWerx began as JET Equipment & Tools in 1957, is co-headquartered in Coquitlam, British Columbia and Elgin, Illinois — Sellstrom’s brand page still lists the Elgin address, keeping an Illinois thread intact — and bought Sellstrom in 2015. In 2018 it added the Jackson Safety and Wilson welding brands, and in 2023 the private markets firm Partners Group bought SureWerx itself from The Riverside Company.
Then the quiet part: Sellstrom’s brand page now labels it “a Jackson® Safety brand,” and sellstrom.com redirects to jacksonsafety.com. When we went looking for the company’s own front door, we found a sibling’s. That is not a scandal — it is normal portfolio hygiene — but it is the single most informative fact on this page about where the brand is headed.
Where they fall down
The brand is dissolving into Jackson. A name with a century of history behind it is now presented as a sub-line of a brand its parent bought three years after it. Which SKUs stay Sellstrom-marked, and for how long, is not something the current pages answer.
Heritage without records. Beyond the owner’s one-line history, the current sites publish no founding story, no factory locations for today’s production, and no country-of-origin claims we could verify. We treat manufacturing origin as unpublished.
Hearing is a side line, not a specialty. The HP427 exists, but a buyer choosing hearing protection on the documented record should read the Howard Leight page — a brand whose entire catalog, and entire set of published caveats, is hearing. It is also the natural comparison for another reason: both centuries-old safety marks now answer to private-equity-backed parents, and both pages reward reading the ownership section before the product one.
Where Sellstrom sits
Budget-tier eye, face and welding protection with a genuine 1923 date on it, sold by an owner that is honest about the ratings and quiet about the brand’s future. Buy the model, verify its Z87.1 marking, and enjoy the history for exactly what the current owner publishes of it — one sentence.
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