Breaking the Status Quo in Electrical Safety and Arc Flash PPE

By: Mike Enright

If you’ve purchased personal protective equipment in the past, what goes into your decision-making? Many companies tend to work with the same vendor they’ve always worked with and buy their electrical PPE from the largest player(s) in the game. They may assume all PPE is similar- offering just enough to cover their need to be compliant.

This is understandable because for years, that was the electrical PPE market. The only difference was the name of vendor. Everything was basically the same, and it was often easiest to choose the biggest company because they offered the most scale. If it felt like there wasn’t much innovation in the market, it’s because there wasn’t.

The Problem with “Always Going with the Biggest Vendor”

There’s a phrase that’s been going around in the tech community for decades, “no one’s ever been fired for buying IBM.” It’s a great analogy for enterprise software—buy from the biggest vendor and you can always justify it.

It’s a simple justification. The company has been around for decades and they’re well-known so making a decision to purchase from them is rational. In simple terms, it works as expected.

In Safety, “It Works as Expected” is the Bare Minimum

Since there are electrical safety standards that define the minimums for nearly everything, the phrase “it works as expected” is mandatory.

As such, a multi-billion conglomerate must create products following the same standards as a startup so everything “works as expected”.

Standards are great. They help you protect your workers. In fact, the latest edition of NFPA 70E has made it easier than ever to select the right electrical PPE for the job. However, years of “meeting standards” created a market where many competitors just did the bare minimum.

Bulky suits, uncomfortable head gear, face shields that were difficult to identify colors. They worked. They met these important standards—but at what cost? Worker comfort? Mobility? Vision and color recognition? There was limited innovation, and it all came at the cost of those on your front lines.

The Basics Don’t Cut It Anymore—Smashing the Status Quo

We launched Enespro PPE with one thing in mind: Innovating for end users. While it would have been easy to make “just another arc flash kit,” providing something that meets the standards and collect payment, we didn’t. We’ve been in this industry long enough to see that workers disliked traditional arc flash suits and the opportunity to add innovation and improve the wearer’s experience was wide open.

So we got to work, gaining critical feedback from end users to help us design arc flash gear that provides true advancements in performance, comfort, and functionality and doing so at a competitive price.

We spent several months at the beginning of last year in market research mode, asking electrical contractors and safety professionals from across the nation what they wanted out of arc flash PPE. Since comfort emerged as the most important attribute from the users, we set out to develop the pinnacle of comfort and performance in electrical PPE. We also decided to manufacturer all of the arc flash gear in the USA because quality control and excellent craftsmanship is paramount when it comes to safety. Enespro PPE launched our product line six months ago and has already been making waves, which includes winning a coveted “Showstopper” award at the national NECA Convention in Philadelphia.  

Whether it was CAT 4 Arc Flash garments that are nearly half the weight of traditional gear, a clear grey tinted face shield that gives you more visibility than a legacy green model, or our quick-ship delivery from inventory atcompetitive prices through our ecommerce site, the Enespro PPE team has you covered—comfortably.

Get to learn more about how we got where we are today and where we are heading in 2019.

Our Products in Action: LidCo Electrical Contractors Case Study

If you’re like many employers, you know the challenge: No matter how much you try, employees still seem to ignore the requirement to wear electrical PPE. In fact, this was a problem for LidCo Electrical Contractors—until they found Enespro.

For years, LidCo provided their employees with traditional arc flash PPE, only for employees to ignore requirements. Sick of seeing these risks, CEO Robert Liddy sought a better solution for safety, attending a recent Enespro seminar and ultimately opting to purchase an Enespro 40 CAL AirLite™ kit for each van.

The results were astounding. Not only did it increase use among workers, employees found the suit so lightweight, breathable, and comfortable that the company was able to move to a one suit approach. Ready to learn more? Read the entire case study below.