Safeguard Equipment Inc., the Post Falls maker of personal devices that detect electrocution hazards, has upgraded its core product to provide additional safety features and is expanding its markets both beyond utility-industry customers and into new geographic territories.

Since the Journal last reported on Safeguard over a year ago, the company has released Compass Pro, a new device that includes emergency-response features and a proprietary app that also provides Safeguard recurring revenue through subscription services.

“So now we’re in telecom … and there’s several other industries we’re going into,” says Tim Ledford, Safeguard’s president, CEO, and co-founder. “Those have been taking off at a greater speed than even I had originally anticipated.”

Ledford says Safeguard also is co-developing products and services with “major industry players.”

“We’ve been working with these companies for the last couple of years,” he says. “We’re anticipating 2024 to 2025 release dates for those co-development projects.”

Leford says the palm-sized Compass Pro devices that clip onto hard hats sell for $250 to $350. Service costs vary, depending on services provided and length of subscription, but Ledford says they can be in the range of “a couple hundred dollars a month per unit, give or take $100 depending on how long they sign up.”

With more than 70,000 active users of Safeguard products, Ledford claims the company is on its way to becoming the global market leader in personal voltage and current detection.

“Our international awareness continues to grow,” he says. “We’re now the market leader in North America, South America, Latin America, and we’re gaining substantial traction in Europe now.”

Safeguard’s latest product, the Compass Pro, can detect a range of critical events, including arc flashes, falls, head impacts, and lack of movement.

When any of these events occur, it triggers text and in-app emergency notifications and live location-detection technology that enables rapid responses.

When hazards are detected, the device also emits audible alerts and visual warnings via color-coded LED lights.

Ledford says the company has received 68 testimonials from people who say alerts from Safeguard devices have saved them from electrocution or serious injury.

“So when I get to report to the engineers and to the assemblers that for every roughly 1,000 to 1,500 units that leave our building a life is going to be saved … it gives immense purpose to the hard work that they put in,” he says. “It’s a very tangible purpose.”

Safeguard occupies about 16,000 square feet of space at 4202 W. Riverbend, in the Tedder Business Center, in Post Falls.

Ledford says the company has a staff of over 30 employees, plus contractors.

“We’ve strengthened our research and development team to 10 engineers,” he says.

Post-pandemic, the company also has pivoted from media-outreach sales to a direct sales team that’s expanding into different territories in the U.S., Canada, and internationally.

The company also has adopted enterprise software to improve and harden its back-office and financial systems, he says.

Ledford and fellow University of Idaho alums Barndon Bledsoe and John Thompson founded Safeguard equipment in 2016. Early Spokane-based investors include Avista Foundation, Spokane Angel Alliance, and Cowles Ventures LLC.

Bledsoe is now Safeguard’s chief operating officer, and Thompson is the senior technology adviser.

The company launched its first product in August 2018, was profitable within three months, and has grown consistently, Ledford says.

“We’re approaching the exponential curve,” he says. “(Investors) have seen healthy growth, but I believe we’re about to see explosive growth.”

He says the company is on track to exceed $100 million in valuation in the next five years.

Last month, Safeguard was one of 16 vendors chosen to showcase products at the Technology Pavilion at the National Safety Council’s Congress & Expo, which was held in New Orleans. Leford says the invitation to present the Compass Pro at the event was a significant opportunity for exposure to an international audience.

He says the company takes pride in having a U.S. made product and strives to source manufacturing and services in the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene area as much as possible.

“When we were starting this company, we had options to move it to Seattle or Atlanta or Silicon Valley, but we’re from this area,” says Ledford, a Coeur d’Alene High School graduate. “We love this area. We love the work-life balance, and we want to support the growth of this community as much as possible.”

For example, he says, the company has partnered with contract manufacturers Servatron Inc. and Tate Technology Inc., both of Spokane Valley, and Lightning Tool & Manufacturing Inc., of Post Falls.

Ledford says Safeguard completes final assembly and shipping at its Post Falls facility.

“We receive all the final components here internally,” he explains. “We receive the printed circuit boards, we put them in the plastics, we ultrasonically weld them, we program and encrypt them. Then we take every single unit through a quality-assurance process before packaging them and shipping them out.”