Topro Brand Guidelines: The Gjøvik Rollator Maker Founded in 1966

A 1966 founding year and three register entries.

Topro is a Norwegian maker of rollators and walkers based in Gjøvik. The company gives its founding year as 1966 and describes itself as a manufacturer of premium rollators, walkers and mobility aids. On its own pages it sets the name in capitals, TOPRO; the legal name of the manufacturer is TOPRO Industri AS.

The Norwegian company register, the Enhetsregisteret, lists a Gjøvik company called TOPRO AS with a founding date of 29 January 1966, the year Topro itself gives. The stated purpose of that company is to run work and inclusion services for people with vocational disabilities, along with the industrial production of goods. The same entry says the company has a non-profit purpose and that its funds may not be paid out to shareholders as dividends. Any surplus, it says, goes toward that purpose.

The company that makes the rollators today is a separate entry in the same register. TOPRO Industri AS carries a founding date of 30 October 2014 and a registered activity of producing and selling mobility aids, along with mechanical and electronic components and other products naturally linked to mobility aids. The register classifies it under the production of bicycles, wheelchairs, electric mobility scooters and similar vehicles, and lists 91 employees. A third entry, TOPRO Elektronikk AS, was founded in 2017, also in Gjøvik, and makes and sells electronic components; its website offers electronics production, electromechanical assembly and testing as contract services.

The company’s own statements about how long it has made mobility aids do not quite match. Its site says it has spent “more than five decades” developing and producing mobility products. A 2020 brochure, in a message from the then chief executive of TOPRO Industri, says “more than 30 years,” and a job advertisement placed on its behalf says the same.

A sideways fold, a carbon frame and a forearm walker.

The Troja is the family Topro presents as its original. The 2020 brochure calls the Troja Classic “The Original,” and describes it as the first innovative rollator on the market to offer enhanced functionality and a design that folds sideways, operated with one hand by pulling a strap on the seat. It lists the weight at 6.8 kg, with a weight capacity of 165 kg, and says the model had been a top-selling premium rollator for more than 15 years. Those are the company’s claims. Its current product pages use the name Troja Original.

The Troja was updated over time. The same brochure says the Troja 5G and the Olympos ATR, an outdoor model, replaced the Troja 2G and the Olympos. Topro’s page for the Troja 5G describes ErgoGrip handles, shaped for several hand positions and for use as armrests when seated, and a memory function that keeps a preset handle height. The consultancy Eker Design says on its website that it worked with Topro on a redesign of the Troja and Olympos lines. It describes the brief as a “grounded, stable and strong” look, which had to meet the ISO standard for rollators and a user weight of up to 150 kg.

The Pegasus, which the brochure says began the product update in autumn 2019, is a carbon rollator. Topro gives its weight as 6.1 kg, with a patent-pending brake, a numeric scale for setting handle height and a partly integrated brake cable run. Away from the rollators, the Taurus is a forearm walker, offered with electric or hydraulic height adjustment. Topro says the electric version is designed for hospitals, care homes and home rehabilitation, and it described the range in a 2024 exhibitor note for the British Orthopaedic Association’s annual event as popular in the NHS.

Consumer testing in Germany runs through the company’s story. The brochure cites a Stiftung Warentest test win for the Troja Classic in September 2005, and a win in the German consumer programme Marktcheck in 2014. Stiftung Warentest’s rollator test dated 26 August 2025 covers eleven models, eight lightweight and three standard, and the Topro Pegasus is among them. Topro says the Pegasus was rated “Sehr gut” (1.5) in that test and was the only product to receive top marks across all five test categories.

Frames, fabrics and ordinary days.

Wheelchairs, walkers and scooters have their own route to market. Writing in 1991, the journalist Joseph Shapiro noted that, unlike virtually every other product, wheelchairs were not sold directly to users but marketed through occupational and physical therapists and medical supply dealers. Today’s makers still describe much the same route: Platinum Equity said in 2024 that Sunrise Medical sells through homecare dealers and distributors, and Invacare’s 2024 announcement named home medical equipment providers alongside retail and online channels.

Catalogues in this trade deal in frames, seats and options. The International Directory of Company Histories described one popular Sunrise chair of the early 1990s as made in one-inch steps of back height, seat depth and seat width. Colour sits on the same order form: Sunrise Medical’s 2025 frame palette gave its shades names of their own, such as Midnight Blue and Turbo Green.

Trade fairs are the category’s public stage. Rehacare, which German Wikipedia says began in 1977 and has been run by Messe Düsseldorf since 1999, shows aids including mobility products to users and relatives as well as to specialists; its organisers list the next edition for September 2027. Medtrade, in the United States, is a trade conference for medical supplies, according to English Wikipedia.

The people in the pictures matter too. Shapiro wrote that Quickie’s brochures showed its chairs in use by active people, at the office and elsewhere, and Sunrise Medical’s American website today quotes named wheelchair users in their own words on work and travel. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made, with the company’s own claims marked as such.

Made in Norway as the message.

Topro’s clearest brand claim is about place. The brochure closes on “Norwegian design and made in Norway,” and the company’s site says every product is developed and produced in Norway by its team in Gjøvik. Its responsibility page puts it as “Local, from A to Z.” The company says it uses low-carbon aluminium and highly automated production; the 2020 brochure mentions hydropower at the factory and an injection-moulding plant using recyclable materials. The job advertisement says it has invested heavily in automated production at Gjøvik. Its 2024 note for the British Orthopaedic Association places the factory in Norway and its UK headquarters in Nottingham, and the Norwegian register also lists TOPRO GmbH in Germany and TOPRO Ltd in the UK as foreign entities.

Topro says it makes more than 100,000 rollators and more than 5,000 forearm walkers a year, with close to 100 employees, and that it is one of Europe’s largest manufacturers in the premium mobility segment. Its stated vision is “To be Europe’s leading designer and manufacturer of premium mobility aids,” and the line it uses on its site is “Empowering Movement and Independence.” It offers a seven-year manufacturer’s warranty on rollators.

The company also names the standards it works to: ISO 9001 for quality management, ISO 14001 for environmental management, ISO 13485 for medical device quality management and ISO 11199-2, the rollator standard. It says its rollators are tested in cooperation with TÜV. Its colour choices are part of the sales pitch as well: the brochure sets out wine red, ultramarine, steel blue and white on individual models, and the Troja 5G page offers blue, silver, red and black.

For a design guide, Topro shows how a maker of a very plain, practical object can build a brand from where the object is made and how little it weighs. Compare Trionic, a Swedish name in walking aids, and Drive DeVilbiss, whose rollators appear in the same German test. For this guide we use spruce green and rust with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Topro’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.