Bernafon Brand Guidelines: A Flamatt Telephone Maker, Ascom & a Name Taken From Bern

A telephone maker’s first hearing aid.

Bernafon did not begin under that name, and not in the city of Bern itself. Its roots are in Gfeller AG, a maker of telephone equipment at Flamatt, in the canton of Fribourg just outside Bern. The Bern newspaper Der Bund, in a history published on 4 September 2012, said that a hearing aid developed by the son of the firm’s head, Hans Gfeller, went into series production in a refined form in 1946. Because the device and its battery sat in two separate leather cases, it was called the A1 2-Pack.

The product found buyers abroad from the start, Der Bund said. Over time the devices shrank: transistors replaced the large, power-hungry valves from 1954, and in 1963 the first behind-the-ear model reached the market. German Wikipedia adds that Gfeller signed sales agreements with agents in Italy, North Africa and the Middle East as early as 1949, so the hearing aids were an export business almost from their first years.

To reach the American market, Gfeller bought Maico of Minneapolis in 1986, Der Bund reported; German Wikipedia describes Maico, founded in 1937, as an established American maker of hearing aids and audiometers at the time. A year later Gfeller became part of Ascom, the Swiss telecommunications group whose formation the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, in a 2002 chronology, dated to a merger announced in December 1986 by Hasler, Autophon and Zellweger Telecommunications. Inside Ascom, the hearing-aid business traded as Ascom Audiosys.

From Ascom Audiosys to Bernafon.

Ascom Audiosys grew quickly. Der Bund quoted Erich Spahr, Bernafon’s chief executive in 2012, as recalling that the group’s strategy had been to build Ascom Audiosys into the world market leader in hearing aids. A contract with Australian health authorities took it to Australia, and in 1992 it bought the hearing-aid business of the German Bosch group.

Ascom’s own troubles ended that plan. With the group selling subsidiaries to cut debt, its hearing-aid business was taken over in 1994 by the Danish William Demant Holding, the former Oticon, Der Bund reported; Bernafon’s website also gives 1994, while English Wikipedia dates the takeover to 1995. The new owners closed production at Flamatt, and more than half of the 120 employees there left. In 1995 development and sales, with 48 staff, moved to Bern-Bümpliz. Only then could the company call itself Bernafon AG: Der Bund said the Fribourg commercial registry had refused the name while the firm sat in Flamatt, because it contained “Bern.” Bernafon itself says its name came from its location in Bern.

Its engineering story rests on digital firsts that it claims. Bernafon says it developed the first digitally programmable hearing aid by 1987 and its first fully digital device in 1999; English Wikipedia names the programmable system PHOX and dates it to 1988. In 2012 Der Bund described Bernafon’s ChannelFree processing, introduced with the Symbio in 2002 according to Wikipedia, as analysing the incoming signal more than 20,000 times a second instead of splitting it into frequency channels, citing the company’s own advertising. Spahr told the paper that this Bern-developed system set Bernafon’s hearing aids apart from those of its sister brand Oticon.

How hearing brands present themselves.

Hearing-aid makers sell a product that is meant to be hard to see, and much of their imagery works around that. Devices are shown balanced on a fingertip to make their size clear, or in close-ups of the ear, where a behind-the-ear case and its thin tube or wire are the only visible trace. The Bern newspaper Der Bund noted in 2012 that hearing aids, unlike glasses, still had an image problem, and that makers were trying both to shrink them and to give them designed housings in a choice of colours.

Colour tends to follow the body rather than fashion. Many ranges come in skin tones, greys and silvers meant to blend with hair and skin, with brighter shells offered as options. Around the device sit the settings of professional care: the audiology booth, the fitting session and, more recently, the phone app used to stream sound or adjust a program.

The industry is concentrated and old. In 2007 Germany’s competition authority, the Bundeskartellamt, named Siemens, Phonak and Oticon as the main producers in the German market, with GN ReSound and Widex as the next-largest. Several of today’s brands began inside telephone and telegraph companies: Bernafon at a Swiss telephone maker in 1946, and GN Hearing’s forerunner Danavox in a Danish group that started with telegraph cables. Most are now part of a few groups that each run several brands side by side.

The trade meets at its own congresses. In Germany the annual EUHA congress of hearing-aid acousticians is where makers show new ranges to the trade; in the United States the American Academy of Audiology’s convention, long known as AudiologyNOW!, plays a similar role. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it and where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

A Swiss name under Danish ownership.

Design was part of the pitch. Der Bund wrote in 2012 that hearing aids, unlike glasses, still had an image problem, and that Bernafon had answered by packing its technology into designed housings in a range of colours. German Wikipedia says its Brite, a receiver-in-the-ear model, won a red dot design award in 2007.

The Swiss base shrank over the following decade. In 2012 Der Bund counted about 500 staff worldwide and 130 in Bern, half of them in product development, and said the devices were produced in Denmark and Poland, with most of the group’s development done jointly in Denmark. German Wikipedia says development and internal quality assurance moved to Denmark and Poland in 2016. Bernafon says much of the company remained in Switzerland until 2022, when it moved to the Demant headquarters near Copenhagen.

Production changed too. In a press release dated 23 November 2023, Bernafon’s German company said it would move all in-the-ear production from its Berlin workshop, the Bernafon Manufaktur, which had belonged to Bernafon for more than 40 years, to Demant Operations in Szczecin, Poland, at the turn of 2023 and 2024. The Berlin team was to keep handling orders, advice and service.

Bernafon still trades as a Demant brand. Its website presents ranges including Revita, which it calls its most advanced family, Encanta, Alpha XT and Leox, a Super Power and Ultra Power model, and says it is part of the Demant Group, with “over a century of experience,” alongside Oticon. It describes its purpose as putting hearing care professionals first.

For a design guide, Bernafon shows how a brand can keep a place name after its work has moved elsewhere. Compare Demant, its owner, and Oticon, its Danish sister brand. For this guide we use a deep green and a sandstone with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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