Graham-Field Brand Guidelines: A 1946 Manhattan Supply House, Lumex & Fond du Lac

A medical-supply loft in lower Manhattan.

Graham-Field began in New York City in 1946. Gale’s International Directory of Company Histories says it was founded as Graham-Field, Inc. by Samuel Graham Golub and Philip Field, who set up a medical equipment supply business in a loft on Pearl Street, in the part of lower Manhattan now known as TriBeCa.

A year after opening, the same history says, Graham-Field brought out its first product, Medicopaste, a bandage product. For four decades it remained a relatively small but well-regarded supply company, the Directory says.

That changed in the mid-1980s. Patient Technology, Inc., a medical-device company formed in Hauppauge, on Long Island, in 1981, bought Graham-Field as one of a run of acquisitions; the Directory’s chronology dates the purchase to 1985, though its narrative also mentions 1986. Patient Technology soon left the medical-device field to concentrate on medical supplies, and in May 1988 it took the name of the business it had bought, which was better known in the trade, becoming Graham-Field Health Products, Inc.

The Graham-Field of later decades is therefore the Patient Technology business under the older, better-known name, and the long series of purchases that followed shaped what the brand covers today.

Growth by acquisition: bandages to wheelchairs and beds.

From 1988 the renamed company bought steadily, the Directory says. It added Bristoline, an importer of medical instruments and microscopes, in 1988; M.E. Team, a home health care distributor, and the John Bunn respiratory line in 1990; and in 1991 International Health Care, formerly AquaTherm Products, a maker of pressure control products, and TEMCO National, which made geriatric seating, walking aids and bath accessories. In 1992 it bought the bandage division of ConvaTec, which brought a manufacturing plant in Rhode Island. Around this time the company moved its listing from the American Stock Exchange to the New York Stock Exchange.

The larger step into equipment came in November 1996, when Graham-Field bought the wheelchair maker Everest & Jennings; in March 1997 it added Kuschall of America, a maker of children’s and high-performance wheelchairs. The same year it built up Graham-Field Express, a same-day and next-day delivery programme for home health care dealers, opening distribution sites in several cities.

By the mid-2000s, the Directory lists its major brands as Lumex, for specialty chairs, beds, walkers and lifts; Everest & Jennings, for manual and power wheelchairs; Basic American Medical Products and Simmons, for beds; and John Bunn, Labtron, Grafco, Akros and Aquatherm. It placed manufacturing plants in Denver, Wisconsin and Rhode Island.

Later purchases pushed further into hospital and care equipment. In June 2013 Graham-Field announced it would buy the assets of Hausted Patient Handling Systems, a maker of stretchers and chairs used in patient transport, radiology, outpatient, emergency and operating rooms, whose brand the company says dates to 1949, and move its manufacturing to Wisconsin and Georgia. In June 2020 it bought the assets of Gendron of Bryan, Ohio, a maker of bariatric beds and transport equipment, Rehab Management reported. In April 2024 it announced the purchase of Transfer Master Products, a maker of hi-low adjustable beds, whose Iowa operation it said would move to Wisconsin.

How bed makers present themselves.

Hospital bed and patient-handling makers sell to buyers who rarely see the product in a showroom. Purchasing teams, nurses and facilities planners meet it in catalogues, on websites and at trade fairs, so the way these companies present themselves leans heavily on photography, diagrams and film rather than on the object in the hand.

The most common image is the bed in a calm ward: a made-up mattress, soft daylight, a tidy bedside cabinet and very little else in the frame. Cutaway views and close-ups take over in technical literature, showing the frame, the castors, the side rails and the handsets and control panels that staff use every day. Hoists and stand-up aids are usually shown in use, in care homes and bathrooms as well as hospitals, with a carer and a resident in a staged transfer.

Trade fairs are a second stage. Large medical exhibitions such as MEDICA in Düsseldorf and Arab Health in Dubai give makers a stand on which beds, lifts and mattresses can be set out as a working room. Product films extend the same idea, often following a nurse at the bedside through a short routine to show how a control, a rail or a lift is meant to be used.

Behind those images sit long ownership histories. Many of the names in this field began as small workshops or furniture makers and passed through larger medical-technology groups, mergers and listings, so the brand on the bed today often carries decades of earlier companies with it. The guides in this round look at that history alongside the way each maker presents itself.

Chapter 11, a new owner and a Wisconsin steel works.

The company’s largest deal led to its hardest years. In late 1997 Graham-Field agreed to buy Fuqua Enterprises, an Atlanta company that furnished nursing facilities, a purchase the Directory dates to 1997. Its results for 1997 then showed heavy losses, the share price fell sharply and shareholders sued; the suits were settled in 1999, the Directory says. An internal audit in 1999 found accounting irregularities, the New York Stock Exchange delisted the shares, and at the end of 1999 Graham-Field and its 24 subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. During the restructuring the head office moved to Atlanta.

The business emerged in April 2003, after an auction in which its bondholders outbid the wheelchair maker Invacare; a new company, GF Health Products, Inc., was formed to take over the assets, and it still trades as Graham-Field. In 2004 a federal jury convicted the company’s long-time chief executive of securities fraud and conspiracy, over the inflation of Graham-Field’s share price before the Fuqua deal, and he was sentenced in 2005, the Directory reports, citing Newsday and Home Care Magazine.

Today Graham-Field is based in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2020 its chief executive described a “Made in USA” strategic initiative, and the company names a 20-acre steel fabrication complex in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and a medical upholstery, assembly and distribution site in Gwinnett County, Georgia, Rehab Management reported. In 2024 it said the Fond du Lac works could make more than 20,000 beds a year, and named Basic American, Patriot and Lumex as its bed brands. Those are the company’s own statements.

For a design guide, Graham-Field shows how one founding name can become an umbrella over a stack of older brands. Compare Joerns Healthcare, another American maker of care beds, and Span-America. For this guide we use a navy, a brick red and a parchment with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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