When the owners of San Francisco’s Bullard Company were looking for a new headquarters location in the early 1970s, they found the perfect place to “hang their hat” in Cynthiana.
Bullard makes hard hats. Each year, the company’s 200 employees produce millions of these helmets, which are shipped around the world. The company was founded in the late 1890s by Edward Dickinson Bullard, who began by selling lamps and mining equipment during the gold- and silver-rush eras of the time.
Not only does the company produce hard hats, its founder’s son actually invented them. After Bullard’s son, E.W. Bullard, came home from World War I, he created a hat similar to the steel helmets United States servicemen, or doughboys, wore overseas.
“He created and patented the Hard Boiled hard hat by steaming—or hard-boiling—canvas, shellacking it and adding a leather brim,” says Wells Bullard, company CEO and Edward Dickinson Bullard’s great-great-granddaughter. “He later expanded his design to include an internal suspension for added protection.”
The Bullard hard hat, which is recognizable by three molded ridges on the top, became prominent in construction when workers were required to wear it while building the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s. Although the requirement was authorized by the construction companies, Wells says that hard hats didn’t become mandatory on job sites that could involve head injury until 1970, when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was established.
The hard hat has evolved over time as new materials were invented. Early models were made of aluminum, then fiberglass and then thermoplastic. Today, the hats are made of polyethylene plastics, which Wells says are lightweight, durable, nonconductive to electricity and easy to mold.
Over the years, hard hats have been spotted on dignitaries at ribbon-cutting ceremonies, on construction workers on job sites, and on firefighters. In addition to setting the standard in hard hats, Bullard makes other workplace-related safety equipment. The company’s product categories are broken down into head protection, body temperature management, respiratory protection, fire and rescue helmets, and thermal imaging.
E.W. Bullard got involved in respiratory protection on the Golden Gate Bridge project. “The steel for the bridge had oxidized, so they had to sandblast it before they could use it to build the bridge,” Wells says. “My great-grandfather saw this problem and designed our first respiratory system for the bridge workers.”
About the company’s decision to relocate its headquarters in the ’70s, Wells says, “We were looking at Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, when we found out that there was a factory in Cynthiana that just closed. There was a skilled work force and an empty building, so Cynthiana had exactly what we needed, when we needed it.”
As Harrison County’s second-largest employer, after 3M, Bullard has made a tremendous impact, according to Cynthiana Mayor James D. Smith. “They have always been active in the community and with the Chamber of Commerce,” Smith says. “Over the years, as they have grown, instead of moving the factory, they chose to stay here in Cynthiana, and we do appreciate that.”
Bullard has several employees who have been there for 40 or more years, as well as several families with multiple family members on the team. “The people of Cynthiana and Harrison County are an amazing, dedicated workforce,” Wells says. “They are driven by our vision and what we are trying to do, which is advancing human safety.
“They know that what they do makes a difference. They know that making that extra stitch or making something up to our quality standards can be the difference if someone goes home safely from their job.”
Obviously, a company cannot stay in business for more than 120 years without a high-quality product, and Bullard takes pride in the testing, researching and quality control that goes into everything they make.
“Our hard hats are only effective if someone is wearing them,” Wells says. “If it is uncomfortable and the person takes it off to rub their temple, well, what if that is when something falls?”
So in addition to protection, Bullard strives to make its products comfortable and stylish, too.
“People want to look cool and feel confident when they work,” she says. “Think of the old-time science protective goggles. You just looked super nerdy. Now, you see eye protection, and it has some style to it. Safety still trumps style, but it isn’t like one excludes the other.”
The same goes for Bullard fire helmets. In research, the company discovered its helmets are slightly heavier than the competition’s.
“But the firefighters will take the few extra ounces of weight to have the look they want, a look that their grandfathers had,” Wells says.
While Bullard proudly calls Cynthiana home, company employees are scattered around the globe. There are 15 employees working in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region and nearly 25 employees working throughout the U.S. and Canada. Just down the road in Lexington, the company recently opened the Bullard Center, home to about 40 employees. Moving these employees—who work in marketing, research and development, and other corporate functions—to Lexington frees up more space at the Cynthiana plant, allowing for a reconfiguration of its layout.
Another bonus to the Lexington location is that Bullard has partnered with the University of Kentucky’s College of Engineering for collaboration on many levels.
According to Kim Sayre, director of industry engagement at UK, Bullard has hired alumni from the College of Engineering and employs interns each semester. The company also taps into the knowledge and experience of faculty members when employees need technical training or expert advice. Bullard also is instrumental in the college’s capstone projects. For these projects, Bullard provides an idea or possibly a situation that it would like researched—along with an outline, details and parameters. Students can choose projects based on their interests or specialties.
“These projects are not critical and are usually something that the engineers on staff might have to back-burner because they have to deal with things that are more urgent,” Sayre says. “Our students spend a semester or two looking at every angle, coming up with solutions, and gaining real-world engineering experience.”
Wells says the students acquire problem-solving skills as well as those needed to sustain current products and develop new ones. She has identified specific segments of business—such as energy, mining, industrial blasting, government and pharmaceuticals—as areas where there is huge growth potential. “By targeting these specific industries, we can better understand their needs,” she says. “When we understand their problems, then we can focus on how to solve these problems for them with our products.”
As Wells Bullard drives the company to meet and surpass the needs of clients and unravel work safety issues of the future, she is continuing down the path that her great-great-grandfather created 120 years ago.
On Jan. 12, Bullard broke a Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people wearing hard hats at an event. This occasion was a celebration of the 100 years since E.W. Bullard invented the hat that has undoubtedly saved thousands of lives.
If you happened to see the University of Kentucky vs. Vanderbilt men’s basketball game, the record was broken during halftime at Rupp Arena, when about 10,000 fans donned their free, UK logo-emblazoned, blue Bullard hard hats and kept them on for five minutes.