Every brand we carry was started by someone trying to solve one specific problem — a man who couldn't stand up all day without his legs aching, a pharmacist whose surgical tape kept irritating skin, an engineer who noticed something odd while standing in a swimming pool. None of them set out to build a catalogue. They set out to fix one thing, and the companies grew up around the fix.
We carry a deliberately short list of manufacturers. These are the ones whose sizing data we trust, whose products a Canadian clinician will recognise by name, and who are still making the thing they became known for. Here's where each of them came from.
medi
Founded 1951 · Bayreuth, Germany · still family-owned, now third generation
In 1951 Wolfgang Weihermüller crossed the "Green Border" out of Soviet-occupied Saxony carrying parts of a knitting machine. His family had been in hosiery and corsetry in Pausa, in the Vogtland, since the end of the nineteenth century — but the business could not stay where it was. He reached Bayreuth, met up with his cousin Günter Voigtmann, and the two of them started again with three knitting machines and one specialised skill: knitting rubber.
They set up in a former dance hall and began producing medical "rubber stockings." Seventy-five years later medi employs around 1,800 people in Bayreuth and roughly 3,000 worldwide, is still owned by the same family, and is still led by the third generation of it.
medi is unusual in doing both halves of what we sell — medical compression and orthopaedic bracing — under one roof. From them we carry the mediven compression range (Elegance, Plus, Comfort, Forte, Angio, Active, Karesse, Vitality, Select, Travel, mediven for men, and the Harmony arm sleeve for lymphedema), the circaid adjustable wraps for patients who can't manage a pull-on stocking, and the orthopaedic range — Genumedi, Levamed, Lumbamed, Manumed, Epicomed, Omomed, Rhizomed and the protect series.
Bauerfeind
Founded 1929 · Zeulenroda, Germany · family-owned, never publicly listed
Bruno Bauerfeind started making medical rubber stockings in Zeulenroda in 1929 — twenty-two years before medi, about 130 km away, in what would become the same country and the same political problem. Within a decade he employed more than a hundred people. Then history repeated the medi story almost exactly: after East German nationalisation his son Rudolf rebuilt the company in the west, and it was the founder's grandson, Hans B. Bauerfeind, who joined in 1962 and grew it into one of the world's leading makers of compression stockings, supports and orthoses. After reunification he went home — back to Zeulenroda in 1991, where he built new production facilities. It has been the company's headquarters since 1997.
For its first fifty-two years Bauerfeind made compression and nothing else. That changed in 1981 with the first GenuTrain knee brace, and the idea behind it still defines the company: a knitted compression sleeve with anatomically shaped pads, so the joint keeps moving while it recovers, rather than being locked still.
From Bauerfeind we carry the Train series (GenuTrain, MalleoTrain, ManuTrain, EpiTrain, OmoTrain, LumboTrain, AchilloTrain, MyoTrain), the firmer Loc and Spinova bracing systems, and the VenoTrain compression range that the company started with.
JOBST
Founded 1950 · Toledo, Ohio · named for Conrad Jobst
Conrad Jobst was a German-born mechanical engineer living in Ohio, and he had venous disease. At the time there was very little to offer him. The insight that changed it came while he was standing in a swimming pool: the water pressed hardest at his feet and less as it got shallower, and while he stood in it his legs felt better. Water pressure increases with depth — and that gradient, he reasoned, was cancelling out the pressure in his veins.
He built a stocking that did the same thing: strongest at the ankle, easing as it travels up the limb. That is graduated compression, and every medical compression stocking sold anywhere today — including every other brand on this page — still works on the principle Conrad Jobst worked out in a swimming pool. He died in 1957, only seven years after founding the company; his wife Carolyn Jobst took it over and grew it substantially.
From JOBST we carry the ready-to-wear stocking lines (UltraSheer, Opaque, forMEN, Sport, Style, ActiveWear and Relief), the FarrowWrap short-stretch wrap system for lymphedema, and the Comprilan, CompriFoam and Compri2 bandaging systems used in clinical practice.
Leukoplast
First made 1901 · Hamburg, Germany
In 1890 a 27-year-old pharmacist from Silesia named Oscar Troplowitz bought a small Hamburg company called Beiersdorf. He wanted to make a surgical tape that would actually stick without tearing up the skin underneath — the adhesives of the day were resin-based and irritating. His answer was zinc oxide, which counteracted the resin.
He released it in 1901 and called it Leukoplast, from leukos, Greek for white. It became one of the first globally successful products of its kind, and it is still on the market under the same name 125 years later. The same company later gave the world Nivea and tesa.
Today Leukoplast covers first-aid and fixation dressings; alongside it we carry Cutimed for advanced wound care, Leukomed for post-operative and film dressings, and Hypafix for wide-area fixation.
Gypsona, Delta-Cast and the casting range
Gypsona: Smith & Nephew, Hull, England · from 1930
Before plaster bandages came ready-made, a cast was mixed and applied by hand, and it was a mess. Smith & Nephew of Hull introduced a pre-impregnated plaster of Paris bandage in 1930 — sold as Cellona, later renamed Gypsona — and it changed how fractures were treated: lighter casts, far less waste, and a process a clinician could repeat consistently. Gypsona is still sold today, and we still stock it.
Alongside it sits the modern half of the same job: Delta-Cast synthetic cast tapes, Dynacast and Delta-Cast Prelude splinting systems, Delta-Dry and AquaCast water-resistant and waterproof liners that let a patient shower or swim in a cast, undercast padding and stockinette, and the physiotherapy tapes — Tensoplast, Leukotape, Strappal, Co-Plus, Elastocrepe and Tensogrip.
Shop fracture management & casting →
Actimove
Orthopaedic bracing
Actimove is the practical, clinic-stocked end of orthopaedic bracing: everyday supports through to post-operative immobilisation, walker boots, slings, and a well-regarded arthritis-care range of gloves and soft supports for people who need something wearable all day rather than a rigid brace.
How JOBST, Leukoplast, Gypsona and Actimove ended up in the same family
It looks like coincidence that a 1901 German adhesive tape, a 1930 English plaster bandage and a 1950 American compression stocking are now sold by one company. It isn't.
In 2001 Beiersdorf — Leukoplast's maker — and Smith & Nephew — Gypsona's — put their medical divisions together into a 50/50 joint venture. They named it after themselves: Beiersdorf, Smith & Nephew — BSN medical. It passed through two private-equity owners over the following fifteen years, and at the end of 2016 was bought by the Swedish group SCA, which spun its health and hygiene business off as Essity in 2017.
So JOBST, Actimove, Leukoplast, Cutimed, Leukomed, Hypafix, Delta-Cast, AquaCast, Gypsona, Tensoplast and Leukotape all sit under Essity today — two European inventions from either side of the First World War, and an American one from after the Second, that took a century to end up on the same shelf.
Sigvaris
Founded 1864 · Switzerland · still family-owned
Sigvaris is the oldest company on this page by a long way — founded in 1864, family-owned ever since, and still headquartered in Switzerland. It has spent more than 160 years on a single problem: how to put graduated pressure on a leg and keep it comfortable enough that someone actually wears it all day.
What that history buys is range. From them we carry the Essential and Style compression lines — including Supima cotton, merino wool, linen, bamboo and sea island cotton knits for people whose skin reacts to synthetics — the Motion range built for standing work and sport, and the Specialty lines: natural rubber for the highest compression classes, and the Advance arm sleeve for lymphedema.
They also make the pieces that take over when a pull-on stocking stops being practical. The Compreflex, Coolflex and Compreboot inelastic wraps fasten with straps instead of being pulled on, which matters for chronic edema and for anyone who cannot manage a compression garment unaided.
Mobilis
Sigvaris Group’s orthopaedic bracing range
Mobilis is Sigvaris’s bracing arm, listed here under its own name because that is the name printed on the box. Where the rest of the Sigvaris range works on circulation, Mobilis works on joints — supports and braces for everyday joint pain, strains and recovery after an injury or surgery.
It covers elbow, wrist and thumb, back, knee and ankle, and it spans a genuine range of support rather than one level. At the mild end are knitted supports you pull on like a sleeve, meant to be worn through a normal day. At the firm end are stabilising braces built around four posterior rods, lateral stays and silicone inserts — for a joint that needs to be held, not just warmed.
All of it is ready-to-wear and sized from a straightforward circumference measurement, so there is no casting and no custom build to wait on. If you are not sure which support level you need, the product pages list the indications each brace is designed for, and you are welcome to ask us.
Can't find the brand you were prescribed?
If your prescription or your fitter names a product we don't list, get in touch before ordering something that looks similar. We can often source a specific line — and where we can't, we would rather tell you than sell you an approximation of a medical device.
- Email: care@alignovamedical.ca
- Phone: +1 416-836-9978
- WeChat: scan or tap to add us