U.S.A. designed, engineered and built: Van Mark Products

By Emma Peterson.

Learn the history of one of the leading manufacturers in the metal bending tool sector.

In February 2025, The Coffee Shops™ had the honor of welcoming Van Mark Products into our community. Van Mark is known as a leader in the construction tool industry with a wide portfolio of products including portable bending brakes, precision cutting tools and gutter hood systems. To get to know them a little better, Yoni Kellman, the regional sales and marketing manager at Van Mark, stopped by to share a bit more about their history.  

Van Mark’s story starts in 1964 with Jean Van Cleave and the idea of building a portable job site for metal bending solutions. Now, 60 years later, Van Mark continues to lead the metal bending tools industry with their development of innovative products. Yoni explained, “We've been developing and evolving our products for different markets, purposes and sizes. For example, our first brake was a slide lock design, which we still offer as an entry-level or DIY brake but have developed our own cam-lock design that is unique to us and has a lot of advantages over the previous design.” The result? Powerful products that lead the field, like Van Mark’s portable bending brakes and the Trim-A-Slitter™, Trim-A-Gutter™ and Trim-A-Table™ cutting lines.

And, through the decades, Van Mark is still family owned. When Jean passed away, his son took over the business and runs it to this day. In addition to maintaining their family-owned identity, Van Mark also prides themselves on sourcing their materials and manufacturing locally in their region. Yoni explained, “We're based in Michigan and take pride in sourcing our materials and manufacturing in-house. All of our suppliers for our raw aluminum components, unique extrusion and other small assemblies are all based in the Midwest. We also use U.S. based foundries for our aluminum casted parts to meet our strict quality standards. We are U.S.A designed, engineered and built.”

To learn more about Van Mark Products or to find a distributor network where you can buy their tool offerings, visit their website at www.van-mark.com/index.shtml.