History

Founder Robert Stofan starts Audiolab Electronics in the garage of his home in Sacramento, California. The company provides engineering services to radio stations and acts as a reseller of radio equipment. 

Robert Stofan designs and manufactures the TD-1, the first commercially available AC tape degausser. His professional reputation as an engineer and the producer of high-quality products earns a growing customer base. He quickly outgrows his garage and moves into the company’s first commercial location on Rosebud Lane in Sacramento.

The company is incorporated as Audiolab Electronics, Inc. Its business still includes engineering services for radio stations, but the company also introduces the TD line of compact, commercial tape degaussers.

Ronald Stofan joins his father in the business. The company automates the degaussing process by introducing the Audiolab CDS line of degaussers, a conveyor-belt system that moves tapes through the degausser.

The company completes its transition to second-generation ownership. Robert Stofan retires and his son, Ronald, becomes the company’s president and CEO. This decade sees the expansion of Audiolab from a small, regionally focused business to a nationally recognized U.S. manufacturer. Audiolab purchases competitor Garner Industries and moves Garner Industries degausser division from Nebraska to California. The two companies’ product lines are merged and the company name is changed from Audiolab to Garner Products, Inc. Garner moves to its current corporate headquarters and manufacturing facility at 10620 Industrial Blvd. in Roseville, California. The new site allows the company to add an in-house machine shop. The decade also brings dramatic innovation to the company’s product line with the introduction of the CDS-4400ED continuous-duty, metal-particle tape degausser; the HDTD-8200, Garner’s first capacitive-discharge hard drive degausser; and the PD-8400, Garner’s first-ever hard drive destroyer.

The current decade proves monumental to Garner’s growth from a U.S. manufacturer to an international market leader, with the list of its FORTUNE 500® customers growing longer each year. The company significantly expands its presence in the global market by signing international distributors in Singapore, the United Kingdom, and India. All of Garner’s products are independently tested and certified to meet CE/ANSI safety and interference standards. Garner introduces it revolutionary PD-5 hard drive destroyer, a compact, physical destroyer for hard drives and SSD-1 accessory that destroys solid-state drives (SSDs) and flash drives. The company is granted a U.S. patent for its SSD-1 solid-state destroyer design. Garner’s TS-1 degausser, PD-4 hard drive physical destroyer, and PD-5 hard drive and solid-state memory destroyer receive highly coveted listings on the National Security Agency (NSA) Evaluated Products List.

As technology evolves, Garner will continue its long-standing reputation of providing innovative solutions to the ever-increasing challenges of data security.