Following an extended period of economic difficulties, White’s Electronics has been sold.
Garrett Electronics, a Texas-based manufacturer of products similar to White’s, announced Oct. 16 that it had purchased “certain assets” of White’s, which was founded 70 years ago in Sweet Home.
According to a statement from Garrett, the purchase includes White’s trademarks, intellectual property, tooling and other assets. It does not include White’s real estate in Oregon or Scotland.
The process of the shutdown of White’s has taken several months, and multiple attempts by The New Era to reach out to company officials over that time have proved fruitless.
“The White family and the Garrett family have had a high level of respect for one another as competitors in the sport market for decades,” said Garrett CEO Steve Novakovich in a statement. “Now we at Garrett are proud to combine our respective legacies as Garrett continues on as the premier American metal detector company.”
In a letter dated June 18 company President Ken White said the company was “suspending manufacturing operations at our Sweet Home facility while we re-evaluate the future of the company. It is never easy to make these decisions, however, we are faced with the reality of intense competition in the industry and ongoing counterfeit instruments coming from China. “Lastly, there have been critical material shortages since the COVID-19 shutdown that we now find insurmountable.”
Dun and Bradstreet listed White’s as having 120 employees in 2019, with annual revenue of $22.13 million last year.
One of the community’s largest employers, White’s has been part of Sweet Home history for 70 years, beginning when inventor Kenneth White Sr. started building Geiger counters in the radio repair service he and his wife Olive owned, along with a furniture store, on Main Street in downtown Sweet Home.
He founded the company in 1950 and within seven years White’s had 65 employees, and the business was moved in 1964 from the basement of the furniture business to its 60-acre campus at 1011 Pleasant Valley Road. Its product line expanded, with new, cutting-edge innovations, and in the 1980s the company opened a manufacturing plant in Inverness, Scotland.
A statement from Garrett, which did not return a phone call from The New Era, said that the company “intends to rigorously defend all of White’s trademarks, patents, and other IP wherever infringement may occur.”
Garrett, a longtime competitor with White’s, was founded in 1964. It offers a product line of recreational metal detectors similar to White’s, but also sells mine detection equipment and walk-through and hand-held security scanners and thermal scanners.