Chamber Member Chat Deck
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Meet the Member: Garmin
Garmin was founded in 1989 with headquarters located in the United States. The company first set foot in the aviation industry with its cutting-edge GPS navigation products almost three decades ago. Since then, Garmin's product lines have expanded to fully cover the aviation, marine, and automotive industries.
Mission
"To be an enduring company by creating superior products for automotive, aviation, marine, outdoor and sports that are an essential part of our customers’ lives."
Vision
"We will be the global leader in every market we serve, and our products will be sought after for their compelling design, superior quality and best value."
Today, Garmin is the renowned leader in the aviation, marine, automotive, outdoor, and fitness markets. Built on a healthy product ecosystem, and combining awe-inspiring designs, impeccable quality, and superior reliability into excellent user experiences, Garmin strives to become the number one brand for all who enjoy their lives.
Ben Wigton
Site Manager, Mesa Gateway
Sandra Watson, Governor Katie Hobbs, and Ben Wigton
ACA Board of Directors meeting
Company Values
The foundation of Garmin's culture is honesty, integrity and respect for associates, customers and business partners. Each associate is fully committed to serving customers and fellow associates through outstanding performance and accomplishing "what we say we will do".
Their strategies are:
- People: They hire the best talent and provide associates with competitive compensation, generous benefits, career growth opportunities, and a fun and engaging culture that encourages long-term contributions.
- Products: They offer products with essential utility, leading edge technologies, compelling features and exceptional ease of use to create clear differentiators that customers will appreciate and desire.
- Operations: They embrace a vertically integrated business model with strategic design, manufacturing, distribution, sales and support centers around the world to maximize value to customers.
- Growth: They relentlessly pursue innovation to create new products and markets that lead to growth opportunities.
- Sustainabilitiy: Continuously reinvest in people, facilities and equipment to focus on long-term success and stability.
In The News from Garmin
The Phoenix area has served as a Garmin engineering hub for over 25 years, initially with a facility in Tempe, and later moving to a larger facility in Chandler. More recently, Garmin further expanded its footprint to Scottsdale after acquiring AeroData in 2019. The proximity of these locations provides support and infrastructure as Garmin continues to grow. The additional [Mesa] facility and expanded operations will allow Garmin to hire experienced associates for the engineering, aircraft airworthiness approval, and flight test teams in Mesa.
Garmin is pleased to announce that it has acquired a hangar and office complex at the Mesa Gateway airport in Mesa, Arizona (KIWA). This new facility space will expand the company’s capacity for its aircraft certification and flight test organizations.
“We are excited to add another aviation facility to our business. The capabilities this location will provide are instrumental in extending aircraft airworthiness approvals and market coverage for our product lines. This expansion represents Garmin’s continued investment in infrastructure that supports growth and innovation in our aviation business segment.”
–Phil Straub, Garmin Executive Vice President Managing Director Aviation
The facility consists of two adjacent hangars of approximately 75,000 total square feet which includes office space that can accommodate approximately 75 associates. The Mesa Gateway Airport has three parallel runways, two of which are over 10,000 feet in length. This overall infrastructure, along with generally clear weather throughout the year, provides an ideal flight operations setting. This new Mesa location joins Garmin’s two existing flight operations centers in New Century, Kansas and Salem, Oregon. Additionally, Mesa Gateway is home to numerous aviation companies, including customer support/service centers of three major aircraft manufacturers – further underscoring the value of the community and location.
Garmin products and services have revolutionized flight and become essential to the lives of pilots and aircraft owners and operators around the world. A leading provider of solutions to general aviation, business aviation, rotorcraft, advanced air mobility, government and defense, and commercial air carrier customers, Garmin believes every day is an opportunity to innovate. Recipient of the prestigious Robert J. Collier Trophy for Garmin Autoland, Garmin developed the world’s first certified autonomous system that activates during an emergency to control and land an aircraft without human intervention.
For additional information regarding Garmin’s aviation business, visit Garmin.com/Aviation.