Garnet Instruments Making its Mark in the RV Industry – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
Garnet Instruments started modestly in George Fraser’s garage in 1993, with the business name coming from the street where Fraser’s home was located, Garnet Avenue.
Today, the Edmonton area, Alberta, Canada-based company is a major supplier of holding tank monitoring systems to some of the RV industry’s largest manufacturers, including Grand Design, Jayco, Keystone RV, Tiffin and Forest River.
The company’s holding tank monitor product line, called SeeLeveL, today accounts for about half of Garnet’s total business, according to Fraser. It’s an accomplishment that is perhaps even more impressive given that the company didn’t originally set out to serve the RV market.
Garnet got its start by manufacturing devices designed to detect fluid levels in oilfield transport trucks, said Fraser, noting that the gas and oil industry is big business in Alberta. The company also makes tank monitoring systems for other liquids transported by tanker trucks, including chemicals and septic and wastewater.
To grow its oilfield business in the United States, Fraser said company sales and marketing rep Don Shapansky traveled cross-country in his RV to promote the company’s products to oilfield representatives in various oil-producing states. Shapansky quickly identified a problem with his RV that he believed Fraser could help rectify.
“As he was doing his sales work in the field, he realized that the holding tank gauges were very poor in the RV industry,” Fraser said. “He asked, ‘Is there anything you can do to make this work better?’
“Of course, when you’re living in an RV full time, it’s a fairly major inconvenience when you have no idea how much water you’ve got, or if your sewer tanks are full, and so on,” he added. “And the big problem with the sewer tanks is they always get gummed up with toilet paper and with refuse, which makes it difficult to get an accurate reading.”
Building a Better Mousetrap
Making use of his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering as well as his expertise in creating holding tank monitors for other industries, Fraser set out to design a better mousetrap, so to speak.
While other tank monitoring systems rely on probes fitted inside of the holding tanks to gauge liquid levels, Fraser designed a monitoring system that is externally mounted. He said advantages of that system include no debris buildup on the sensor to cause false readings, simple installation via self-adhesive sensors and existing wiring, and versatile compatibility that allows the monitoring system to be installed on various size and shape tank configurations. Additionally, Garnet holding tank monitors are digital and include more sensors for more accurate readings.
“With a lot of other systems, the probes given you a very rough indication of the tank levels, like the tank is one-third full or two-third full, whereas ours gives you a percentage that can be within 3 percent,” Fraser explained. “That’s because with our system, for a typical 12-inch tall tank, you’ve got 32 sensing points, which gives you about a 3 percent resolution.
“So, with an old (monitoring) system, when you drop below one-third, you’ve got no idea—am I almost empty? Or am I just under one-third? Well, in our case, you actually know right down to that 3 percent what your holding tank level is.”
Garnet’s holding tank monitors are a bit more expensive than competing products, Fraser acknowledged, but said they make up for it in quality.
“What we try to emphasize to them (OEMs) is that it’s not just about the (product) cost. It’s also about your warranty costs in terms of the expense of fixing these (competing) probe systems that break down constantly and how much customer dissatisfaction are you incurring,” he said.
New Models Being Showcased During Open House Week
Today, Garnet’s holding tank monitors come in a variety of configurations, including models that can monitor between one and seven holding tanks and an RV-C interface series. During Elkhart Open House Week, Garnet will use its exhibit booth (#121) to showcase two new products: the SeeLevel Soul, a data module that gathers tank level information from SeeLeveL senders and transmits it to a multiplex system via an RV-C bus; and the SeeLevel 709-BTP7, a Blu-tooth-enabled system capable of monitoring up to seven holding tanks.
Now in its third decade in business, Fraser said many things have changed for the company over the years, including expanded product offerings and the opening of a facility in the Dallas, Texas, area to serve the U.S. market.
One thing that has not changed, Fraser said, is the company’s commitment to keeping its manufacturing operations in Canada and its call center operations in-house, staffed by its own employees. Fraser said the company’s commitment to customer service also is unwavering.
“As a company, we believe in conducting ourselves with integrity and honesty and serving our customers well,” he said. “We’ve been around for over 30 years now and I think that philosophy has proven itself out.”
