Gardner Spring: Over a Century of Excellence

Gardner Spring, Inc., a Tulsa-based spring manufacturer supplying the OEM (original equipment manufacturing), industrial supply, and hardware industries, celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2007.

Gardner Spring was founded in Chicago in 1907, quickly making its mark as one of the country’s leading manufacturers of stock and specialty springs. Magrini’s brother bought the stock spring division when Gardner was sold in the mid 1960s, moving the company – along with its healthy nationwide customer base – to Oklahoma.

Within a few months, the company was sold to Associated Spring, who hired Magrini to run the company for the next ten years. In 1978 Magrini purchased Gardner back from Associated.

Magrini has been Gardner’s sole owner for nearly 30 years. She was the first, and, for many years, the only woman member of the American Hardware Manufacturers Association.

“I still remember how well I was treated back then,” Magrini recalled. “As the only woman in a male dominated industry, you’d think I would have had difficulties, but, honestly, I never did.”

“I think the reason that I never had to cope with the discrimination encountered by so many other women trying to make it the business world at the time was because I entered the arena as a business owner – a peer – rather than having to work my way up through the ranks of a large company,” Magrini speculated.

Magrini was also the first woman to join the Tulsa Area Manufacturers Assocation (TAMA). “When I first joined TAMA, all of the men who had been around for a long time treated me – as well as those women who came later – very professionally and respectfully,” Magrini said.

Gardner makes and stocks thousands of sizes of a wide variety of springs.

Gardner parts have found their way into everything from kitchen appliances to aerospace components.

Magrini is a founding member of the prestigious Committee of 200, an invitation-only organization of the most successful businesswomen.