A garage, a shed and a fire.

SKB was founded in 1977 in Southern California by Dave Sanderson and Steve Kottman. The company says the two met in 1973 on the rowing team at California State University, Long Beach, and began making guitar cases for friends on vacuum-forming equipment they built themselves. The Los Angeles Times reported in 1998 that Kottman “started the company in his father’s garage with college pal Sanderson”; the company places that garage in Anaheim.

The third initial, the company’s timeline suggests, came from a third partner. In 1976, it says, Sanderson and Kottman took their cases to Doug Browne, a music-store owner who offered to invest and let them work in a windowless shed behind his warehouse, which they called the “pig hole.” In 1977 a vacuum-former left running while they were out started a fire — “a total loss,” in the words quoted on the company site. Browne then sold his share, the company says, and the pair scraped together enough money for a small shop in Orange, California, where SKB is still based.

The break came from Fender. In 1979, the company says, SKB persuaded Fender that it could supply 2,500 cases for a special anniversary edition of the Stratocaster; by 1983 it had 20 employees making 600 cases a week for Fender, still on machinery the founders had built, with Kottman and Sanderson making the deliveries themselves. In 1998 the two were named Orange County entrepreneurs of the year in the manufacturing category, the Los Angeles Times reported. Asked about the award, Kottman told the paper: “I’ve never had a real job. This is the only thing I know.”

From guitar cases to mil-spec boxes.

Music was the start, not the limit. The company says military contracts and cases for medical equipment, computers and lasers arrived in the 1980s, and that in 1987 it moved into a 40,000-square-foot building in Orange. A sports division followed in 1990; by the end of that year, it says, SKB had 170 employees building more than a million dollars’ worth of cases a month, including more than 8,000 golf club cases. A rotational-molding plant with three ovens opened in 1997, when it says the workforce had reached 500, and mil-spec lines followed in 2002.

Its best-known products today are the iSeries: injection-molded, gasket-sealed waterproof cases in polypropylene copolymer, tested to the US military’s MIL-STD 810H standard. SKB says it installed injection-molding equipment at its main Orange plant in 2004 and added larger presses in 2014 and 2022, the last described as the largest on the West Coast, and that it now offers more than 65 iSeries sizes. In 2017 it began working with Think Tank Photo on padded dividers for the cases, and in 2025 it gained AS9100D certification, the aerospace and defence quality standard. Alongside them sit rotomolded rSeries cases, vacuum-formed vSeries cases, rack cases for 19-inch audio gear, and cases for guitars, keyboards, band instruments, golf clubs and bows.

For musicians, SKB is best known for molded guitar and bass cases, rack cases and pedalboards. The trade magazine Music Inc reported in January 2022, when SKB relaunched its website, that the company offered more than 900 products for music, pro audio, photo and video and other markets, quoting its chief operating officer, Robert Wilkes.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands here all protect instruments on the road. Two are best known for moulded plastic. SKB says it was founded in 1977 by Dave Sanderson and Steve Kottman in an Anaheim garage, and that its iSeries cases are made at its factory in Orange, California. Since January 2025 the private-equity firm MPE Partners has held a stake alongside Dave Sanderson and the management team, MPE announced. Gator Cases says it was founded in Tampa, Florida, in 2000 by Jerry Freed and his daughter Crystal Morris, and in 2008 bought the Protechtor Cases factory in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Two make rigid cases in Britain, by their own account. Hiscox says it has made lightweight hard cases since 1985 and lists “hand-made in the UK” among its selling points; its online shop now gives a contact address in Poland. Hardcase, of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, says it was established in 1992 as a family-run maker of rigid plastic drum and percussion cases and is “proud to remain a British manufacturer.”

Three are known mainly for soft cases and gig bags. Reunion Blues says it began making gig bags in 1976; Ace Products Group of Petaluma, California, lists it among its brands. Gruv Gear says it began in 2007 as a side project of the Los Angeles bassist Jay Baldemor and is now based in Murrieta, California. Protection Racket, in Cornwall, dates itself to 1994, says it began with surfboard bags, and is privately owned through a holding company of its two directors, Companies House records show.

Few of these companies say plainly where every product is made, and where they do, the claim is usually their own.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A founders’ company, recapitalised.

For almost half a century SKB was run by its founders. That changed in January 2025, when MPE Partners, the Cleveland- and Boston-based private-equity firm also known as Morgenthaler Private Equity, announced an investment in the company; MPE lists the deal as a leveraged recapitalisation from its fourth fund. MPE said it invested “alongside Dave Sanderson and the senior management team,” led by executive chairman and chief executive John Saxon and president Daniel Jewell. In the announcement Kottman and Sanderson said that when they founded SKB they “set out to create the best protective cases for musicians and entertainers.” In April 2026 MPE and SKB bought NANUK, the protective-case maker of Terrebonne, Québec, and MPE now lists the business as SKB Cases & NANUK.

On manufacturing, SKB is specific about one line. “Every iSeries case is designed, manufactured, assembled, and finished at our factory in Orange, California,” it says, “and has been since the beginning.” Both the 2025 and 2026 announcements also describe an additional facility in Mexicali, Mexico, and the company lists SKB Europe, in the Netherlands, and SKB Middle East-Africa, in Dubai, among its locations. We give these as its statements; we could not confirm which of its other products are made in which plant. In 2026, its timeline says, SKB introduced a refreshed logo that “draws on the company’s legacy.”

For a design guide, SKB shows how a utilitarian object — a black molded box — can carry a brand through consistency of form and finish. Compare Gator Cases, the younger Florida case maker, and Fender, whose 1979 order, by SKB’s account, set the company on its way. For this guide we use a resin black, a signal red and a field olive with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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