Although Peachtree Corners incorporated as a city just 14 years ago, the municipality already is a thriving family-friendly community with a booming business scene. According to the latest economic data, Peachtree Corners has a highly educated workforce — more than 52 percent of people age 25 and over have a college degree — major employers in the fields of technology, logistics, and manufacturing, as well as business friendly leadership and incentives. City officials say that as a regional employment center with as many jobs as residents, Peachtree Corners has positioned itself to lead Gwinnett County’s economic resurgence.

Among the companies driving this growth in Gwinnett’s largest city is Guardian Sports, makers of protective equipment for athletes such as its well-regarded Guardian Cap for football players.

Guardian’s owner and co-founder, Erin Hanson, said that with the city’s close proximity to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the University of Georgia, the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), and Georgia State University, her company has access to a deep engineering talent pool. Additionally, she said, the city is business friendly, easy to get around, and personal. “City leaders know us by name. Peachtree Corners has built an identity around innovation with Curiosity Lab and Technology Park, so a technology company here fits right in.”

Guardian Sports grew out of The Hanson Group, the material science company founded by Erin’s husband, Lee Hanson, 30 years ago to solve advanced materials problems for Fortune 500 companies. Lee is a chemical engineer and Georgia Tech graduate who enjoys creating solutions. Erin told KnowAtlanta that in 2010, Lee was contracted to work on a concept for a more flexible football helmet, and the data behind flexing the exterior of a hard shell was eye-opening. Hard shell helmets were doing what they were created to do: preventing skull fractures on the field. But in recent years, brain injury prevention has become a central focus in player safety, particularly the long-term repercussions of hits over the course of a player’s career.

“For me, it really started as a mom moment,” Erin said. “You spend your child’s whole life saying be careful, don’t hit your head, and then one day you hand him a helmet and tell him to go hit somebody.”

Guardian took their first flexible helmet prototype to a symposium and were told that it was too “soft” for football. But the Hansons’ own son had begun playing the sport, so the couple couldn’t disagree more, Erin said. “We decided then and there that it was time for a change. We decided that if a flexible helmet was too far ahead of its time, we could improve the millions of helmets already out there. In 2011, we founded Guardian Sports with one goal — protecting athletes through better engineered equipment.”

Thus, the aforementioned Guardian Cap launched in 2012. If you’re a football fan, you’ve likely seen them in use at all levels of the sport. It’s a soft shell padded cover that sits on the outside of the helmet and reduces the force of an impact before it reaches the hard shell. It “floats” on top of the helmet, which also redirects rotational forces. And for Georgia especially, it reduces the radiant heat that reaches the helmet by up to 20 degrees.

Erin says that today, more than 500,000 athletes wear Guardian Caps, from youth programs to top college programs to the NFL and the CFL. But early adoption wasn’t easy. The first big break came from the University of South Carolina in 2013, when team physician, Dr. Jeffrey Guy, pushed for the Guardian Caps to be used for contact practices. The university apparently started a trend. Other NCAA coaches and staff quickly saw the benefits. Then, high school coaches began adopting the Caps as a standard piece of practice equipment. By 2017, Guardian Sports had won the NFL’s HeadHealthTECH Challenge, which validated the science at the highest professional level. In 2022, the NFL mandated Guardian Caps for contact practices. Then, a league study published in 2025 associated the mandate with a roughly 50-percent decrease in concussions among mandated positions, and players are now permitted to wear the Caps in games as well.

“That success funded more innovation,” Erin said. “When our son played lacrosse goalie at Georgia Tech, we saw a problem with traditional rubber balls that harden over time, just like your car tires. That’s when we developed PEARL, the first greaseless, made-in-the-USA lacrosse ball that stays in spec and doesn’t turn into a greaser, which keeps it safer and more consistent for play.”

PEARL is now the official ball of the Premier Lacrosse League, the NCAA championships and the 2028 Olympics, and it’s made in Peachtree Corners.

Additional safety innovations pioneered by Guardian Sports include the FLEX chinstrap, engineered to absorb facemask impacts; the LOOP, a Virginia Tech 5-star rated flag football headband; and a safer bio-based artificial turf infill that reduces field temperatures by up to 30 degrees. “All of our solutions speak to our mission of better protecting athletes through innovation. We look at what’s been offered to players as the status quo and improve it to give players what we feel they deserve,” Erin said.

With six, current product lines, Guardian Sports is thriving and indeed has become a vital part of the growth of Peachtree Corners. “We’re growing at every level of play and putting that back into research and new products,” Erin said. “Looking ahead, we’re focused on reaching more youth and international football players, bringing products like FLEX and LOOP into new sports, and continuing our research and development here in Peachtree Corners.”