Martin Door

Martin Door Manufacturing, founded in 1936, is a garage door manufacturing company, based in Salt Lake City, with distribution to 87 countries.

The company is privately owned. David O. Martin is chairman of the company.

History

Martin Door Manufacturing is one of the oldest garage door manufacturers in the world. Leno Martin founded the company in 1936 in Santa Ana, Ca.

Leno created a one-piece overhead type door that soon began to replace the swinging doors of the west. Dave Martin helped his older brother, Leno, expand his market in California and learned the business from him.

The advent of World War II temporarily closed the company down. The Martin family moved to Utah and after a few years the company was formally reorganized in 1951, with Dave Martin buying the business from his ailing brother.

MDM evolved through the years and continued the pattern of innovation initiated by Leno. Dave Martin was a partner in developing the idea and design for raised panel steel doors and has a large number of patents for safety and design changes, which have followed through the years.

Seeing a growing trend of garage door related injuries in the 1990s, Martin vowed to go out of business, rather than to continue to produce a product, which caused so many injuries. In 1996 the company introduced FingerShield™, a safety, device designed to keep fingers out of the joint of a garage door. Since that time other safety innovations have included safety features on track, section, and spring assemblies.

Martin Doors are still manufactured in Utah but in 2002 the company expanded to open a factory direct outlet in Las Vegas.

Site

Martin Door Manufacturing has 210,000 square feet of manufacturing space in five adjacent buildings on a 14-acre site at its 2828 South 900 West location in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Vegas facility has 10,000 square feet of feet on a one-acre site.

Certifications

In 2001, MDM successfully became the first garage door manufacturer certified to the new ISO 9001 quality standard. With this certification, Martin became the first "UL Registered" garage door manufacturer worldwide.

The following year, 2002, Martin Door Manufacturing had six door systems earn UL approval, making it the first company within the garage door industry to have both a UL-listed product and be ISO 9001 certified.

In 2003, Martin Garage Doors passed hurricane test wind standards for Miami-Dade and Broward Counties in the state of Florida.

Two years later, in 2005, Martin Garage Doors passed European standards for safety and earned the right to use the CE label. Martin Door added the controlled descent device, an advanced falling door safety device, to its door systems, as part of the CE process.

In 2007, Martin Door introduced a new UL-listed garage door system without photo eyes, featuring soft touch reverse technology.