Wire shelving for a humid climate.

ClosetMaid began in Delray Beach, on Florida’s Atlantic coast, in 1965. The company’s own timeline, published in a 60th-anniversary release on PR Newswire in February 2025, says its ventilated wire shelving “was developed to provide airflow in response to the South’s humid conditions.” That is the brand’s founding idea as it tells it: a shelf made of coated wire rather than solid boards, so that air can move around clothes and linens in a closet.

The company did not stay in Delray Beach for long. In 1970, the same timeline says, ClosetMaid moved its headquarters to Ocala, in central Florida, and opened a new plant there. Ocala remained part of the brand’s story for decades afterwards: Griffon’s annual report for 2023 lists an Ocala, Florida, facility among the principal North American sites of the division that ClosetMaid joined.

The move from builder’s product to shop shelf came next. ClosetMaid says its first consumer products were sold in Ace Hardware stores in 1975. From then on the brand had two audiences — the professionals who fit out new homes and the homeowners who buy a kit and a drill — and its later history keeps returning to that split.

The company’s published timeline tells the story through dates, products and places rather than people: Delray Beach, Ocala, Ace Hardware, and a run of named shelving systems that followed.

From ShelfTrack to SpaceCreations.

ClosetMaid’s product history, as it tells it, is a sequence of systems rather than single shelves. In 1994 it introduced ShelfTrack, an adjustable standard-and-bracket system designed to work with wire shelving, so that shelves could be moved up and down a wall rather than fixed in place. In 1996 it launched MasterSuite, a custom line installed by professionals through what the company calls an Authorized Dealer network. In 2019 it launched ShelfTrack EVO, a newer version of the 1994 system.

Wood joined wire. Griffon’s annual report for 2023 divides the brand’s range in two: wire products, sold under names including Maximum Load, SuperSlide and ShelfTrack, and wood products, under names including MasterSuite, Suite Symphony, ExpressShelf, Style+ and SpaceCreations. The same report describes ClosetMaid as a maker and marketer of wood and wire closet organisation, general living storage and wire garage storage, sold through retail, direct to consumers online, and direct to professional installers working for home builders.

That last channel has its own identity inside the brand. In 2016, the company says, it launched two websites, ClosetMaidPro and CustomClosetMaid, alongside SpaceCreations; in the 2025 release, Brian Dougherty, vice-president of sales for the ClosetMaid PRO building division, spoke of relationships “with homebuilding professionals across the country,” from single-family homes to multi-family developments.

The range now runs from closets into the kitchen, the pantry, the garage and the living room: the brand’s website groups its products into closets and accessories, garage storage, cubes and bins, kitchen and pantry storage, and furniture, including bookshelves and children’s storage.

Design and documentation.

Storage and organisation brands in general sit at many different points in the home and office trade, from closet-system makers that design and install whole rooms to companies that sell plastic boxes, shelving and desk accessories through retailers and their own websites. A single name can cover anything from a stackable bin to a built-in wardrobe or a range of office furniture.

A storage brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a system: a colour range, a modular set of parts that fit together, a catalogue or a showroom that shows how the pieces add up to a room. Because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or broadened its range, the plain questions behind each name are worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its look has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Emerson, Griffon, AMES — and Veritage.

For many years ClosetMaid belonged to Emerson Electric. When Emerson agreed to sell it in 2017, the buyer was Griffon Corporation, the New York holding company: Griffon announced a definitive agreement on 5 September 2017, and its annual report states that it acquired ClosetMaid from Emerson Electric Co. in October 2017. In March 2018 Griffon announced that ClosetMaid’s operations would be combined with those of The AMES Companies, its lawn-and-garden tools business, and ClosetMaid has since presented itself as one of the AMES family of brands. In 2022, the company says, it became part of Home by AMES, a new e-commerce site; today the closetmaid.com address redirects to that site.

Where the products are made has shifted with that ownership. On 3 May 2023, Griffon’s annual report says, it announced it would expand its global sourcing strategy to include, among other lines, wood storage and organisation products, moving them to what it called an “asset-light” structure and reducing its facility footprint; the affected US locations it named included Grantsville, Maryland, and Fairfield, Iowa, and four wood mills. Griffon does not tie each of those sites to ClosetMaid, and the guide makes no further claim about where individual products are made.

Ownership moved again in 2026. On 5 February 2026 Griffon announced an agreement with ONCAP, the private-equity platform of Onex, to form a joint venture combining the United States and Canada businesses of The AMES Companies with Venanpri’s Bellota, Corona and Burgon & Ball tool businesses. Griffon’s filings say the venture, named Veritage Brands, was completed on 9 June 2026, with Griffon holding a minority interest; Veritage Brands gives its headquarters as Orlando, Florida. The filings name AMES rather than ClosetMaid, which reaches the venture as part of AMES North America.

Visually, the brand has lived on retail packaging, in hardware aisles and on builders’ websites rather than in museums. The palette here is our own interpretation of a utilitarian shelving brand: a navy, a white like coated wire, and a steel grey.

For a design guide, ClosetMaid shows how a single practical idea — a ventilated shelf — can grow into a family of systems, each with its own name, sold to builders and homeowners alike. Compare Elfa, the Swedish shelving system, and The Container Store, the American retailer that owns it. For this guide we use navy, white and steel grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep ClosetMaid’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.