Paper, then cloth-paper, then doors.

Clopay is the name on garage doors sold across North America, but the company behind it did not start with doors. A history published in the Winter 2004–2005 issue of Door & Access Systems, the magazine of the door-industry trade association DASMA, compiled with Clopay’s marketing and technical staff, begins in 1859, when Benard Seinsheimer Corp. started business as a wholesaler of paper and allied products in the Cincinnati area. The same timeline says the business was incorporated in Ohio in 1888 as The Seinsheimer Paper Company; the International Directory of Company Histories gives the year of incorporation as 1889.

The name came next. According to the DASMA timeline, the company changed its name in 1930 to Clopay, a contraction of “cloth-paper.” English Wikipedia, in its article on Clopay’s present parent, tells the story slightly differently, saying the company began making window coverings during the Second World War and afterwards took the Clopay name. Both accounts agree on what the word means. The International Directory of Company Histories adds that the company moved into plastic films in 1952, a business it kept for decades.

Garage doors arrived in the 1960s. The DASMA timeline says Clopay entered the garage-door business in 1964 by buying Baker-Aldor-Jones of Hialeah, Florida, a maker of steel, fibreglass and aluminium garage doors; the International Directory of Company Histories dates the move to 1966. A separate DASMA history, of a small Ohio door firm, records the same 1964 purchase.

That second history explains where the Clopay door really took shape. Published in the Winter 2001–2002 issue of Door & Access Systems and based on interviews with former employees and the founder’s widow, it describes Francis Products of Russia, Ohio — a village whose name, the magazine notes, is pronounced “ROO-shee.” Leo Francis started the business in 1953 in the basement and garage of his home. It began as a wholesale distributor of residential garage-door operators made by Verdier Brothers of nearby Sidney, Ohio, then sold wooden, steel and fibreglass doors bought from other makers. In 1964 Francis Products began making its own wooden garage door, the Francis Door.

Clopay bought Francis Products in 1969. According to the Clopay timeline, the Russia factory then became Clopay’s main manufacturing site, and in 1972 both the Baker-Aldor-Jones and Francis doors changed to the Clopay brand name. The Francis history adds that Leo Francis stayed on for a time as Clopay’s plant manager at Russia.

One brand name, a dealer network, and a factory in western Ohio.

The 1972 decision to put every door under the Clopay name is the starting point of the brand as it is known today. The DASMA timeline then follows the factories. Plants began making doors in Ludlow, Vermont, and Ada, Oklahoma, in 1977, but in the early 1980s Clopay consolidated all of its manufacturing at Russia, Ohio. In 1983 it introduced Tog-L-Loc, a technology for making steel pan doors, and in 1989 a line of sandwich-construction steel doors for homes and commercial buildings.

Much of the identity was built through installers rather than consumers. The timeline says Clopay’s Dealer Advisory Board began meeting in 1986, and that in 1988 and 1989 the firm created the Clopay Authorized Dealer network and held its annual authorized-dealer conference. In 1992 the business changed its name to Clopay Building Products and bought two Wisconsin door makers, Ideal Door and Phenix Door. In the mid-1990s, the timeline says, Clopay invested in national brand awareness, advertising in print and on television.

More names joined in the years that followed. Clopay acquired Atlas Roll-Lite Door of Orlando, Florida, in 1995, and in 1997 bought Holmes-Hally Industries, which included Anozira Door Systems of Tempe, Arizona, and Holmes Door of Auburn, Washington. Asked by DASMA to explain its growth, Clopay pointed to “people committed to customers and the industry,” market-driven products “such as steel sandwich doors and attractive window designs,” its dealer programme, its distribution centres and “increased awareness of the Clopay brand.”

Several of those acquired names survive as brands. Griffon Corporation’s annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 30 September 2025 says its residential and commercial sectional doors are sold under brands including Clopay, America’s Favorite Garage Doors, Holmes Garage Door Company and IDEAL Door, and that its commercial rolling steel doors carry the Cornell, Cookson and Clopay names.

Where the doors are made is set out in the same filing. Griffon says Clopay’s principal manufacturing facilities are in Troy and Russia, Ohio, with further plants in Mountain Top, Pennsylvania, and Goodyear, Arizona. English Wikipedia likewise says Clopay manufactures in the United States, with its headquarters and principal manufacturing sites in Ohio. Russia, Ohio, where Leo Francis began making the Francis Door in 1964, is still named among those principal sites.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group all make garage doors or the openers that lift them. Garage-door and opener makers in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to brands that now belong to much larger building-products groups, and a single name can be sold through a professional installer, a home-improvement store or both.

A garage-door brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a name on a dealer’s van, a model range and a home town, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factories or joined a group that owns several rival names at once. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its doors and openers 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 range has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Instrument Systems, then Griffon.

Clopay has been owned by the same corporate parent since 1986, though that parent has changed its name. The DASMA timeline says that in 1986 Instrument Systems Corporation of New York acquired Clopay and named Bill Sachs president of the garage-door business; English Wikipedia, citing Newsday of June 1986, and the International Directory of Company Histories record the same purchase. In 1995, according to the timeline, Clopay’s parent became the Griffon Corporation. Griffon has owned Clopay since 1986, counting its years as Instrument Systems.

The leadership changed in the years after. Sachs, who the timeline says served Clopay for 29 years, retired in 1996 and was succeeded by Bob Caulk, previously of Johnson Worldwide Associates; Gene Colleran, from Newell Rubbermaid’s BernzOmatic division, became president in 2000. In 2002 the company moved its headquarters from downtown Cincinnati to a new campus in Mason, Ohio, about 15 miles north, combining the corporate offices with a technical development centre. That year, the timeline says, Clopay sold the assets of its Atlas commercial door operators to The Chamberlain Group and the assets of the Atlas door to Cornell Iron Works.

Griffon later reshaped the business around doors. English Wikipedia, citing Griffon’s own announcement, says Griffon agreed in November 2017 to sell Clopay Plastics to Berry Global, a deal that closed in February 2018 and ended the plastic-films business that had come with Clopay in 1986. In 2018, citing Long Island Business News, it adds, Griffon bought CornellCookson, a maker of rolling steel service doors, fire doors and grilles, and placed it with Clopay Building Products — bringing the Cornell name, once the buyer of Clopay’s Atlas door assets, into the same group.

For a design guide, Clopay shows how a brand name invented for paper products can be carried onto a very different object, and how a single factory town can anchor a national identity built through dealers. Compare it with Wayne Dalton, another Ohio garage-door name, and Overhead Door. For this guide we use brick red, Ohio slate and carriage-house brown with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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