Harmar Brand Guidelines: The Sarasota Stairlift and Vehicle-Lift Maker Since 1998

A Florida maker of lifts for homes and vehicles.

Harmar Mobility makes stairlifts, vertical platform lifts, home elevators, ramps and vehicle lifts, and is based in Sarasota, Florida. The company says it was founded in 1998: its website shows “Since 1998,” and the standard company paragraph at the foot of its press releases repeats the year. It trades as Harmar, under the line “We Lift Lives,” which it presents as its mission.

Harmar describes itself as a U.S.-based manufacturer and says its products are “designed and assembled here in the U.S.” It says it has sold more than 500,000 lifts and works through “thousands of dealer locations across North America,” whose staff offer assessments, installation and maintenance. Those figures are the company’s own, and the dealer model means that most buyers meet Harmar through a local business rather than through the maker itself.

The company has expanded its plants in two states. In September 2021 it announced a move to a new Sarasota building one mile from its former Florida factory, with about 60% more space, after its staff grew from 195 to 220 over the previous year, it said; the new site included a training room for dealers and a photography and video studio. In February 2024 it said it had merged two Missouri plants, at Lake Winnebago and Grandview, into a single site at Raymore, Missouri, with three times the floor area and room for an engineering lab and a training area. In June 2026 it said it had been certified as a Great Place to Work for the sixth year running, and its website names the non-profit Wheelchairs 4 Kids as its community partner. Steve Dawson has led the company as chief executive through those moves; the Irish News quoted him in that role in October 2024.

Pinnacle, Helix and Highlander.

Harmar organises its products into home access and vehicle lifts. For the home it sells straight stairlifts, among them the SL300 Pinnacle, the heavier-duty SL600HD, the SL350AC and the outdoor SL350OD Summit, as well as curved stairlifts, vertical platform lifts, ramps and a residential elevator. Its straight-stairlift page describes a helical worm gear that needs no grease and a folded width of 10.5 inches, as the company gives it.

Its curved range mixes its own and partner products. The Helix is Harmar’s own curved stairlift, with a rail the company says is handcrafted in Florida to fit each staircase. In June 2023 Harmar announced the US launch of the UP Stairlift, a modular curved stairlift made by the Netherlands-based DeVi Stairlift, for which Harmar is the exclusive US distributor; the company said it could be stocked for quick installation. Its curved-stairlift page now also lists the Modul-Air Smart from the Dutch maker Otolift, which it says can typically be installed within two weeks.

Its vertical platform lifts, the Highlander II, the Highlander and the VPL400-X, carry loads of up to 750 pounds, the company says, for porches, decks and garage steps. Harmar says the Highlander II won the Access Home category of HME Business’s 2021 New Product Award, after earlier wins in 2018 for the Pinnacle stairlift and the AL580-HDX outside vehicle lift. In June 2022 it said it had been named a Silver winner of Florida’s Sterling Manufacturing Business Excellence award, run by the Sterling Council and FloridaMakes.

On the road, Harmar sells hitch-mounted, hybrid and hoist lifts that carry wheelchairs, powerchairs and scooters in cars, SUVs, vans, minivans and trucks. In August 2026 it announced a partnership with Toyota, introduced at the National Mobility Equipment Dealers Association conference that year, to offer its lifts for a range of Toyota vehicles.

Design and documentation.

Home-lift and stairlift makers sell machines that end up in private hallways and living rooms, and two Swedish makers, Aritco and Cibes, present them that way. Aritco names its range around the home, with the HomeLift, HomeLift Compact and HomeLift Access, and credits the Swedish designer Alexander Lervik for several models; Cibes Lift Group says its customers choose from colour, material and function options picked by local design teams.

Naming often begins as engineering shorthand. Cibes still uses letter-and-number models such as the A5000, launched in 1992, and groups its lifts as A-lifts, with their own shaft walls, and B-lifts, which the company traces to a screw-and-nut design of the early 1970s. Aritco moved from numbered models, from the Aritco 7000 of 1995 to the Aritco 9000 cabin lift of 2013, to the named HomeLift and PublicLift lines from 2016 onwards.

Both companies describe selling largely through partners. Cibes Lift Group says it works through more than 270 certified distributors as well as its own offices in 20 countries; Aritco says it sells in 60 countries through more than 170 distributors, and that it set up a global network of installation and service partners in 2014. Cibes has also bought local lift companies and kept several of their names, such as Kalea, Aesy Liften and Apex Lifts.

Corporate pages fill in the rest: who owns the company and where the lifts are made. Cibes names its factories in Gävle, Jiaxing and the United States and a components unit in Gdańsk, and its owner, the investment company Nalka, lists it as a holding. Aritco describes its factory in Veddesta, outside Stockholm, and its place in Innovalift, a business area of Investment AB Latour. This guide sets out what can be checked for each brand, and marks what rests on the company’s own word.

From Sarasota to Carrickfergus.

In 2024 Harmar added home lifts made outside the United States. On 18 October 2024 BBC News reported that Florida-based Harmar Mobility had bought Pollock Lifts of Carrickfergus, County Antrim, which employs about 175 people, and that the existing management team would stay and manufacturing would continue in Carrickfergus. The Irish News reported the same day that Harmar had acquired all the equity in Pollock’s parent company on 16 September 2024, that Pollock was set up in 1983, and that it makes home lifts, commercial elevators and stairlifts from a 95,000-square-foot site. Harmar’s own announcement said the deal opened “a new and exciting product category” for the company. Pollock’s managing director called the sale “a great outcome for our customers and team members,” as BBC News and the Irish News both reported.

The result appears in Harmar’s American range as the Pollock Residential Elevator, a shaftless home lift that runs on two rails fixed near a wall, labelled on its product page as manufactured in Ireland and sold through Harmar dealers.

Harmar’s identity is built on plain product language. Model codes such as SL300 and VPL400-X sit alongside names such as Pinnacle, Summit, Helix and Highlander, and the company’s line, “We Lift Lives,” turns its main product verb into a slogan that appears across its website and press releases.

For a design guide, Harmar shows how a maker can build a brand around a single verb across home and vehicle products. Compare Bruno, another American maker of stairlifts and scooter lifts, and Otolift, whose Modul-Air Smart Harmar sells. For this guide we use a gulf teal and a sunrise orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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