About Us

George and Kathleen Nisbet started the business in 1993. George was from a farming family and then went on to serve his time as a car mechanic. Eventually this was to be useful in the fitting and repairing of garage doors. Kathleen was a primary school teacher and kept the accounts and the paperwork in check for George. His son, Michael, had come out of the army just as we were getting busier. Michael’s time as an Armourer also helped him apply himself in the Garage Door trade. From time to time we employed young apprentices from Henry Boot and were very successful in the recruitment of Gavin our longest serving employee. Gavin started with us at 16 and has gone on to be a really valued member of the team. In the past few years, Gav has been promoted to a more supervisory role within the business and is the first port of contact in training new members of the fitting team. We are very proud to have Gav as a devoted employee and family member for the past 14 years!

The time came in October 2009 when George and Kathleen were due to retire. Kathleen trained Michael’s wife Simone (that’s me by the way!) how to look after the accounts. My previous background was in marketing, advertising and customer services – so I feel I can achieve the same cheery service the family has provided our customers for so long.

So now as I’m writing this I realise what a duty we have to keep building on the wonderful business reputation that George and Kathleen spent years in the making. I also undertook a product knowledge course with one of our suppliers Hörmann and enjoyed my time learning about the products and how they are made. Whilst there I learned that Hörmann are also a family business and they are now in their 4^thgeneration. They have a fantastic motto which is “A good reputation must be earned” – we couldn’t agree more! They came over to the UK in 1979 and have just kept growing ever since. Check out their website for further information.

Since writing this it has been 11 years since George and Kathleen retired! Time has gone by so fast and they are very much enjoying their retirement. George spends time doing up their now home beside the Ochils and still doing a lot of work in the garden. Kathleen has been providing George with instructions for the decor 😘 and is still enjoying her reading and spending time with family. They also have an enviable social life! Lucky things!

Back to business now, since the retirement we have made lots of progress, namely we purchased a new Industrial Unit and have a customer showroom! We are very excited to welcome in our lovely customers to look at our products in a comfortable and warm environment. I enjoy speaking to the lovely customers that pop into the showroom so feel free to pop in and say hello. Our showroom is open 930-4pm Monday to Thursday and Fridays 930-330pm. Our dog Ben the border collie passed away at Easter time 2016. We were all very sad about the loss and we still have customers coming in to see him. It turned out we couldn’t live without a dog for long and got our new family member Rex in July 2016. He is a black lab and he is super friendly and mostly well behaved! He also works in the showroom most days meeting and greeting customers! If you are dog shy we can pop him through the back for your visit and he can lounge on the sofa. He’s trained to do this so he doesn’t mind at all. Plus, he is greedy and getting a treat after, is his bonus!

Wow! Again its been a long time since my last update in 2020, and can I say what a crazy 3 years its been! Covid, Brexit, Cost of Living Crisis, and the war In Ukraine! I don’t know about you but I do feel that’s enough now! 😏😏

This year we are organising an advert for TV!! EEK! So you finally get to see Michael and I and hear our squeaky voices, if your garage door sounds like us get it serviced! 🤣🤣 Watch this space for the advert and obviously watch STV to see us! I think we are going for the 1st of June 23 so quite excited and scared all at the same time!

For a laugh I thought I would show you Michael’s very first advert so you can see how much grey hair I’ve cause him over the years! 😍😂

Here is the new advert and our very first advert for TV!

Hope you like it! 😁 Michael was really nailing all the talking and you can see me being happy at the end that he properly nailed that bit! 🤣

At first cars were kept next to the horses in the same building i.e. the carriage house.

The first Garage Door was like a barn door, it was attached with hinges and opened out. These doors would be subject to a lot of wear and tear as they were opened almost daily. If there was snow on the ground (nearly always in Scotland) it was very hard to open these doors and it would be very time consuming to shovel it away beforehand. Soon, another type of garage door was created and this was on a sliding track, which allowed the doors to be moved sideways, but this meant the garage had to be double the width of the door. Further development was needed and this came in the form of a hinged sectional door (a similar principle we still use today). This allowed the door to fold round a corner, reducing the width of the garage. And finally, we had the fantastic invention of the overhead door(we now call this the up n over door). This could be lifted upwards and folding parallel to the ceiling. The up n over door was invented by C.G. Johnson in 1921 and he then went on to invent the electric operated door five years later. This helped with the lifting of heavy wooden doors.

In the fifties more and more people had cars and the need for garages. As most built up areas were short on space, houses were being built with the garages attached. Now people wanted their Garage Door to tie in with the exterior of their homes. So as house designs became more elaborate so did the styles and designs of the Garage Doors! All doors were made of wood but this was subject to rotting etc and therefore required regular maintenance and repainting. Galvanised steel doors were the next alternative coming into use in the seventies. Steel wasn’t as well insulated as wood, so they would put two pieces of steel together with polystyrene between them (we still supply a similar product today) this made the doors last longer.

These days, doors are made from materials such as fibreglass, resin filled wood, vinyl covered aluminium and glass reinforced polyester. Have a look at our products to see what types of doors we do now.