Stanley Black & Decker set to sell historic ‘Magic Door’ unit

For $900 million, Stanley Black & Decker is selling its automatic door division — born in the Great Depression as the “Stanley Magic Door” — with plans to stay focused on its tool lines that have seen sales surge since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Access Technologies, as the division has been known for decades, will move to Irelandbased Allegion. It generated $340 million in sales last year.

In a written statement, Stanley Black & Decker CEO Jim Loree said the company will use the proceeds to pay off debt and repurchase shares of its stock from investors.

The Farmington-based Access Technologies business was the original platform for Stanley, which is based in New Britain, to enter the commercial security industry in the late 1990s. Sales and profits from that move were so strong after 9/11 that Stanley was able to buy its longtime rival, Black & Decker, which had tried to take over Stanley several times.

The sale means Stanley will now exit security. The company recently sold its Stanley Security segment to Securitas for $3.2 billion, but held on to the historic business. Security products included advanced locks, video surveillance systems and entry systems to screen people for weapons. Stanley Security sales topped $1.6 billion last year.

Stanley Access Technologies claims credit to the first patent for a “hands-free” door, in 1931. Grocery stores were the earliest adopters of the “Stanley Magic Door” with commercial builders and high-rise apartments quick to follow as the company added automated revolving doors and other products.

Today, Stanley Access Technologies remains one of the biggest vendors for automated doors, along with Assa Abloy which has a door security division in New Haven. The unit has 1,300 employees including 144 in Connecticut, Stanley Black & Decker said.

Boosted in part by sales of tools to homeowners adopting the “do it yourself ” mentality during the COVID-19 pandemic that led into a booming home-sale market, Stanley’s revenue rose 20 percent last year to $15.6 billion.

“There’s a whole generation of people now that have become familiar with DIY,” Loree told investment analysts last year. “This whole notion of a gradual exodus from urban centers into suburban and rural areas — there is a tremendous amount of home improvement and home sales that go on as a result of that.”