Business beat: Chamberlain Group distribution center opens

Photo: Chamberlain Group CEO Jeff Meredith (wearing a Penny Hardaway jersey) cuts the ribbon to open the new distribution center in Olive Branch. (Bob Bakken/desotocountynews.com)

April 24, 2025 – Chicago-based smart access technology company Chamberlain Group (CGI) held a ribbon-cutting event with DeSoto County and Olive Branch officials today to mark the grand opening of its new state-of-the-art distribution center. The approximately 300,000-square-foot facility will employ 75 employees from the Mid-South region and is located at 7401 Woods Blvd. in Olive Branch. The center went on line for the first time in March.  

Officials say Chamberlain Group’s expansion to Olive Branch represents a significant investment in both the local Mississippi economy and the future of smart access technology. 

The Chamberlain Group (CGI) is a global leader in intelligent access solutions, with a history dating back to 1900. Initially focused on cream separators and later manufacturing for wartime efforts, the company transitioned to consumer products, notably garage door automation.   

The Chamberlain Group designs, engineers, and manufactures a wide range of access control products and systems for residential, commercial, and community applications.   

Their main product lines include: 

• Garage Door Openers: Under the Chamberlain and LiftMaster brands (LiftMaster is geared towards professional installers).   
• Commercial Door Operators   
• Gate Entry Systems   
• Security Cameras
• Smart Home Technology: Including their myQ ecosystem, which allows users to control and monitor access points via a smartphone app.   
• Accessories: Remotes, wall controllers, keypads, and replacement parts.   
• Loading Dock Equipment: Through their Systems LLC acquisition, they manufacture dock levelers.

Key Brands:

• Chamberlain: Focuses on DIY garage door opener kits and construction-grade openers
• LiftMaster: Their professional-grade line of garage door openers and accessories.   
• myQ: Their smart home ecosystem that connects various Chamberlain Group products.   
• Controlled Products Systems Group (CPSG): The largest wholesale distributor of perimeter access control equipment in the U.S.   
• Systems LLC: A manufacturer of loading dock levelers and equipment.   
• Clicker: A line of universal garage door remotes.   
• Craftsman: Re-branded Chamberlain models previously sold at Sears.   

Chamberlain Group Chief Executive Officer Jeff Meredith took a moment to speak with DeSoto County News about his company and the new Olive Branch distribution center.  

 What is Chamberlain Group all about? 

So Chamberlain group is a global leader in intelligent access solutions. So more specifically, what that would tell you is we make both residential and commercial access products. So the things that you might know us for garage door openers, if you have a Lift Master or Chamberlain garage door opener, which many people in the United States do, we manufacture those. Also gates, commercial openers, and even more recently, we’ve gotten aggressive into offering digital support for our products. So, the My Q app is owned and used by 13 million users. So we’re all about access.

What makes this a state of a state of the art type of distribution center?

First off, as you look at the selection for the distribution center, and we went through a pretty rigorous selection process for this facility, we looked at locations all throughout the Southeast. You want to make sure that you have a really good labor pool and a good local community to come into. So that’s been a key point of emphasis for us. Also, you want to make sure that you have the latest in terms of logistic technology, which is an interesting thing, because we’re working on developing that not just for our own use, but for broad scale use. So we’ll put our own technology, which will help us to manage the logistics of the in and out of the facility here, and as well as make sure that we are, you know, testing our own products, and we like to say, eating our own dog food sometimes, but we’ll do that on in this facility.

It is said that there will be 75 employees here. What will they be doing here? 

So we’ll start with around 20 today, and we’ll expand as time goes on. They’ll be helping us to not only handle distribution for the eastern half of the United States, but to make sure that we serve our customers with, you know, amazing service, on-time shipments, accuracy of shipments, and just leading in terms of providing the heightened level of overall customer service that we want to our 1000s of customers. 

Why locate in Olive Branch? 

You know, Olive Branch for us. and as I said before, we went through a really rigorous process. We felt like this community was one that was growing in terms of its employee base. It has proven itself to be an outstanding location for other distribution centers. We just found it very accommodating and the local officials just very receptive to the type of investment that we wanted to make, but also the growth.