Company History

Michael Burke founded Stira Folding Attic Stairs Ltd in 1982. The idea stemmed from a request to repair an imported attic stairs.

"I looked at it and immediately saw the problem and an opportunity. The problem was obvious, inferior material was used on the arms; the opportunity was that the product was a great idea it was just poorly made. As I had an engineering background it did not take long to build a prototype and test it out. I saw the problems with the design and began making improvements. It took six months to get the design sorted out but when I was finished with it I had a strong safe product to try out on the market." Michael Burke MD Stira.

When Michael had the design of the product ready he bought an old hay barn from his parents and began manufacturing the stairs on a small scale. The stairs was an immediate success in he’s local county Galway. Little was spent on advertising as the budget just wasn’t there so he relied on word of month to spread the word and the company still get’s allot of it’s sales this way.
Our customers where more than happy to recommend our stairs to their family and friends because of the service we offered. Not only would we get the job done in less than two hours we left no mess behind, as anyone who’s dealt with tradesmen knows this is very rare.

The company’s big break came in 1990 when we where invited on Irelands most popular current events programme “The Late Late Show” hosted by Gay Byrne. The show was dedicated to showcasing new, up and coming Irish businesses the response from that show was incredible and catapulted us onto the national stage very quickly.

With this huge influx of new customers we had to make sweeping changes to our factory and the way it operated to keep up with demand. This was the stage we started to look towards international standards in manufacturing and we invested a lot of money redesigning our factory and training employees in the new practices. This process took us the best part of 10 years and we are now members of the BSI and one of the only attic stairs/loft ladders in the world to be accepted.

Over that time modifications were made to the stairs; greater time and attention was spent on safety, strength and durability. Since the initial Stira was produced in 1982, the product design has changed dramatically. The main raw material piranha pine was substituted with southern yellow pine in 1989. The spring loading mechanism that keeps the unit closed has also undergone alteration.

All components, used on the Stira, are produced within the company. The company also employs a fitting service, which comprises of 14 highly trained fitters that cover the island of Ireland. This gives us unique insight into attics, as other companies do not fit their stairs, our team of fitters have been giving us feedback from the 80,000 installations they have done and highlighted problems to our engineers back in the factory. Thanks to this feedback our stairs can be fitted in 99% of situations.

Expansion of the company product over the past decade has come to include sales in England, Wales, Scotland and the U.S.A we hope to find local experienced tradesmen to distribute and fit our stairs in those countries.