The Story of OK-WINDER Oy:

From a Personal Need to Installers Around the World

OK-WINDER® products are the result of more than 25 years of hands-on experience in door installation. The company’s founder, Olli Kääriäinen, began his career installing industrial sectional doors and later also worked in the sales, installation and maintenance of garage doors.

BORN FROM A PRACTICAL NEED

Tensioning the springs is one of the stages involved in door installation. Traditionally, it is done with metal winding bars, which require considerable physical strength from the installer. Over the years, the work became physically demanding for Kääriäinen and took a great deal of time, especially on large sites where several industrial doors had to be installed at once. This led him to ask: could the springs be tensioned more easily and safely?

This idea and the thought that followed marked the beginning of the development of a spring tensioning tool. It also began a journey that would later change the entire profile and direction of the company.

FROM PROTOTYPE TO COMMERCIAL PRODUCT

The development work resulted in the first prototype of the OK-WINDER® 500 spring tensioning device in 2006. Although the device looked fairly rudimentary compared with today’s OK-WINDER® 500, its operating principle has remained the same: a cordless drill-operated spring tensioning device that is safe to use, does not accidentally detach from the spring and does not require great physical strength from the installer. From the moment it was completed, the prototype was used daily by Kääriäinen.

The development of the OK-WINDER® 500 did not end with the first prototype. The device was continuously improved on the basis of practical experience. Ten years later, in 2016, this development work resulted in the first commercial version of the OK-WINDER® 500. The product was not originally intended for sale, but installer colleagues who tried it wanted a similar tool for their own use. Sales therefore began almost by themselves.

At first, the sale of installation tools was a secondary activity for the company, while its main business remained the installation of industrial sectional doors and the sales and installation of garage doors. As user experience accumulated, however, it became increasingly clear that the need behind the tool was not unique to one installer. Professional installers elsewhere also needed a safer and less physically demanding way to tension torsion springs.

BREAKTHROUGH IN GERMANY

The international expansion of OK-WINDER® products truly began in 2017, when Kääriäinen joined a group of Finnish garage door dealers visiting a German sectional door manufacturer. Kääriäinen happened to sit at the same dinner table as the manufacturer’s chief designer, told him about the OK-WINDER® 500 spring tensioning device and showed him a demonstration video of the OK-WINDER® 500.

Kääriäinen remembers how the chief designer’s initially friendly but sceptical expression changed as the video progressed. After the demonstration, the designer said that the device appeared to be the best solution then available for tensioning industrial door springs. The manufacturer later ordered a device for testing. After trying the OK-WINDER® 500, the designer who had been sitting at the dinner table said that they had previously tested many different devices and concluded that the OK-WINDER® 500 performed better than any of them.

In spring 2018, the manufacturer brought together door industry companies from different parts of Germany, which placed a joint order for the OK-WINDER® 500. For the first time, several dozen devices were sold in a single order. The manufacturer also referred customers interested in OK-WINDER® devices directly to Kääriäinen’s company.

SAFETY FIRST

The international breakthrough set off a chain of recommendations, and orders for the OK-WINDER® 500 spring tensioning device began to increase. Professional industrial door installers had found the right tool to make spring tensioning safer and less physically demanding than before.

The importance of occupational safety became particularly clear at one customer company, where a professional installer suffered a serious accident involving the use of winding bars. Following the accident, the company decided to make a substantial investment in safer tools for its installers and purchased several dozen OK-WINDER® 500 devices at once. For comparison, the purchase price of one OK-WINDER® 500 is equivalent to the estimated cost of approximately three days of sickness absence, based on an average employer cost of 370 euros per day of absence.

The OK-WINDER® product family also expanded gradually. In 2019, the OK-WINDER® 200 spring tensioning device for garage doors was launched alongside the OK-WINDER® 500, and in 2025 the OK-LIFTER® sectional door panel lifter for garage doors completed the range. Like the OK-WINDER® 500, these devices were developed from first-hand need and a desire to improve installation safety and reduce physical strain. Improved versions of the products were also developed on the basis of installer feedback and first-hand experience.

FROM AUTOTALLIOLLI TO OK-WINDER OY

By the beginning of the 2020s, OK-WINDER® products accounted for an increasingly large share of the company’s turnover each year. At the same time, Kääriäinen began withdrawing from the sales and installation of sectional doors, naturally creating room to focus the company’s future increasingly around OK-WINDER® products.

Between 2023 and 2025, the company underwent a major transformation. Olli Kääriäinen’s son, Paavo Kääriäinen, joined the company full-time in 2024. At the end of 2025, the decision was made to change the name Autotalliolli Oy, which the company had used since 2018. The name change was a natural step after the sales of garage sectional doors ended and the company decided to focus exclusively on OK-WINDER® products. Since the beginning of 2026, the company has been known simply and concisely as OK-WINDER Oy.

USED IN NEARLY 30 COUNTRIES

Year after year, professional installers in an increasing number of countries have discovered OK-WINDER® products: first in Europe, then in North America and Asia, and in 2026 also in South America. Today, OK-WINDER® products are used in nearly 30 countries. Whether our customers are in Finland or farther afield, our goals have remained the same: to improve occupational safety and reduce the physical strain on professional sectional door installers in their work.

Although OK-WINDER® products are now used around the world, they are still manufactured in Eastern Finland. Working closely with nearby manufacturing partners enables us to develop the products in close cooperation, directly influence quality and support regional businesses and the local economy.

DEVELOPMENT CONTINUES

OK-WINDER Oy and OK-WINDER® products have developed considerably since the first prototype 20 years ago, and the development work continues. The guiding principles and core questions of our company have remained the same over the years: how can the work of sectional door installers be made safer, less physically demanding, more controlled and more cost-effective? Inspired by these questions, we will continue to develop products that help professional installers in their daily work.