After two bankruptcies, a Utah entrepreneur found success selling secret doors

Ogden • When Jeremy Barker started Murphy Door Inc. in 2012, he was told there wasn’t a market for a product so niche, so whimsical.

“No one wants a hidden door,” Barker recalled skeptics saying. But, he thought, deep down, doesn’t everybody? To be like Tony Stark with his secret Iron Man lab, or Bruce Wayne with his Batman hideout. Or to walk through the brick wall into Platform 9¾, like in the Harry Potter series.

“Those different concepts have been around since the Egyptians,” Barker said. While people have built similar hidden doors, he said, “no one really ever marketed it and capitalized on that” like he has.

Today, he says his company generates about $60 million in revenue. That is some vindication for the Utah native, who has cycled through two bankruptcies and a series of blue-collar jobs – from construction, to firefighting, to long-haul trucking – before starting Murphy Door.

It turns out that all sorts of people — from tiny-home dwellers, to doomsday preppers, to celebrities and set-builders — want hidden doors. Versions of these doors have been used in Hollywood sets and productions, a spokesperson said, like the John Wick Experience attraction in Las Vegas.

The company is producing about one door every six minutes from its factory in Ogden, and another in Lexington, Kentucky, Barker said. He is looking for manufacturing space in four other states, with the goal to get doors to people anywhere in the continental U.S. in three days, versus the current few weeks.

But for now, as the company tries to scale up to meet demand, its approximately 125 workers are also dealing with the repercussions of growing so fast – particularly in dealing with a drop in customer service last year as sales grew, Barker said.

Behind the Murphy Door

The company moved into its Ogden headquarters, jammed between the Ogden-Hinkley Airport and I-15, in 2021.

Today, the former call center is a laid-back workspace, with dry-erase board walls and long, conference-room tables. But it’s part firehouse too, with a full-size kitchen ready for employees to make their weekly group meals.

There are also, of course, a plethora of hidden doors. The disguised bookcases lead into offices, or a swanky cigar lounge decked out in leather and wood grain, or sound-proofed podcasting rooms. Walls morph into sales room entrances and conference room exits. Employees with offices get to customize their own secret doors when they move in.

It hasn’t been easy. About a year ago, the company had “a horrific run of customer service,” Barker said. People who paid thousands of dollars per door posted reviews on the Better Business Bureau’s website, citing delays or broken parts.The team wasn’t equipped to handle that volume of complaints, Barker said, but he also worried about the cost of adding more staff to deal with the problems.

After enough negative reviews, Barker made an unusual move: Now, within 24 hours of purchasing a door, “you’re starting to get calls from us.”

These “proactive concierges” walk customers through their purchases, making sure that what they intend to buy aligns with their needs. That support continues after the door arrives. The concierges will follow up, asking, “Did you get your door installed? Was there anything wrong?”

As for that Better Business Bureau page, it currently shows Murphy Door with an A+ rating.

From sheds to secret rooms

When Barker started Murphy Door, he wasn’t sure it would succeed. He had started successful companies before — and also filed twice for bankruptcy.

At the age of 18, he founded Frontier Shed Company, a manufacturing business that landed him a lucrative partnership with Home Depot.

But it was too much, too fast. “I wasn’t educated enough or disciplined enough to see this much money piling in,” he said. He started taking friends on trips to the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or beach fun in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. He quips: “I was robbing Peter to pay party.”

As funds ran low in 1999, Barker filed for bankruptcy. His next job was as a solo mover, hauling items in a truck that also served as his sleeping quarters. All those miles on the road by himself provided a “reset,” he said.

He then worked in construction, becoming CEO of his own Utah firm. But the 2008 financial crisis hit, and he filed for bankruptcy a second time.

He pivoted to firefighting, something he had tried after high school. For the next seven years, he was a firefighter and a paramedic, working at Roy City Fire Rescue and then the Weber Fire District. But those jobs just didn’t pay enough.

Meanwhile, the “serial entrepreneur” inside him beckoned, and Barker was on the lookout for his next startup.

“Everything I would do,” he recalled, “I would think, ‘Is there a place in the market?’”

At the time, Barker was married with kids and living in Morgan, where he decided to build a family theater room. Nothing fancy, just a few chairs and a screen.

But he wanted to give it something special. “If I could make the door going into the theater room,” he said, “then the experience would be in the doorway, not in the theater.”

He built a ticket booth-esque entryway, reminiscent of an old coin-operated fortune teller machine, with special hinges to mount the door. His kids loved it, he said, and the idea for the company was born.

He patented the hinges in 2018. At first, Barker’s company sold only those hinges, but people wanted the doors, too. More patents followed.

Now, those customers include everyone from “tiny home prepper to multi-billionnaire status,” Barker said.

His company has made a “secret batcave” for the Utah social media influencers Ninja Kidz, who make family-friendly, martial arts-themed entertainment.

Recently, Shark Tank entrepreneur and investor Daymond John enlisted the company to adorn his art gallery. “I wanted a space where people would actually remember when they leave,” John said in a video posted by Murphy Door.

“They’re going to remember the experience that when they were here, there were doors that were moving around, cabinets that were flipping around, bars where I just hit a button and the finest cognac was there to celebrate.”

Even the gallery’s bathroom is concealed behind a bookcase door.

Barker says his company tries to pair practicality with “beauty and experience.” A bookshelf is not just an aesthetic storage item. With a push of a button, “it’ll move out of the way.”

“Now you have a functional bookcase that gives you doorway, passage and storage.”

People with smaller budgets also want them. Barker has seen the doors used to create more space in small homes, or to conceal a hidden bunker or gun cache.

In his own office, Barker has hidden shelves.

The one nearest his desk holds a Book of Mormon, a plant, and some art on the outside. He presses a button and it swings open to reveal shelves of clear bottles of amber liquor.

The factory keeps pumping out doors, he said, each made-to-order. The cheapest model runs just shy of $1,000, but they can cost nearly $20,000 if one adds extras like armor.

He said that a set-up like Daymond John’s gallery — with the different units, lighting and automation — could cost more than $300,000

Firefighting lessons

Barker says his firefighting past has helped him manage his Murphy Door staff. For example, he now asks his employees to get together every Friday to cook a meal and eat together, so they’ll bond like firefighters do.

That career has also helped him manage stress. If a door breaks in transit, that’s not as bad as someone dying inside a burning building. “This is not the end of the world for anyone,” he said. “It’s just the end of a door.”

People often ask if the doors are safe in cases of emergency.

They worry that a firefighter clearing a flaming house could miss someone if they’re in a room behind one of Barker’s hidden doors.

“I’m like, ‘Well, I’m a firefighter, and I know the tools that we have.’”

He said that firefighters often use thermal imaging cameras to navigate in those situations — “because you can’t see in the house anyway.” Also, if the power goes out, he said the electronically powered doors will disengage and swing free so people can get in or out.

Beyond secret doors

Barker also has started a company called PureBrand, which allows customers to talk to each other about their experience with a company.

He hopes to build on that, using artificial intelligence to create a platform that automatizes customer service by anticipating needs — like preemptively sending a replacement part — and flagging the company if the same issues appear often.

Eventually, he’d like to expand to create customer profiles, including what people’s homes look like, so AI can learn what a person likes and “be able to generate a product in real time that doesn’t even exist.”

The revenue from Murphy Door mostly goes back into the company, Barker said. He makes his money in his real estate business, he said.

“Man, this is just kind of like my laboratory,” he said. “It gives me inputs for really creative thinking.”

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