About
Several Holidays to Tasmania for an Adelaide Hills couple eventually led to a business manufacturing fly screens.
Carol & John Mc Grath (mug shot below) moved to Tasmania, Australia’s most southern state in August in 2000 and commenced development work on the flexiscreen® insect screen concept in October of that year.
We found that the windows in our 1860’s cottage in the beautiful Huon Valley could not be screened with the “standard aluminium” framed screens. Our windows were out of square, oddly shaped and just impossible to screen. We were desperate to have some sort of screening as we were surrounded by cow paddocks, you can imagine the fly problem. Because we experienced these problems we felt also that there must be other home owners experiencing the same dilemma.
We thought about how many houses, boats, caravans etc have window designs that cannot have “standard aluminium” screens fitted to them. There are many reasons for this, including aesthetics and window construction – casement, sash, hopper, awning etc. Aluminium screens are difficult to manufacture to the tolerances required to keep out crawling insects. They are generally unsatisfactory in the way that they attach to the window frames, usually by means of a small spring-loaded clip or swivel hooks, which often break off. flexiscreens® flyscreens overcome these problems and provide a complete seal along the whole screen.
After months spent working on a prototype, flexiscreens® was born in 2000.
With backgrounds in pathology and plumbing, then later moving into the marketing and food industries, we agreed that our biggest challenge was mastering the right manufacturing and distribution model. We had some teething problems but learned quickly. We realised that our primary market were glaziers and window furniture suppliers. Our other market was the home, boat, van owner who were confident using a tape measure and wanted to purchase without leaving their home.
Word of mouth, driven distributors and an easy-to-use website are important components for getting our flexiscreen® bug screens onto your windows.
We have have been really amazed at how much business we’ve had through customers passing on our details and our distributors spreading the word in their industry. We are now located in Hobart which is the hub of all the manufacturing and order fulfillment.
Each screen is custom – made to your measurement incorporating VELCRO brand fasteners, the loop part is sewn to the mesh and the self-adhesive hook attaches to the frame. The flexible construction of the flexiscreens® fly screen enables them to be folded and easily posted, whether it is direct from us to our customers or from us to our distributors. Australia Express Post is used to send the flexiscreens flyscreens within Australia and airmail for our over seas orders, all free of charge to you.
National and international retail / distributor sales are growing at a rapid rate but this does not detract from the fact, that every customer is number one, no matter how busy we are!
So don’t hesitate in ordering your flexiscreens® flyscreen, we know you will get hooked!! Check out our order page for a DIY purchase or contact one of our friendly distributors to do it all for you.
Buy the genuine Flexiscreen® brand to avoid disappointment! There are plenty of inferior look-a-likes – (they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!)
There will always be those that plagiarise the Flexiscreens® (copying our screen design and stealing our business model) but the Flexiscreen® is by far the superior insect screen!
At Flexiscreens® we use the genuine Velcro-brand fasteners to manufacture your custom-made fly screen, achieving a quality end product!
