May 2015
| Business World
175
DRYWALL INNOVATORS
The old adage goes that necessity is the mother of invention. Seeing the problems facing
the drywall phase of home building, Strait-Flex international came to the rescue. Defined by
innovative leadership, the company offers a wide array of products that directly impact and
resolve the problems faced by customers, contractors, and homeowners alike – in a more
efficient and cleaner way.
A custom home builder for 21 years, John
Conboy, founder of Strait-Flex Interna-
tional, could never get his vaulted ceilings
straight. Soon after, he set out to design a
product that would resolve the problems of
edge cracking, perfecting straight alignment
and maintaining the strength and flexibility
needed to get job done.
“I got up there because I knew how to fin-
ish concrete, and drywall work is similar,” he
said. “I tried to do the off-angle and I real-
ized how hard it was, so I started to figure
out how to make that easier to do.”
“I knew it had to be plastic, but I didn't know
how to get the compound to stick to plas-
tic,” Conboy continued. “I was in my shop
building cabinets, and I had glue on my arm
which ripped out all the hairs and I said 'if I
just could get fibers to stick to the plastic'. So
I took a cotton rag, ground it up, put some
poly urethane on the plastic that I had and
mixed the cotton into the urethane.”
That eureka moment would lead to a pat-
ent for the development of Strait-Flex Dry-
wall Tape in 1995. Following the initial run
of the product in St. Louis, Conboy began
showcasing the product at national conven-
tions, displaying and demonstrating it to
professionals within the field. What began
in a small sector of the United States has now
gone worldwide.
