A POPULAR Redditch firm has turned its hand to designing protective perspex screens for shops – and sparked a business revival in the process.
Kingfisher Blinds last hit the headlines when staff turned their hands to making face masks and scrubs at the height of the PPE crisis.
Now owner Pat Dowling has turned the firm’s design skills to making plastic screens to keeping shoppers and shopkeepers safe during the current phase of the pandemic.
“Together with my husband we were giving the premises a deep clean and we thought ‘this pandemic isn’t going to go away anytime soon,” said Pat.
“And we had a bit of a meltdown – how are we going to survive? I have a son who lives in America and I was looking at articles on what they were doing there and I thought, we’re going to have to have some screens made or something, and then, the penny dropped – we’re good at designing things why can’t we do it?”
Pat starting buying perspex and acrylic and then found a company in Bromsgrove – Webb Display – which had CNC machines to cut it.
“They said they dealt mainly with the exhibition market and had nothing going on so I was sure we could do better than the imports from China so I told them what I wanted to do and they got onboard.”
Pat then contacted another Bromsgrove company, Gary Nicholls Fabrication, to make the brackets and since then the screens have been flying off the shelves.
“He’s been brilliant – they’ve made 400 for me and we are supplying everywhere; Greenlands Business Centre, the Nevill Arms at Astwood Bank, a nail salon in Stourbridge, we’ve got inquiries coming in from doctors practices – we’re supplying everyone who wants one,” said Pat.
“But that’s what we are about, everyone helping each other out and getting on, and it works.”
ONE business grateful for a Kingfishers Blind screen is The Nursery Shop at Crabbs Cross.
Owner Mike Morris said: “I’d ordered a screen on the internet and it took eight weeks to arrive and when it did get here it was broken and was as flimsy as anything.
“I was telling Pat about it and she said ‘I make them!’ She had to come up to the shop to buy some flowers and was absolutely brilliant.
“She was there at about 11am and by 3.30pm we had the screen in place.”
