The History of Safetydrape®

In 1990, as troops were being deployed to Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War, Craig Schwartz saw a nightly news report that stated "85% of death and injury from a bomb blast occurs because of flying glass and debris." At the time, Mr. Schwartz was the President of Skyline Mills, one of the premier drapery contractors to the Federal Government, and the first company in the world to sell window coverings on a General Services Administration (GSA) contract. Using this information as a starting point, Mr. Schwartz created Safetydrape®.

The first Research and Development on Safetydrape® was performed in an old rock quarry, near Baltimore, Maryland. While the first tests using live explosives to hurl exploding glass into Safetydrape® met with moderate success, further adjustments to the combination of fiber, construction, attachment systems, weights and manufacturing techniques perfected the capacity of Safetydrape® to retain glass shards while remaining intact. While we had a viable life saving product ready for the market, we were way ahead of our time for the US Government. Therefore, we concentrated our marketing efforts to the United Kingdom Government, as well as opening offices in Kuwait following the Gulf War. It was not until 1997 that GSA established criteria for testing such products that we felt the time was right for the US market. We retested Safetydrape® to prove that it would pass the newly established GSA criteria. Based on successful testing of the GSA standards we were ready to market to the US Federal Government for use both domestically and abroad.

From these rough and low-tech beginnings, we have become a rapidly expanding company with a worldwide dealer network completely linked through custom state of the art on-line software. While we have a near unlimited manufacturing capacity and are capable of providing Safetydrape® to meet all of our customers' needs, we have remained true to our mission statement of integrity and continual improvement.