Company Story
StrapBandit was conceived on the notion that there had to be a better way to thread strapping through pallets. Threading is the first of three critical steps, followed by tensioning and sealing. The last two were figured out decades ago with sealing tools and tensioning tools, and an industry has evolved around these. Yet the first, and arguably most physical task, remained the most underserved until now.
In 2014, while demonstrating a friction sealing tool, Ken Payne, StrapBandit’s founder, watched a customer struggle to get plastic strapping through the demo pallet. The space between pallets was too tight to get their makeshift corner board tool into the gap. He’d seen this clumsy process many times in his 20-year packaging career – workers on their knees, fishing strapping through pallets using jimmy rigged devices made of broomsticks, pieces of pipe and such. None of them had a professional grade tool.
The industry functioned for decades with sticks, awkwardly wielded by weary workers. For a person handling 25 pallets a day, that’s more than 25,000 times a year they must stressfully bend or kneel to perform their job. And while the industry does offer a few tools, they’re mostly ill-conceived sticks themselves that are clumsy to use and with little or no distribution. The need for a purpose-built tool was vastly underestimated and complacently overlooked.
Fortunately 3D printing and a world of freelance talent made the journey from concept to market a manageable one for the first-time inventor. StrapBandit was three years in the making. The result is a highly effective and durable tool that lowers repetitive strain risks and reduces the time and labor of this critical task. We hope that StrapBandit provides users with a great experience to make their jobs easier.