Greg Amundson
Transcription
Greg Amundson
The Inventor’s Resource Center would like to welcome... Greg Amundson My journey of inventing began when I was a child as a creative outlet. Over the years, I have come up with many ideas but only one has become reality through many failures, near financial ruin and ultimately, invaluable lessons in life. Greg Amundson, 55 years old and lives in Scandia, MN, is the inventor and owner of Easy Caulk Products. His company, Cornerflex, Inc., is based in Scandia, MN and sells Easy Caulk Products through their website, www.cornerflex.com and also wholesale to Amazon. 5 years ago Greg and his wife, June, started Cornerflex after the housing crash and the quick demise of their home construction business. With time on his hands, he came up with a caulk solution that was simple for the consumer to apply. He began a search for an extrusion company that would meet with him and kept getting the same response of “we don’t work with inventors on prototype projects”. Finally he ran across Gary Noble at Bio Plastics Solutions who not only invited him down to Blooming Prairie but also worked with him over the next 4 years to perfect the tooling and final extrusion. Although the concept was simple, it took him 5 years to perfect the final design and adhesive qualities needed to make it an effective and quality product. He experienced failure after failure for many years and approached every caulking company he could find. “They liked my idea but we continually kept failing testing with each company.” We even did a direct response TV ad one year and that failed as well. Finally in 2014, Greg found the solution he had been looking for, and it was literally in his backyard, with a Minnesota company who designed the “perfect” proprietary adhesive he had been looking for. Cornerflex took on new life and we ramped up production at our facility at Bio Plastics Solutions in Blooming Prairie, MN to aggressively market our new Easy Caulk Product. Everything was finally falling into place until late in 2014, Greg lost his partner, and wife, June to cancer. Oddly enough, as traumatic as this was, he found new strength and inspiration in his wife’s passing and rebranded Cornerflex to honor her. Cornerflex’s mission statement became very clear to him and he rebranded the Easy Caulk Product as a “Healthier alternative to caulk”. The Easy Caulk Product utilizes a non-toxic adhesive and is sold as a “zero landfill impact” product with recycled cardboard packaging locally made in Minnesota. One of the huge disadvantages the caulking companies have is the amount of wasted caulk and the millions of tubes of caulk disposed of every year in landfills. In addition, many types of caulk contain toxic compounds that are emitted during the curing process as the caulk cures. Greg has also taken their mission statement further by donating 5% of all “net sales” of Easy Caulk Products to the American Lung Association to honor his late wife and to help in education and research for lung cancer and disease. Greg now works with his daughter, Dana, who has stepped in to fill his wife’s shoes in the business and is doing a fantastic job! www.cornerflex.com