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In 1988 Richard Smith, now the President and CEO of Screen America Corporation, was looking for a way to screen in his garage doors in order to keep out the mosquitoes while he worked on his hobby – building performance car engines.
Having two single car garage doors presented a problem for the best available alternative at the time, the sliding screen concept, because the screens had to be manually removed completely from the opening to drive vehicles in or out.
Just beginning to show up on the market at the time were compact electric tubular motor operators that could be remote controlled. Their chief application was finding its way into the hurricane shutter market. He decided to put his college degrees and 30 years of Engineering to good use and began designing a motorized roll-up screen.
After purchasing one of these motor/operators from Somfy USA, he set to work and in two weeks he had a working model. Thus, on August 15th 1988, appeared the first motorized roll-up screen ever made. It generated so much interest that he considered refining the idea into a commercially viable product.
After designing custom aluminum and vinyl extrusions for tracks, drums and crossbars he made three production prototypes for field testing. Following further refinements it was decided to test the market at a local home show in Punta Gorda, Florida. The product was first introduced on January 4th, 1989.
At this point there was no market, and we had to develop a market for motorized screens. On that weekend, we sold two screens; one for the single car garage door, and surprisingly, one for a two-car garage door. We also signed up one dealer who had a vision as to the potential of this new product. The sale for a two-car garage door surprised us since the popular slider worked well for that application.
The word was out and shortly thereafter we were approached by a customer who was building a $5.2 million home on the Gulf of Mexico. He wanted none of our screens on his four garage doors, but rather wanted twelve screens built into his French doors and lanai openings. The potential market broadened again. And, as they say “the rest is history.”
Screen America Corporation was formed in 1992 and purchased facilities and moved to Homosassa, Florida in 1994. Sixteen years and fifteen thousand screens later, Screen America Corporation is a thriving enterprise leading the motorized screen market due primarily to the vision and hard work of its founder and its outstanding dealer network and the dedication of the best employees in the world.