Expo vendor fights against the “Gnat Belt”
Published 7:45 pm Thursday, October 20, 2022
- Beth Cornett and Mike Fultz represented the Clean Breeze Collection during last week’s Sunbelt Ag Expo. Their portable filtered air system promises to prevent dust, allergens or gnats from affecting the user while they mow or weed-eat.
MOULTRIE — One man’s allergies turned into a filtered air system business that vows to help fight against the “Gnat Belt.”
Michael Fultz, the CEO of the Clean Breeze Collection based in Jamestown, Kentucky, said his friend Carl Davis initially invented the filtered air system.
“He had to quit mowing grass because of his respiratory issues and allergies. Every time he had to mow he would get sick. He came up with a very rudimentary form,” Fultz said in an interview from his booth at the Sunbelt Expo on Wednesday.
After Davis asked him to test the system, Fultz decided to check it out.
“I put it on,” he said, “and we hooked it up. I’m sitting there going, ‘Well, first of all, I’m gonna burn up.’ Then when we turned it on, the air was blown over my head. It was miserably hot, and miserably humid because he lives in Tennessee, and I was out there for five hours on his mower and I didn’t smell any grass. I didn’t get sweaty. I was totally cold the whole time it was running. I didn’t get sick. I have a lot of allergies too, and I thought, ‘Okay, we got something.’”
The Clean Breeze Collection offers a portable battery-packed high-efficiency particulate absorbing (HEPA) filtered air system. The system helps prevent dust and particles from entering the mask while mowing, weed-eating, blowing, bush-hogging, sanding, woodworking, woodturning and crafting.
“You can walk around and do whatever you want to do, and not have to breathe any of the dust and allergens that mess up your lungs,” Fultz explained. “We make all of our parts with 3D printers. We buy the face [mask], and we buy the motors that go in but everything else we’re we’re responsible for.”
Fultz and Beth Cornett, the secretary and treasurer, represented the Clean Breeze Collection during the Expo. They said it took them almost two years to develop the product and started selling the systems in August of 2021.
One customer that visited their booth and ordered said the system would help with the “gnat belt.”
“A lot of people have really gotten excited about it. We had one guy come by and he said the gnats will get in his face, ears and eyes. He said, ‘All this keeps all that pushed out,’” Fultz recalled.
The three-day Sunbelt Ag Expo ended Thursday afternoon.
To learn more about The Clean Breeze Collection, please visit www.thecleanbreezecollection.com.
