Phil Hall, a forestry contractor in Masterton, was getting feedback from his forestry work crew that their safety goggles were fogging up in the heat of the day. This problem made conventional protective eye-wear very difficult to use.
Phil took the initiative to buy a set of full screen swimming goggles, then took out the lenses and replaced them with fine metal gauze, allowing the lenses themselves to breathe. This met with the approval of his crew, so Phil hand-made a number more for the rest of them which met with universal favour.
The crew said to Phil that he should manufacture the goggles commercially, and so Phil got in touch with Absolute Tooling in Palmerston North. Tooling was designed to over-mould the gauze visor with newly designed plastic goggles.
Success soon followed, and the finished product is now being manufactured by Pike's Plastics in Masterton and exported around the world as "Safe Eyes".