Those of you who have followed us from the humble beginnings of when Chris and Marty were business partners, will know that we have come a long way from only offering one range of brushes, in one size, and only 8 colours. Now Beast Brushes boasts having a full production of brush manufacturing, natural material processing, dubbing manufacture in addition to a consistently growing range of Beast Brushes brand and major brand materials. In addition to giving birth to the Australian Fly Tyers Co Op, and initiative to support local fly tyers to compete with imported flies.
Since the beginning we have strived to separate ourselves from the existing resellers by creatively sourcing materials direct from textile manufacturers to create our very own range of carefully selected fibres. In this time we have also sourced popular natural materials form places that don't sell to anyone else, except for Beast Brushes globally, offering graded materials that smash the stereotype that we get given "scraps off the floor" in Australia.
Our in house dying has been an intense process that has been a learned the hard way, there have been many mis-tints along the way. As a former commercial fly tyer, who was constantly looking for quality in major name bucktails, I was often left wondering why my flies did not look like Bob Popovics... a lot of that is because I don't have the talent that Bob does haha, but a big reason was that commercial tails are pretty much lifeless straw. I have learned that this is because mass producers give preference to colour as opposed to quality of the hair which often strips hai and feathers of the properties we look for as fly tyers. With our process, we leave as much of the natural lanolin in the hair to leave you with a well conditioned hair that ties super nice flies but most importantly, enhances the action in the water.
Since Marty ( one of the founders) left Beast Brushes in Jan 2020, Chris has been handling all of the processing and manufacturing. Marty was and still is a carpenter, and at the end of 2019, Beast became such a beast that his hobby was quickly becoming a choice of careers, and as a consequence, Marty decided to stick with his trade.