Couple builds a better fly trap, eyes distribution

On a hunting trip four years ago, Kory McGavin entered a lodge in Augusta to find thousands of dead flies under an ineffective fly sticky tape above a table. It was one of the most disgusting scenes he’d seen, but it made him think about pest problems in houses sold by him and his wife, Liz, as real estate agents.

“I came back and told my wife that we’re going to become the world’s best fly catchers,” he said.

This summer, the couple launched Flystop and parent company McFly, LLC, after a three-year crash course into everything insects and how to catch them. More recently they have also been working to create a trap for mosquitoes.

The Flystop traps can be disposable or reusable, depending on the container. A reusable window trap, for instance, sticks to glass with a suction cup and splits into two pieces so bait can be added to the bottom and the trap’s eventual victims can be disposed of. Insects enter and cannot exit through the patented cone on top. The cone is 38 millimeters at its widest and fits the standard wide-mouth bottle size used for countless existing containers.

“So, in fact, our cone snaps onto billions of bottles, creating the least expensive, most effective trap that exists in the world today,” Kory said. “Which is a big statement, but it’s true.”

As real estate agents for their other company, Montana Land Office, they knew pests were a big issue in virtually every home.

“Our history in real estate proves that flies don’t discriminate. Our highest multi-billionaire clients with huge homes to our first time homebuyers and everyone in between, they all have pest problems. Everybody gets flies in their homes,” Liz said.

Early in the creative process, they consulted with Gary Byers of Creative Manufacturing in Columbia Falls to develop the cone-shaped trap and received a full utility patent for the technology.

Self-funded, progress moved as fast as they could afford, but by 2015 they were ready to launch their product. But Kory wasn’t happy. The traps worked, but not as efficiently as they had hoped.

They consulted with entomologists, spending hundreds of hours on the phone discussing the perfect non-toxic, sugar-based bait to put inside the trap. When the new bait recipe seemed ready they tried out two traps in their Whitefish home.

“Within a few hours we caught 92 flies,” Kory said. “That was the result that we really needed to feel confident and comfortable launching the product.”

They quickly discovered that the traps caught more than flies and have since expanded their line of traps to accommodate for hornets, yellow-jackets, mosquitoes and more. Even cockroaches have fallen prey to the trap.

Flystop and its bee equivalent, Stingstop, are both available for purchase on the business’ website. Disposable traps sell for $5.99 and window traps are $11.99.

Developing an effective mosquito trap is the next step. After news of the Zika virus being discovered in Florida earlier this year, the McGavins recalled the countless flies they’d caught through their testing and felt an obligation to help. The Zika virus, often carried by mosquito, can cause flu-like symptoms, but if transmitted to pregnant women can cause birth defects.

Now they are working with entomologists from the University of Florida, Texas A&M and the United States Department of Agriculture to expedite the development process for an Aedeas Aegypti mosquito trap, the disease-carrying mosquito also known as the “yellow-fever mosquito.”

“We started hearing about the Zika virus, and it broke our hearts,” Kory said. “It’s a huge problem, and our goal is to try to use what we’ve learned over the last few years with our traps to help impact and save some lives.”

Now that a mosquito carrying Zika has been reported in Texas, the timeframe for getting that trap tested and produced is down to just two months. The goal is to have it ready when mosquito season begins in Texas and Florida.

“The trap itself catches a lot of insects, now it’s really perfecting the bait and the different type of scents that we use to expedite and effectively catch our target species, the Aedeas Aegypti mosquito,” Kory said.

The last four years haven’t been without challenges, though. One issue they’ve had is funding, which they hope to solve through their involvement with Montana crowdfunding, a new program overseen by the state that lets Montana-based companies raise up to $1 million from investors over a one-year period.

In an effort to raise enough money to take their dream further into reality, McFly, LLC will sell 300 units of investment for one year to Montana residents and investors. Each unit costs $1,000 and yields 12 percent interest for a two year period. The goal is to raise $300,000 to further develop products, manufacture traps, and complete packaging and distribution to have the traps ready for retail.

“I really feel like this is the birth of something very cool. Our product is made in Montana, it was developed, created and brought to fruition here in Montana,” Liz said. “Now we’re asking our locals here in Montana to help bring this forward and allow us to have some capital so that we can take this product where we think it can go.”

Kory said there’s been times in the last few years where he’s been ready to throw in the towel, and he and Liz credit Pastor David Halan at the Calvary Chapel in Whitefish and Pastor Kevin Geer at Canvas Church in Kalispell for helping them push through when times got rough.

The name of the parent company of Flystop, McFly, LLC, came from the McGavins being dubbed the “McFlys.” While their children, Kalie, Landon and Ridge, are still too young to understand the reference to the “Back to the Future” movie series in the family nickname, Liz said family has been a huge part of the developmental and business process in the last few years.

“They’re a big part of why we want to create this company,” she said. “Not only do we want to help others and make an impact on people’s living spaces and health, but we want to take a single fly trap product and potentially grow it into a line of pest management control projects and opportunities and create a legacy for our family.”

While they’re still humble about their small beginnings, the two don’t hesitate to keep thinking big about what they can accomplish moving forward.

“We want to be humanitarians in this as well. The idea of just developing a fly trap has grown and become so much bigger than that,” Liz said.

“It’s evolved now to where we straight up believe we’re going to save lives,” Kory added.

For more information, visit www.flystop.com.