A golf umbrella from Long Island.

GustBuster is an umbrella brand from Farmingdale, on Long Island in New York. Its website was online by the end of 1997: the earliest copy kept by the Internet Archive, captured in January 1998, carries a revision date of November 1997 and a 1997 copyright line. A news page of the same month announced a move to “new, larger quarters” in Farmingdale, with new telephone lines from 1 December 1997.

The brand has never published a founding year on the pages we read, and today’s website speaks only of “25+ years of experience.” Its ownership is documented through the press rather than a register: in September 2014 the Canadian personal-finance magazine MoneySense described Steve Asman as the GustBuster owner and placed the company’s head office in Farmingdale, where, it reported, the umbrellas are tested in a wind tunnel. Patent records connect the brand to a company called Innoventions Enterprises Ltd, the original assignee of a 1999 umbrella patent described below.

Its 1997 company profile explained the idea in a sentence. It described the umbrellas as built for a single purpose: windproofing. The first step, the profile went on, was “the design of the innovative canopies, through which high wind pressures dissipate rather than inverting and destroying the umbrella.” The rest of the umbrella — ribs, shaft, joints and handle — was then redesigned for strength, and the result was checked by what the company called “rigorous wind tunnel-testing.”

The earliest range was aimed at golfers. The 1997 site listed a Pro-Series Gold, a Pro Series and a newer Fashion Series, which the company said it had added to its golf umbrellas “for the most dependable everyday protection against the elements,” along with a custom shop for printed umbrellas used as gifts and promotional items. The same profile claimed that professionals on the PGA Tour, the LPGA Tour, the Senior PGA Tour and the Nike Tour considered the umbrella standard equipment; we give that as the company’s own claim.

Two canopies and a vent.

The design is easy to describe. In the company’s words from around 1999, its secret is an “innovative patented, double canopy design where the aerodynamic vents in the lower canopy let the wind pass through while the upper canopy keeps the rain out.” A gust that would turn an ordinary canopy inside out escapes through the vents instead, and the overlapping top layer stops rain following it in. The same page listed the other parts in detail: nylon of 190 threads per square inch, specially treated and coated; solid round ribs and spreaders, with a “Memory Rod” construction on the golf models that the company said would flex with the wind and return to shape; a reinforced fibreglass shaft; high-impact plastic joints and tip cups; and handles fixed with epoxy. Even the closure strap was specified, with Velcro fastening and an embroidered logo, and a double strap on the Pro-Series Gold and Fashion Series.

Patents fill in some of the engineering history. Google Patents lists US 5,975,099, “Collapsible umbrella with reinforced rib structure,” filed in October 1997 with a priority date of October 1996 and granted in November 1999, with Innoventions Enterprises Ltd as original assignee and four inventors: Gary D. Johnson, Stanley Hochfeld, Alfonso Murcia and Frank Holloway. Continuations followed in 2001 and 2002 under the same assignee. Johnson and Hochfeld are also named as the inventors of an earlier “windproof umbrella” patent, US 4,979,534, filed in February 1989 and granted in December 1990, which describes a canopy with a vent hole; Google Patents records it as assigned in 1989 to another individual, not to Innoventions. Today the company says the brand rests on seven technology patents; we give that number as its claim.

The tests have been repeated outside the company. The archived site of around 2000 said the umbrella had been “wind tunnel tested at the College of Aeronautics, LaGuardia Airport, NY.” In 2014 MoneySense held a GustBuster Classic behind a motorboat travelling at 60 kilometres an hour on Georgian Bay, in Ontario; its ribs held, the magazine reported, while a rival umbrella turned inside out at once. It credited elastic shock cords, the double canopy, high-thread-count nylon and ABS plastic spreaders and ribs. Chuck Green, reviewing the 62-inch golf model for Cool Tools — the page is dated 2018 and marked a favourite from 2006 — found that in 20 mph winds it would not pull upside down, even turned sideways.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all umbrella names: James Smith & Sons, totes, Knirps, London Undercover, Il Marchesato, GustBuster and ShedRain. Umbrella brands sit at many different points in the trade, from a single London shop to names sold in department stores and supermarkets around the world, and from makers that still sew in their own workrooms to brands whose umbrellas are designed in one country and made in another.

An umbrella brand’s identity is usually carried by a handful of things — a name, a handle, a canopy colour or print, a label sewn into the cover — rather than by any one product, because the company behind the name may have changed hands or moved its production since it began. Some names are very old: James Smith & Sons, which English Wikipedia says was founded in 1830, still trades from a Grade II* listed shop on New Oxford Street in London. Others have moved country: the Knirps name, which German Wikipedia traces to Hans Haupt’s folding umbrella of 1928 in Solingen, is now run from Braunau am Inn in Austria.

That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its umbrellas are actually designed and made. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its umbrellas are made and how its products and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

“The World’s Smartest Umbrella.”

The brand’s language is built on wordplay. Today’s website calls the product “The World’s Smartest Umbrella” and promises “stylish umbrellas that make weather obsolete,” and it coins its own trademarked negatives — UNflippable, Unflappable and UNleakable — to name the three things an umbrella should not do. Its tone is conversational: a section headed “Stop Being a Statistic” asks readers how many umbrellas they have “lost in the line of duty” this year, and another warns of imitators under the line “Often Copied, Never Duplicated.” The company says its umbrellas are tested up to 55 mph and that its canopy fabric is made from recycled material; we give both as its claims. In 2014 Steve Asman summed up the appeal for MoneySense: “You get to laugh at everybody else on the street corner.”

The range has moved from the golf course to the pavement. The current line runs from the Metro, an automatic folding umbrella, and the LTD, which opens and closes automatically, to the Classic stick umbrella, the extra-large Doorman and the Pro Series golf umbrella, with a SunBlok line sold for shade as well as rain. Corporate printing, offered on the 1997 website, is still part of the business. The umbrellas carry a lifetime guarantee: in 2014 MoneySense described it as a guarantee against breakage, and in 2018 Cool Tools as a limited lifetime warranty.

The 1997 home page carried a design credit to Workman Creative for the website itself. The palette here — a storm navy with a warning yellow — is our own interpretation.

For a design guide, GustBuster shows how a single engineering idea can carry a whole brand voice, from the name to the trademarks. Compare Senz, the Dutch storm umbrella built around an asymmetric canopy, and Blunt, the New Zealand umbrella built around a tensioned canopy. For this guide we use a storm navy and a gust yellow with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep GustBuster’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.