Most product founders come from engineering or product design backgrounds. Anthony Burr came from the other end of the jobsite. Before he founded Safety Pickets, Inc., Burr spent years working as a concreter, setting steel star pickets and t-posts for the formwork on new home builds and developments. That hands-on experience with the actual hazard is what shaped the product now used across residential, civil, and agricultural sites.
For anyone in real estate development, property management, or land maintenance, exposed steel posts on active sites are a familiar and often underestimated liability. Burr’s path from tradesman to founder shows how a problem seen every day on site can turn into a company built to solve it at scale.
Learning the Hazard on the Ground
Steel pickets are used constantly in construction to mark and form concrete work, but the exposed top of each post is sharp enough to cause serious injury. The plastic caps used to cover them were common but unreliable, cracking in the sun and breaking off in wind and rain, which left posts exposed exactly when a site needed them covered most.
Burr said that shift from a reactive to a preventative safety culture across the industry over the past several years is part of what drove him to act. Sites are now expected to address hazards before an incident occurs, rather than respond after one does, and that shift extends beyond construction into civil infrastructure, farms, equine properties, and public parks maintained by local councils and developers.
Building the Business Without a Business Background
Burr describes the shift from concreting to running a product company as one of the biggest adjustments of the last several years. Concreting is a service business built on word of mouth and a track record on past jobs. Running a product company meant learning distribution, logistics, and how to earn trust in something buyers had never seen before.
That gap was partly closed by his father-in-law, who came on board after Burr shared an early prototype at a family dinner. With 35 years of sales experience, he became a partner in the business and helped fund the first production run.
“That’s been a great aspect as well because that’s not my background at all, sales,” Burr said. “So he’s come along.”
The company’s first major distribution deal came directly with Bunnings Warehouse, the largest hardware and trade retailer in Australia, without going through smaller regional distributors first. Safety Pickets is now stocked in every Australian state and has been nominated for the country’s Safety Solution of the Year award. More on the company’s approach to design and durability is available on the Safety Pickets about page.
Why It Matters for the US Market
Burr said the company is now looking for a US distribution partner as it prepares to enter the American market, drawing on early conversations with contacts in Florida’s road infrastructure sector. For real estate developers and site operators evaluating new safety products, the appeal is less about a flashy pitch and more about a founder who identified the hazard firsthand and built a fix that holds up on the same kind of sites where the problem started.
Safety Pickets, Inc. was founded by Anthony Burr to solve a problem he saw firsthand on jobsites: plastic caps breaking and exposing sharp steel pickets. The company’s patented, reusable steel cap is distributed through Bunnings Warehouse in Australia and is now expanding into the US market. Learn more at safetypickets.com.
This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed herein reflect those of the individuals quoted and do not represent an endorsement of any company, product, or service mentioned. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and consult qualified professionals before making any investment decisions.