Fort Collins company's graphics fly the world over.

• Author: ANDERSEN, KRISTIN
• Position: Fiberlok Inc. - Brief Article - Company Profile

In one of those coals-to-Newcastle role-reversals born of the global economy, a company in Fort Collins sells mouse pads featuring Persian-rug-inspired designs to customers in Saudi Arabia. Fiberlok Inc., which provides decorative graphics to such giant customers as General Motors, Nike, Pepsi and Harley-Davidson, introduced its "MouseRugs" about three years ago. Today, the miniature versions of a flying carpet, complete with fringe, are selling well in Mexico, Canada, the U.S and in the Middle East.

The pads are just one offering from a multifaceted company whose fiber-coated graphics can be found on everything from golf shirts to car seats.

Brown Abrams, 52, started Fiberlok 21 years ago as a spin-off of his family's St. Louis-based hat-manufacturing company.

Abrams said he'd been working in corporate promotions when he heard about flock transfers -- think of those fuzzy numbers on sports uniforms and you've got the idea. "I ended up on an airplane in 1979, going to Japan to meet the guys who developed (them)," he said. "They taught me how to make them."

Several years later, about 1988, he invented a way to improve on what he'd learned, and got a patent for it.

He called the product Lextra. Now Lextra is Fiberlok's flagship item and represents a unique way to put a graphic on fabric, vinyl and other surfaces. Unlike standard flocking, which attaches fiber to an adhesive, Lextra uses larger -- 1 mm instead of 0.5 mm -- nylon fibers electro-statically charged to stand up.

Basically, a Lextra graphic is "printed" with millions of...