Dreamfarm founder Alex Gransbury accuses Kmart of ‘copying’ his Fluicer citrus juicer

An Aussie small-business owner has accused the retail giant of copying his award-winning kitchen tool that was featured in Time Magazine and on Oprah, and selling it for $5.

Dreamfarm, unique hinged mechanism presses the fruit in half from the sides like juicing with your hands, requiring less force than squashing the fruit flat like traditional juicers.

An Australian business owner has accused Kmart of making a dupe of his award-winning citrus juicer and selling it for $5, and he slammed the homewares giant as “un-Australian”.

Alex Gransbury founded the domestic industrial design company Dreamfarm in a garage in 2003. Together with his team, he spent 22 years reinventing household objects to improve design and functionality.

His most successful item was the Fluicer in 2023, a handheld citrus juicer which comes in three sizes to fit limes, lemons and oranges. The product has a unique fold design with anti-spray features, and retails between $19.95 and $29.95, depending on the size.

Alex Gransbury founded the domestic industrial design company, Dreamfarm.

The Fluicer has a unique design that won a range of awards and was featured in Time magazine and on Oprah.

The Fluicer was so popular that it was dubbed one of Time Magazine’s best inventions of 2023, sitting alongside products by Apple, Adobe and Breville, and was listed as one of Oprah’s favourite things that same year.

It also won a range of design awards, including the sought-after Gia Global Innovation award.

Mr Gransbury told this masthead: “We’re at the premier level of design, this little company in Brisbane, it really opened doors for us.”

He didn’t realise Kmart was selling a very similar item called the Folding Juicer until Tuesday when someone from his IT department said, “sorry the Fluicer got ripped off”.

Mr Gransbury said: “It’s the most un-Australian thing I’ve ever seen.”

“We design everything in-house in Brisbane ourselves, we come up with the prototyping, we employ about 30 people here in Australia, and that product was huge for us.”

The Fluicer is an original award-winning design by Australian business, Dreamfarm (pictured).

Kmart sells a very similar juicer, called the Folding Juicer, for $5 (pictured).

He’s also worried Kmart might have taken his photos.

The Kmart package has an image which shows anti-spray features on the outside of the product, very much like the Fluicer. Mr Gransbury says the Folding Juicer does not have those anti-spray features.

The Fluicer is patented in the US because that’s where the majority of customers are based, but it’s not patented in Australia because the process is so costly and litigious that it’s often not economically viable.

“It costs about $30,000 to get a patent in Australia because you have to get lawyers to draft it, and then there’s annual fees to maintain it on top of that,” Mr Gransbury said.

”The onus is then on you as the patent holder to take any infringements to court, so if we did have the patent in Australia, we would have to pay a tonne of money to take it to court.”

He said it wasn’t the first time Dreamfarm products had been copied, but said it was “a real kick in the teeth” to have it done by another Australian company.

The Kmart package shows an image with anti-splash features (left) but the product does not have anti-splash features (right)

But one of the real issues, he said, was to do with the size of the Folding Juicer.

“They have taken the size of the lime Fluicer, coloured it yellow, and said it’s big enough to do lemons, but it’s not big enough,” he said.

“It’s like putting 4WD wheels on Mini Golf and expecting it to go off-road, it will barely handle a lime.”

Mr Gransbury acknowledged the situation was a double-edge sword because it also meant the Fluicer was good enough for a major company to create a dupe. He also said he wouldn’t have minded it Kmart had taken his product and improved the functionality.

He said: “I wish, in Australia, we supported each other, but when did it become OK to rip each other off?”

Kmart has been contacted for comment.

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