The coronavirus has driven demand for masks
to an all-time high.
Reporter: Fears over the coronavirus have led
to the scarcity of masks worldwide.
Reporter: Hospital systems have been sounding the alarm.
Reporter: Struggling with their limited supplies of masks.
Reporter: Third-party online retailers
are jacking up prices.
Tedros Adhanom: Market manipulation is widespread.
Narrator: Price gouging, hoarding,
and a slow federal response
have all led to a deadly mask shortage.
Val Griffeth: New York is seeing people needing
to reuse masks, because there's not enough.
First of all, we wanna stay healthy so we can
continue caring for people that are getting sick.
Narrator: To help fill this gap,
companies that normally make clothing, mattresses,
and footwear have started making masks.
Griffeth: I think it is heartening to see
a social movement like this,
where we're solving the problem.
Narrator: We followed two companies,
one big and one small,
as they stopped normal production
and changed factories over to make face masks.
They did it all in a matter of days,
and they're taking a financial hit
to donate masks where they're needed most.
Stuart Carlitz: Here's people putting themselves at risk,
but to not have a face mask, and realizing
that I could get these made pretty quickly,
I really didn't have to think about it.
It was just like an automatic, let's chip in.
Narrator: At two New Balance factories,
shoe production came to a halt mid-March.
But 130 factory workers stayed behind
to begin production on face masks full-time.
Dave Wheeler: It really has united everybody
to really step up and do whatever they can.
Narrator: But New Balance is a shoe company.
It'd never made masks before.
Wheeler: The team that we have,
they're experts at footwear.
And so, as we looked at the design options,
we wanted to leverage the equipment
that we have in place, because, really,
time and quality were of the essence.
Narrator: On March 20, New Balance partnered
with scientists from MIT
to design a mask prototype.
In that design, they used the same no-sew fabric
that makes up New Balance's shoes.
And for the strap...
Wheeler: It has curly, elastic lace straps
that hold the mask.
Narrator: That came from one of
New Balance's old shoes, too.
Wheeler: It provides the ability to tighten the mask,
so that you can actually pull those straps forward,
and it pushes the mask onto your face.
Narrator: Within three days,
New Balance had made it from design
to 3D-model prototype.
Then came setting up the production lines.
The trickiest part? Physical distancing,
a restriction they'd never had to face
on the factory floor before.
Wheeler: Creating the social distance
between our pieces of equipment,
how we move the product,
to make sure that we weren't within
six feet of each other, was No. 1.
And it obviously enlarged the footprint,
but we certainly have enough space to handle it.
Masks, gowns, covering garments,
hair bonnets, and obviously gloves
all were important PPE
that we wanted to provide to them.
Narrator: While the distancing restrictions
were new, the machines weren't.
Wheeler: The design leverages our
computer-controlled cutting equipment
that we already have on the shop floor,
and it also leverages our
heat-press capabilities that we have.
Those pieces of equipment are used
in our usual footwear production,
so our associates didn't require additional training.
Narrator: Thanks to all of that,
New Balance was able to get the manufacturing line
up and running in just seven days,
and its mask production
has kept 130 people working.
Over in New Jersey,
a smaller company has a similar story.
Eclipse International usually makes mattresses
but lost more than half its business
when mattress stores closed down.
Andrew Cuomo: Supplies are a major issue.
PPE, gloves, gowns, masks.
Carlitz: When the governor said that they were
being gouged on pricing on masks,
that's what really spurred me on to get involved.
This is our mask.
Why don't you model it, Joe?
So, that fits nice and snug.
Narrator: Like New Balance,
Eclipse could use machines it already had.
Carlitz: We're a sewing operation,
so we have a lot of sewing machines.
We even had some of our employees
bringing in home sewing machines
so that we could build to capacity.
Narrator: Both companies could even source materials
for their masks from their normal suppliers.
Wheeler: Because we do make
so much product here in the US,
we have a solid pipeline of material sources.
So, it's about a mix of 50-50
typical footwear fabrics and materials,
as well as a couple of new fabrics,
obviously, for the filtration.
Carlitz: The materials that are used to make masks,
some of which are in my daily
manufacturing the mattresses,
I realized that if I put some effort into it,
I could figure out a way to make masks.
Narrator: Eclipse's workers are also stepping up.
20% of Stuart's team
is working full-time on face masks.
Altogether, Eclipse made 38,000 masks
in just the first round of productions.
The company donated all of them
to New Jersey hospitals and the local police department.
Carlitz: Selling a mask for a dollar to $4
is not going to make or break my company,
so I'd rather donate them.
Narrator: New Balance is currently on track
to make 100,000 masks per week.
The company's deciding between
donating them to Boston-area hospitals
or selling them at break-even prices
to the Maine and Massachusetts governors' offices.
Either way, the company's not planning
to make any profit.
Both these companies moved
from design to production in record time
to make life-saving face masks quickly.
The only downside to that pace: certification.
Carlitz: I'm sure if it was tested,
it would test favorably.
However, we don't have the luxury of time.
Narrator: Neither Eclipse nor New Balance's masks
are FDA approved, but they can still help
in preventing the spread of COVID-19.
Griffeth: Where I see a lot of utility,
though, in those masks
is helping protect people outside of healthcare,
grocery-store clerks, bank tellers,
people that are considered part of essential businesses.
Narrator: Doctors like Val hope that
by making more masks like these
available for the general public,
it'll free up the bigger masks,
like the N95 respirators,
for the frontline healthcare workers
who really need them.
Wheeler: US manufacturing, it really is
a crown jewel of the country,
and leveraging that to solve a national crisis
is pretty darn inspiring.
Carlitz: There's no doubt even one mask
on a person in the emergency room
that they didn't have is a help.
I'm prepared, and I'm keeping the flow
of materials here and the people employed,
so that, if they're needed in our area,
we'll continue making them
until they're not needed anymore.