Can’t Find an N95 Mask? This Company Has 30M That It Can’t Sell (opens in new tab)

I think they are just bad at sales.

We have government and hospital contracts. But, we are really good at sales. My team is really good at sales. Previously, My President and head of sales ran a medical sales division at a company with 300 sales people. We have about 17 sales folks. And we wouldn't be thriving without that team.

They also might not be great at manufacturing.

There stuff is really expensive. They are selling an ASTM Level 3 mask for $37.5 + $8 Shipping! That's $0.90 a mask delivered.

https://shop.demetech.us/collections/surgical-mask-astm-leve...

I can buy a Chinese made ASTM Level 3 masks delivered for $0.18 FROM CHINA.

How can they win charging 5 times more? Because "America"? That argument is many a 3x multiple :)

If I were to guess by looking at all their photos, it looks they have a very manual process for making masks and packing masks. We've had to semi automate the packaging process to survive (which no one else has done). When we fully automated it later this year we will be able to sell our masks much much cheaper than China can.

Our masks sell between $0.20 - $0.59 which is still too high, but all of our margins go directly into investing in the product.

That is in some ways true. However, the ability to manage a complex sales process is a good proxy for ability to manage customer stakeholders and do the project planning and management required for success.

eg if you can't manage a complex sales process, the probability a vendor is mature enough to ship eg 2mm masks/month on time, with appropriate quality levels, and with the resources to manage production disruptions is quite low. And that's what hospital systems want to buy.

Citation? Ther actual written standards of N95 vs KN95 are very similar, and if anything KN95 is probably slightly better. To meet KN95, the mask must be shown not to let air pass around the edges even while doing vigorous exercise, whereas N95 has no such requirement.

This is notable in the shape of N95 and KN95 masks. Some N95 masks look like someone just hit the "circle" button in some CAD software, whereas KN95 masks clearly have effort to actually being human-shaped.

Given that, I have no issues with using a fake mask. My manual fitting effort to reduce leakage around the mask will have far far more impact on health outcomes than the exact specifications of the way the ear straps go as required by high grade medical certifications...

It's time we de-emphasized product certifications and paperwork in favor of simply getting more products that mostly work into the hands of more people. Per dollar spent, far more people will have improved lives.

https://www.protectivemasksdirect.co.uk/

This is a legit store with legit masks, it existed before the pandemic.

In general, if someone is looking for FFP2/FFP3/N95 masks, search for personal protection equipment stores in your country, not Amazon/eBay/...

That said, was I aware of these smaller USA n95 sellers, I might have purchased from them. But at slightly less than $1/mask delivered for these KN95s, it's still a good choice.

EDIT: Note the N95 / KN95 difference: N95 is the US standard, KN95 is the China standard.

Like getting a piece in the nytimes?

> Or start selling direct to consumer using marketplaces like Amazon.

Per the article, most consumer destinations ban any mask advertising because of scalping.

This is glorious.

https://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1954352

Shepperson thought he could help and make some money, too, so he bought 19 generators. He and his family then rented a U-Haul and drove 600 miles to an area of Mississippi that was left without power in the wake of the hurricane.

He offered to sell his generators for twice what he had paid for them, and people were eager to buy. Police confiscated his generators, though, and Shepperson was jailed for four days for price-gouging. His generators are still in police custody.

It works like this: You basically rent a bit of shelf space in a warehouse somewhere in the USA and get your personal shipping address in that warehouse. Your unique address is identified by a unique "suite number" in the mailing address. You have stores send your packages there and the freight forwarder optionally holds them for some time, usually up to 30 days. Then you can consolidate the individual packages and have them sent as one shipment. I'm using MyUS these days; They ship by weight only, and have very fair shipping rates. I have been able to ship non-medical N95-level masks through MyUS.

Having access to in-USA shipping makes quite a big difference. You get access to a big consumer market, which makes the unbuyable buyable and the hard-to-buy easy!

This isn't a mystery. Public pressure doesn't work because corporations "feel bad".

i.e. wearing a mask will protect a user, but the outside of it isn't sterile. So if you come off a covid ward, easier to just bin the mask and take a new one, than wash the outside of a re-usable one.

Although perhaps that makes more sense in an operating theatre than many of the lower-risk places people now wear them, all day.

https://www.buyfacemasks.co.uk/

No idea how reliable they are, but that's always the danger when you buy anything from a small shop. I don't like the look of is as I can't find any corporate information about the store on their site, but it's no worse than buying anything else online.

Your link doesn't work anymore, but KN95-style masks have been quite readily available for at least 6 months now, if not more. Though most of them seem to be of iffy quality/fit in my experience. Sometimes they're marketed at N95, but I'm thinking that's usually fraudulent mislabeling.

"Only one step left! To finish setting up your new web address, go to your domain settings, click "Connect existing domain", and enter: clinicalsuppliesusa.com"

Valves with a diffuser cap that stops the air jetting out are probably the best if you have this restriction.