THE MASKS THAT SAVED US: Small-business owners share the lessons they learned after a year of selling the world's most in-demand product

• Face masks hit the American retail market last year with unprecedented demand.
• When the pandemic came, small businesses turned to masks to make up for lost sales.
• For some, masks became a last hope to keep their companies afloat and provide for their families.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Darwin Manahan sat at the head of his dining table, surrounded by a team of friends helping out with his events business. To Manahan’s right, his business partner, Pascale, was confirming the final sponsor for the Barbie festival they would be working that weekend.

It was March 3, 2020, in Los Angeles, four days before Manahan’s birthday. His pregnant wife, Nikki, was walking around the apartment working on aprons for another business that the couple founded together, Manahan & Co. It would provide custom aprons for the staff at the festival, enough orders for the month.

Everything was locked in — staff and vendors secured, paperwork signed, equipment purchased, and apron fabric on its way.

A half hour later they got a call that summed up what the rest of the year would feel like for business owners across America: Because the coronavirus was sweeping the nation, the Barbie festival was cancelled.

The group was in shock. Dizzy and sick to his stomach, Manahan shut his laptop.

“Either I can laugh or cry,” he recalled thinking. “I guess I’ll choose the latter and laugh about it because it just seems so unreal.”

In the days that followed, the COVID-19 pandemic decimated a year fully booked with events, restaurant openings, and apron orders. “In the span of a weekend, everything disappeared,” he said. “It was an amazing shit show.”

With a baby on the way, he and his wife needed a new stream of income, and fast. Then, days before LA issued its stay-at-home order, Manahan’s brother-in-law called from Japan telling them about the country’s shortage of face masks. He suggested the couple use their extra apron fabric to make some. Manahan asked, “What else am I going to do?”

In 2020, face masks hit the American retail market with unprecedented demand as federal guidelines began declaring masks to be one of the most effective ways to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

From April to June, Etsy facilitated $346 million in mask sales. Between April 2020 and February 2021, the online printing service Vistaprint sold $90 million in masks, selling up to five masks every minute in its peak months of July and August, a representative said.

Around the country, as 800 small businesses closed daily, business owners turned to these face masks as a way to make up for lost sales from mandatory closures, stay-at-home orders, and physical-distancing requirements. While some spotted an opportunity to help their communities and generate extra revenue, others relied on mask sales for the survival of their businesses.

Today, many are selling masks and their flagship products, and the lessons in agility, innovation, and perseverance taught by COVID-19 are going to stick around long after the pandemic has ended.

America’s supply chains get crushed, leaving business owners strapped for cash

At the start of 2020, Ahyoung Kim Stobar, the founder and designer of the children’s-clothing brand Joah Love, was feeling burned out from wholesale. Her business was doing well, stocked in 300 stores across the US and Canada, but people no longer wanted the middlemen and were going directly to the brands themselves. She asked herself, “How do I jump off this train?”

“It’s a never-ending cycle,” Stobar told Insider. “And after 12 years of doing this, it stopped becoming fun.”

By February, the pandemic had upended global supply chains, manufacturers shut down, and wholesale plummeted. Stobar bore the brunt of that crash when many of her clients refused to pay for inventory she’d already sent them. Though she knew some were in desperate situations, she suspected others were using global shutdowns as an excuse not to pay.

She poured money from her savings and 401(k) into her company. She noticed how early her parents’ home country of South Korea had accepted masks as necessary protection. When her husband suggested she make and sell cloth masks, she rolled her eyes, thinking of the sea of cultural differences that separates Asia from the US.

“Yeah right, whatever. Nobody will understand cloth masks here,” she said. “The US has a culture of, ‘If it’s going to protect me, I’m going to wear the mask.’ In Asia and other parts of the world, you wear it as a courtesy for other people.”

The next day, one of her wholesale clients called to tell her he wouldn’t pay her for the $60,000 in inventory he had in his stores, nor would he ship any of it back. She hung up, holding back tears, and looked at the hundreds of rolls of excess T-shirt fabric in her warehouse. Suddenly her husband’s idea didn’t seem so crazy.

“Either I can liquidate it and sell it for pennies, or I can try that ridiculous idea of making the masks,” she told herself. “As it stands right now, I’m going to lose my company. I have to do something.”

Stobar knew she needed to make masks that Americans could coordinate with their outfits. “You have to make it fashion in order to make it stick,” she said. It took her a couple of days to get the pattern right, then she and her sample sewer made a few hundred masks and started selling them on March 19, donating one mask for every one sold.

Her first batch sold out in a day, and angry commenters on Instagram condemned her for making profit. It hurt at first because she wasn’t used to the backlash, but then she focused on the positives: She was using her fashion skills to provide essential protection.

Stobar declined to publish specific revenue figures, but she did verify in documentation provided to Insider that 80% of her sales in 2020 came from masks, enough to yield a year-over-year increase from 2019 of more than 13 times. Without the masks, Stobar said, she would have had to shut down her business. She said, “Who’s shopping for premium kids’ clothing when you’re scared that you’re going to die from COVID?”

Stobar believes she was among the first American entrepreneurs making masks, and if it’s up to her she’ll be one of the last. “When everyone is done with masks,” she said, “I’ll still be selling them.”

Shopping changes overnight

As cities shut down and people rushed to buy quarantine essentials, basic mask supplies such as cotton fabric and elastic were hard to come by. Business owners repurposed what they already had.

Deborah Chusid was working at her desk in the sunny kitchen of her Upper West Side apartment on the day New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a statewide shutdown.

She’d recently started her side hustle, Tembo NYC, designing and selling tote bags sewn by women at The Artisan Sewing Co-op in Queens.

When she heard Cuomo say New York needed personal protective equipment, she realized she couldn’t be in a better position to help make masks. She had plenty of fabric and knew seamstresses who could work from their homes.

Tembo NYC sold 8,256 masks, which made up 52% of its sales. Chusid said she and 17 seamstresses made about 20,000 masks, donating about 2,300.

The most rewarding part, she said, was that masks sales kept the immigrant seamstresses at the co-op employed while some of their husbands were laid off or experienced hardship in low-paying jobs. “It helped a whole community of Bangladeshi women,” she said. “It put food on the table.”

As summer wore on and masks were mass-produced by larger retailers, small-business owners saw sales begin to stall. “Every big-box brand has them, and that’s when my business kind of slowed down,” Chusid said. She’s now working on her e-commerce site and a scarf collection.

Local manufacturing gave business owners an advantage to meet demand

If masks didn’t fit within a business’ prepandemic offering, entrepreneurs such as the fashion designer Linda Asaf founded mask-only brands.

Asaf used to make custom gowns for galas and weddings, but when those events stopped, so did her business. “Usually in times of crisis,” she said, “I don’t run — I run towards.”

She was heartbroken to see so many PPE shortages in major cities. So she started Take Heart Masks, applying the same scrupulous crafting and attention to detail used for her gowns to make quality masks, with a goal to donate 5,000 to the homeless.

Asaf has always produced in the US, so her connections and supply chain were an advantage for quick turnaround. She had an assistant designer and sample maker on staff, and contracted the rest of the work to local factories. As orders came in, she picked up production and hired more sewing operators.

Once masks were in high demand, both as a product and as a DIY craft, it was difficult to find all the raw materials. “Everything — elastic bias, binding, solid color cotton broadcloth — it was kind of like the lottery,” she said. She had a relationship with one mill and would call to ask what they had in stock, and grab it when she could.

Asaf declined to share revenue but said she sold about 4,500 masks, which made up 57% of 2020 sales. Take Heart Masks donated 2,982 masks to homeless shelters and charities in Austin, Texas. “Starting the face-mask line,” she said, “it was really gratifying to have that physical product directly help someone in need.”

As Asaf enters spring — her busiest season for wedding gowns — she’s seeing an uptick in couture orders. But she’ll continue making masks as long as there’s demand.

The assembly line in the living room

Back in LA, Manahan stayed up until 3 a.m. watching YouTube videos on how to make masks. He said his first prototype was “garbage,” but with his wife’s help he had a satisfactory design by the next day. He didn’t have any cardboard to fashion a template, so he cut it from a Tony Robbins mailer.

Manahan posted a selfie wearing his first mask on Instagram, announcing that a dollar from every mask sale would go to the Pilipino Workers Center. DMs and emails poured in. First 13 masks, then 40, then 70. Within five days, he had over 100 orders. He thought to himself, “Oh, wow — this is what an influencer must feel like.”

To keep up with demand, the couple recruited their brother and a cousin. The Manahan living room became an assembly line. A sewing machine took the place of a stocked bar under the TV.

Manahan’s career in the restaurant industry helped streamline the process: Everyone had a station cutting, binding, sewing, or attaching ear loops. “We would be working 12- to 16-hour days, just nonstop,” he said. “Every day felt like a weird ‘Groundhog Day.'”

Manahan & Co. kept going full speed until June, when they stepped back to prepare for their son’s July arrival. By August, mask sales dwindled, but they had enough backstock to fulfill orders for the rest of the year.

The couple sold 4,630 masks in 2020, which made up 82% of its sales and more than doubled revenue from 2019. They revamped their e-commerce site and shifted focus back to aprons in October. But until restaurants and events return, they’re still living on the mask money. “We have a small little nest egg that can help us survive,” Manahan said.

For his family and many others, masks meant more than financial relief: They helped Manahan appreciate the small joys in life and set his priorities, like getting closer with his wife during quarantine, turning grocery trips into date nights, and spending time with his newborn son.

“I was in a really bad place,” he said. “But these little cotton things on your face saved me.”

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