10 ms·

Can’t Find an N95 Mask? This Company Has 30M That It Can’t Sell

90 points by winstonsmith 6y ago

sneak 6y ago
> Another obstacle comes from companies like Facebook and Google, which banned the sale and advertising of N95 masks in an effort to thwart profiteers from diverting vital medical gear needed by frontline medical workers. In their desire to wield censorship to avoid bad PR, these companies are actually hindering some of the people doing the best work (and taking on their own financial risk!) to help. This is despicable. Why are large corporations so cowardly?
- XorNot 6y ago
  Why do people keep asking this question when pretty obviously big corporations have big PR and marketing departments that when they tell you you're going to lose a lot of money from consumer disengagement and are looking at a senate investigation, so what corporations are literally built to only do and take the most profitable option? This isn't a mystery. Public pressure doesn't work because corporations "feel bad".
  - sneak 6y ago
    Public pressure to avoid being seen as profiting from opportunists seems to work.
ardourdev 6y ago
I have noticed that Google Shopping is blocking results for "N95 mask" in the UK, making it more difficult to find retailers which sell them. On the other hand there are thousands upon thousands of results on eBay/Amazon, most of which cannot be trusted.
- iso1210 6y ago
  Use ddg in the UK, type "buy n95 mask", 3rd result down is https://www.buyfacemasks.co.uk/ 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.
- viraptor 6y ago
  You can also look for comparable quality masks by name. For example Korean airqueen is still available relatively cheap and they're amazing quality.
OJFord 6y ago
> The problem is getting consumers to their retail websites. At the moment, anyone trying to buy N95 masks on Google Shopping or Facebook Marketplace is greeted with a blank page; on Amazon, a search for N95s yields a welter of vendors hawking KN95 masks, a Chinese-made equivalent that researchers say is less effective. > “How is it that you can spread conspiracy theories on Facebook, but we can’t sell N95 masks to the millions of Americans who need them right now?” Mr. Brown asked. “I can understand Facebook not wanting to sell masks made by some guy in his garage, but these masks meet strict N.I.O.S.H. guidelines.” I can more understand the first half of the article, about ingrained purchasing processes in hospitals etc. leaving newcomers with unbought supply, but this is nuts. All the crap that Amazon does show if you search 'mask' or 'respirator' over the last year, and they refuse to list genuine stuff? I still have a disposable FFP3 (UK/EU N99 equivalent I believe) from a couple of years before the pandemic, it was £1.12ea or much less in packs. Currently I'd have to pay 10x that for a shitty piece of ill-fitting cloth. (It's probably technically past its shelf life, but it can't be worse than fabric that never met any filtration specification.)
- mcintyre1994 6y ago
  It might just be me, but even if Google and Facebook were happy to advertise their masks I'd assume they were fake/bad quality if they were being advertised on those platforms - in the same way that Amazon clearly are selling rubbish. Not sure what the solution to that is though.
  - high_density 6y ago
    maybe Google, FB, Amazon are victims of their own 'successful ML algorithms' or some sellers that are gaming the advertisement system?
- londons_explore 6y ago
  We should remember that the certification processes for medical stuff are very long and extensive, yet even so a mask that allows 5% of air to leak round the edge of the mask will pass the certification! 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.
cmckn 6y ago
I purchased some at Home Depot recently for $4/pc (they had plenty in stock, Seattle area). The company mentioned here is selling [0] them for $3.75/pc, but only in quantities of 20 ($75). I wish N95’s did not necessitate the second strap, but hey, it’s better than COVID! [0] https://shop.demetech.us/collections/n95-respirator-masks/products/n95-respirator-masks-fold-style https://shop.demetech.us/collections/n95-respirator-masks/pr... Edit: for the record, I think the ones I got at Home Depot are nicer. They have a foam cushion on the bridge of the nose and a super sturdy “pinch”.
- h_anna_h 6y ago
  what do you mean by pc in this post?
  - nwatson 6y ago
    "/pc" == "per piece" == apiece
  - ojilles 6y ago
    Per piece, as in per individual mask.
- chefkoch 6y ago
  In Germany they are 1€ per piece in every supermarket.
pulse7 6y ago
Their shop (https://shop.demetech.us https://shop.demetech.us) ships only to United States, Canada and Mexico... so I am unable to buy it the easy way...
- whalesalad 6y ago
  It also looks like a typical faceless drop ship company that I’d normally never buy anything from.
  - atonse 6y ago
    No they’re one of the companies mentioned in the article. Hardly faceless.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- AnthonBerg 6y ago
  I've had a good experience with freight forwarding services like MyUS.com and shipito.com. 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!
  - pulse7 6y ago
    This is true (I also have a MyUS account)! But then you have a "customs clearance procedure" and some shops will reject non-US credit cards - like Lenovo US - and you have to call support and "fight-it-through" or use virtual US credit card like that on privacy.com... So yes, it works, but has "unknown obstacles"...
roenxi 6y ago
There are a lot of questions to answer about masks. Who makes them, how many, what price they are sold for and who to? These question are political. Early on in the pandemic, around April, selling masks for $7 was considered price gouging [0] and $1.27 was the politically fair price. The tech companies are already facing various government investigations for being greedy capitalists; I can very much see the wisdom of whoever decided to stay away from masks. I'm watching with interest what happens to these small time mask makers. Their fate will influence the behaviour of people who anticipate the next crisis. [0] https://theintercept.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-3m-n95-masks-price-gouging/ https://theintercept.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-3m-n95-masks...
- h_anna_h 6y ago
  Here the usual price is 0.2 euro per mask.
Oras 6y ago
Interesting, I am not in the US so I thought of checking if it is a new company but it was founded in 2000! [0] How come that they are 20+ years in medical business and they do not have established connections with hospitals and other retailers to sell these masks? [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0692237D:US https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0692237D:US
- pjc50 6y ago
  Other way round: in the UK, all sorts of companies were popped up to sell masks to the government by people who had the political connections. Quite a lot of them didn't deliver.
pembrook 6y ago
> These businesses must overcome the ingrained purchasing habits of hospital systems, medical supply distributors and state governments. I’m guessing this is the real crux of the problem. They’re trying to sell to some of the most glacial organizations on planet. The bigger the organization, the slower it moves. Purchasing cycles can take anywhere from 6 months to YEARS if you’re talking big business or government. This is also why B2B and B2G are such lucrative markets to be in. Having a bunch of lazy, stumbling giants with basically unlimited money as your clients is the holy grail. Once they’ve been sold, they literally CANNOT stop buying from you if even they wanted to. It’d be a year before they could even get another supplier approved! Talk about low churn.
- mathewsanders 6y ago
  I worked at Monster.com (job posting service) ten years ago and this was essentially their business model: HR departments would be locked into a long term contract of 2-5 years, which was (anecdotally) a longer period than typical HR manager role who would approve a contract like this, so they would often not even be around for a renewal and whoever replaced them would be sucked into signing another long term contract.
- lloydarmbrust 6y ago
  I don't agree with this. I run ArmbrustUSA and can make about 1MM masks per day, and we started at the same time as this company. 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-level-3/products/surgical-mask-astm-level-3 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.
tpowell 6y ago
I thought I was Chicken Little buying my first masks (P100 respirators) in January 2020. I bought a couple more fancy ones in Feb. Days later, decent masks disappeared—those had to last me the rest of 2020. Around November(?), Powecom masks became FDA approved and I've bought plenty through https://bonafidemasks.com https://bonafidemasks.com. There are coupons floating around (try slickdeals). The headband style ones are a little more $, but provide a better seal. I also like that they have black as an option. FYI I use a BYD surgical masks ($8 for 50 at Costco) on top of these and really try to keep those to single use. Don't forget to use germ-x or whatever after touching the outside of your mask—static electricity is supposed to help particles stick to the outside (hence a fresh surgical for the outside layer).
- pulse7 6y ago
  Just ordered 100x Powecom KN95 FDA Authorized masks on this website based on your comment! Found a valid coupon code (DEAL22). For $95.56 including shipping to Europe this is less than a dollar for a KN95 mask! Thank you! EDIT: Note the N95 / KN95 difference: N95 is the US standard, KN95 is the China standard.
- blub 6y ago
  Foreign governments (ahem, government) bought the masks from underneath the US's nose. The USG should have insta-blocked exports.
  - AlbertoGP 6y ago
    Not just the government directly, but also a big established network of their citizens: “Who stole all the masks?” (2020-04-03) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImmRjT74i-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImmRjT74i-c That’s the practice known as “Daigou” (代购): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigou A pre-pandemic article about the practice, specifically in Australia: “The daigou channel — how a handful of Chinese shoppers turned into a billion-dollar industry” (2019-07-31) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-31/chinese-daigou-changing-influencing-australian-business/11221498 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-31/chinese-daigou-changi...
- 6y ago
ulucs 6y ago
Thankfully they are not valved, people who wear valved masks are worse than anti-maskers.
- onethought 6y ago
  Some people have actual breathing conditions (pollution sensitive, allergies etc) that require a proper sealed mask, without the valve the seal will often break. Valves with a diffuser cap that stops the air jetting out are probably the best if you have this restriction.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    If those people need a proper sealed mask now, they also needed a proper sealed mask before covid-19. In actuality they were not wearing a mask at all unless they were either Japanese or usually in a hospital/nursing home/hospice and on a short trip outside to see a specialist. That being said, I have breathing problems and the combination of masks and cold weather is awful. I'd love to wear something that released the moisture. It wouldn't be nice to the people around me, though, and I can just get away from people to take a break if I need it.
    - onethought 6y ago
      Yes. I meant people who wore masks before Covid.
- pinky1417 6y ago
  Worse than anti-maskers? At least someone wearing a valved mask is reducing the risk that he/she will get COVID in the first place and, thus, become a spreader. Masks that don't filter exhalations can still contribute to reducing R0.
  - ulucs 6y ago
    Anti-maskers mostly don't acknowledge COVID as a risk. Valve-wearers do acknowledge that COVID is a risk, but choose to disregard others' health anyway. One is dumb, but the other is malicious.
GuB-42 6y ago
> a search for N95s yields a welter of vendors hawking KN95 masks, a Chinese-made equivalent that researchers say is less effective Any source for that? From what I've seen, N95, KN95, FFP2 and others are pretty much equivalent. There are some small differences but none that significantly affect the level of protection. There are certainly differences between manufacturers, and maybe there are more fake KN95 than there are fake N95, but that's not an issue with the certification.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  For reasons I don’t fully understand, NIOSH absolutely requires head bands to be N95 certified. NIOSH believes a good fit is difficult enough with ear loops that they’ll never certify them.
wiradikusuma 6y ago
Sorry maybe I missed this from the article, but why not sell to common people through Amazon? In some Asian countries, it's freely available from online marketplaces. The price now down to 1/10 of what it was during the early days of Covid, but since mask is mandatory whenever you go out, it's like staple.
zajio1am 6y ago
I do not really understand why hospital workers and others that use masks daily for whole shift still use single-use N95 masks and not half-face respirators with reusable filters, like 3M 7500 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5zbj3_ezqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5zbj3_ezqE). They are more comfortable and fit much better.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- iguy 6y ago
  I don't know either, but lots of stuff in hospitals is disposable, because this is easier than figuring out a system to disinfect & re-use it. Although perhaps that makes more sense in an operating theatre than many of the lower-risk places people now wear them, all day.
- goldcd 6y ago
  My guess is that it's to prevent cross-contamination. 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.
Semaphor 6y ago
Is there still a shortage in the US? Here in Germany (we need surgical masks or (K)N95/FFP2 masks to go to the store or for public transport) they have been available easily for a while. Prices for Made in Germany ones were (and are) high, but getting Chinese-made masks shipped from EU or German warehouses was easy, and now one of our discounters (Lidl) started selling them for 0.88€ ($1.07) per piece. I bought 20 FFP2 and 50 surgical masks in a pack from a German medical equipment importer for 25€ ($30).
- wil421 6y ago
  You can buy packs of kn95 masks on Amazon with same day delivery so I assume the shortage is gone.
- HelloMcFly 6y ago
  It's quite easy to get KN95 (even ones approved by FDA and tested by CDC) and KF94 (same). N95 and N99 are not as easy come by, but I think people fixate on those a but to their detriment. My Powecom KN95 and Dr. Puri KF94 are far, far, far superior to any N95 mask I've ever had in the way it seals my face, and their effectiveness is similarly good (https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/respirators/testing/NonNIOSHresults.html https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/respirators/testing/NonNIOSH...).
whalesalad 6y ago
This guy isn’t hustling as hard as he should be. If you can’t get deals because of the old boys club of buyers and suppliers you gotta do some guerrilla marketing. Learn which hospitals are struggling with masks. Lease a bunch of U-Haul/Ryder trucks and fill them with masks. Park them in front of the hospitals with massive banners on the side: “50,000 made in USA n95 masks inside. Call 555-555-5555” Pretty soon you’ll be selling every mask you make. Or start selling direct to consumer using marketplaces like Amazon.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- vegannet 6y ago
  > you gotta do some guerrilla marketing 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.
  - whalesalad 6y ago
    Yeah after this article they'll be fine.
  - throwaway81523 6y ago
    > Like getting a piece in the nytimes? Back in my day we called that a slashvertisement.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > Learn which hospitals are struggling with masks. Lease a bunch of U-Haul/Ryder trucks and fill them with masks. Park them in front of the hospitals with massive banners on the side: “50,000 made in USA n95 masks inside. Call 555-555-5555” This is glorious.
- 55873445216111 6y ago
  "Hustling" tends to get viewed as "price gouging". Reminds me of a story from 2006 during Katrina. https://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1954352 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.
lrossi 6y ago
> Another obstacle comes from companies like Facebook and Google, which banned the sale and advertising of N95 masks If this is true, these companies are responsible for thousands of deaths, and should be prosecuted.
hereme888 6y ago
No shortage at any of the hospitals I've worked in over the past several months. A regular surgical mask is enough for the average street walker, and a month ago in NY there were people handing boxes of them out to people in the streets for free.
josefresco 6y ago
I recently ordered N95 masks from http://clinicalsuppliesusa.com/ http://clinicalsuppliesusa.com/ (no affiliation) I actually didn't know they were even available, after being told by officials to use cloth masks for 10+ months I stopped looking. I was surprised how easy and available they were. EDIT: As others have pointed out their website is down. It was working as recently as 1 month ago. Sorry!
- MockObject 6y ago
  I go there and I see "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"
  - josefresco 6y ago
    Ha! Good catch. It was working on Jan 4th which is when I placed my order.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > I actually didn't know they were even available, after being told by officials to use cloth masks for 10+ months I stopped looking. I was surprised how easy and available they were. 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.
  - josefresco 6y ago
    I bought N95 NIOSH masks. Like most US consumers I searched Amazon occasionally to see if the market was again offering them to consumers but it took a post here on HN, for me to Google and find a US-based supplier. I'm happy to have them, and have given some to my elderly parents.
    - ardy42 6y ago
hilbert42 6y ago
Fucking hell. Do we have to dig up General Groves and Oppenheimer to find people with sufficient organizing skills to get the COVID-19 Jobs done? What the hell's gone wrong with the US? (If this were the early/mid 1940s then the AXIS powers would have won!)
nikolay 6y ago
So, N95 masks are made by people wearing surgical masks [0]? [0]: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/02/09/science/09VIRUS-MASKS4/merlin_183326406_f64af596-5698-427d-836c-90db20bf3226-superJumbo.jpg https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/02/09/science/09VIRUS-M...
jdsully 6y ago
In Canada KN95 masks are easily available but nobody in the medical community will use them. I have friends going to work with vulnerable populations using nearly worthless surgical masks because there "aren't enough N95s" even though KN95 is basically the same spec.
observer987 6y ago
I searched for the N95 masks online for months without success - Ordered 20pc box from demetech and the us mask company referenced in the article within 5 mins of reading it.

90 points by winstonsmith 6y ago

> Another obstacle comes from companies like Facebook and Google, which banned the sale and advertising of N95 masks in an effort to thwart profiteers from diverting vital medical gear needed by frontline medical workers. In their desire to wield censorship to avoid bad PR, these companies are actually hindering some of the people doing the best work (and taking on their own financial risk!) to help. This is despicable. Why are large corporations so cowardly?

XorNot 6y ago
Why do people keep asking this question when pretty obviously big corporations have big PR and marketing departments that when they tell you you're going to lose a lot of money from consumer disengagement and are looking at a senate investigation, so what corporations are literally built to only do and take the most profitable option? This isn't a mystery. Public pressure doesn't work because corporations "feel bad".
- sneak 6y ago
  Public pressure to avoid being seen as profiting from opportunists seems to work.

ardourdev 6y ago

I have noticed that Google Shopping is blocking results for "N95 mask" in the UK, making it more difficult to find retailers which sell them. On the other hand there are thousands upon thousands of results on eBay/Amazon, most of which cannot be trusted.

iso1210 6y ago
Use ddg in the UK, type "buy n95 mask", 3rd result down is https://www.buyfacemasks.co.uk/ 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.
viraptor 6y ago
You can also look for comparable quality masks by name. For example Korean airqueen is still available relatively cheap and they're amazing quality.

OJFord 6y ago

> The problem is getting consumers to their retail websites. At the moment, anyone trying to buy N95 masks on Google Shopping or Facebook Marketplace is greeted with a blank page; on Amazon, a search for N95s yields a welter of vendors hawking KN95 masks, a Chinese-made equivalent that researchers say is less effective. > “How is it that you can spread conspiracy theories on Facebook, but we can’t sell N95 masks to the millions of Americans who need them right now?” Mr. Brown asked. “I can understand Facebook not wanting to sell masks made by some guy in his garage, but these masks meet strict N.I.O.S.H. guidelines.” I can more understand the first half of the article, about ingrained purchasing processes in hospitals etc. leaving newcomers with unbought supply, but this is nuts. All the crap that Amazon does show if you search 'mask' or 'respirator' over the last year, and they refuse to list genuine stuff? I still have a disposable FFP3 (UK/EU N99 equivalent I believe) from a couple of years before the pandemic, it was £1.12ea or much less in packs. Currently I'd have to pay 10x that for a shitty piece of ill-fitting cloth. (It's probably technically past its shelf life, but it can't be worse than fabric that never met any filtration specification.)

mcintyre1994 6y ago
It might just be me, but even if Google and Facebook were happy to advertise their masks I'd assume they were fake/bad quality if they were being advertised on those platforms - in the same way that Amazon clearly are selling rubbish. Not sure what the solution to that is though.
- high_density 6y ago
  maybe Google, FB, Amazon are victims of their own 'successful ML algorithms' or some sellers that are gaming the advertisement system?
londons_explore 6y ago
We should remember that the certification processes for medical stuff are very long and extensive, yet even so a mask that allows 5% of air to leak round the edge of the mask will pass the certification! 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.

cmckn 6y ago

I purchased some at Home Depot recently for $4/pc (they had plenty in stock, Seattle area). The company mentioned here is selling [0] them for $3.75/pc, but only in quantities of 20 ($75). I wish N95’s did not necessitate the second strap, but hey, it’s better than COVID! [0] https://shop.demetech.us/collections/n95-respirator-masks/products/n95-respirator-masks-fold-style https://shop.demetech.us/collections/n95-respirator-masks/pr... Edit: for the record, I think the ones I got at Home Depot are nicer. They have a foam cushion on the bridge of the nose and a super sturdy “pinch”.

h_anna_h 6y ago
what do you mean by pc in this post?
- nwatson 6y ago
  "/pc" == "per piece" == apiece
- ojilles 6y ago
  Per piece, as in per individual mask.
chefkoch 6y ago
In Germany they are 1€ per piece in every supermarket.

pulse7 6y ago

Their shop (https://shop.demetech.us https://shop.demetech.us) ships only to United States, Canada and Mexico... so I am unable to buy it the easy way...

whalesalad 6y ago
It also looks like a typical faceless drop ship company that I’d normally never buy anything from.
- atonse 6y ago
  No they’re one of the companies mentioned in the article. Hardly faceless.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
AnthonBerg 6y ago
I've had a good experience with freight forwarding services like MyUS.com and shipito.com. 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!
- pulse7 6y ago
  This is true (I also have a MyUS account)! But then you have a "customs clearance procedure" and some shops will reject non-US credit cards - like Lenovo US - and you have to call support and "fight-it-through" or use virtual US credit card like that on privacy.com... So yes, it works, but has "unknown obstacles"...

roenxi 6y ago

There are a lot of questions to answer about masks. Who makes them, how many, what price they are sold for and who to? These question are political. Early on in the pandemic, around April, selling masks for $7 was considered price gouging [0] and $1.27 was the politically fair price. The tech companies are already facing various government investigations for being greedy capitalists; I can very much see the wisdom of whoever decided to stay away from masks. I'm watching with interest what happens to these small time mask makers. Their fate will influence the behaviour of people who anticipate the next crisis. [0] https://theintercept.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-3m-n95-masks-price-gouging/ https://theintercept.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-3m-n95-masks...

h_anna_h 6y ago
Here the usual price is 0.2 euro per mask.

Oras 6y ago

Interesting, I am not in the US so I thought of checking if it is a new company but it was founded in 2000! [0] How come that they are 20+ years in medical business and they do not have established connections with hospitals and other retailers to sell these masks? [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0692237D:US https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0692237D:US

pjc50 6y ago
Other way round: in the UK, all sorts of companies were popped up to sell masks to the government by people who had the political connections. Quite a lot of them didn't deliver.

pembrook 6y ago

> These businesses must overcome the ingrained purchasing habits of hospital systems, medical supply distributors and state governments. I’m guessing this is the real crux of the problem. They’re trying to sell to some of the most glacial organizations on planet. The bigger the organization, the slower it moves. Purchasing cycles can take anywhere from 6 months to YEARS if you’re talking big business or government. This is also why B2B and B2G are such lucrative markets to be in. Having a bunch of lazy, stumbling giants with basically unlimited money as your clients is the holy grail. Once they’ve been sold, they literally CANNOT stop buying from you if even they wanted to. It’d be a year before they could even get another supplier approved! Talk about low churn.

mathewsanders 6y ago
I worked at Monster.com (job posting service) ten years ago and this was essentially their business model: HR departments would be locked into a long term contract of 2-5 years, which was (anecdotally) a longer period than typical HR manager role who would approve a contract like this, so they would often not even be around for a renewal and whoever replaced them would be sucked into signing another long term contract.
lloydarmbrust 6y ago
I don't agree with this. I run ArmbrustUSA and can make about 1MM masks per day, and we started at the same time as this company. 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-level-3/products/surgical-mask-astm-level-3 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.

tpowell 6y ago

I thought I was Chicken Little buying my first masks (P100 respirators) in January 2020. I bought a couple more fancy ones in Feb. Days later, decent masks disappeared—those had to last me the rest of 2020. Around November(?), Powecom masks became FDA approved and I've bought plenty through https://bonafidemasks.com https://bonafidemasks.com. There are coupons floating around (try slickdeals). The headband style ones are a little more $, but provide a better seal. I also like that they have black as an option. FYI I use a BYD surgical masks ($8 for 50 at Costco) on top of these and really try to keep those to single use. Don't forget to use germ-x or whatever after touching the outside of your mask—static electricity is supposed to help particles stick to the outside (hence a fresh surgical for the outside layer).

pulse7 6y ago
Just ordered 100x Powecom KN95 FDA Authorized masks on this website based on your comment! Found a valid coupon code (DEAL22). For $95.56 including shipping to Europe this is less than a dollar for a KN95 mask! Thank you! EDIT: Note the N95 / KN95 difference: N95 is the US standard, KN95 is the China standard.
blub 6y ago
Foreign governments (ahem, government) bought the masks from underneath the US's nose. The USG should have insta-blocked exports.
- AlbertoGP 6y ago
  Not just the government directly, but also a big established network of their citizens: “Who stole all the masks?” (2020-04-03) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImmRjT74i-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImmRjT74i-c That’s the practice known as “Daigou” (代购): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigou A pre-pandemic article about the practice, specifically in Australia: “The daigou channel — how a handful of Chinese shoppers turned into a billion-dollar industry” (2019-07-31) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-31/chinese-daigou-changing-influencing-australian-business/11221498 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-31/chinese-daigou-changi...
6y ago

ulucs 6y ago

Thankfully they are not valved, people who wear valved masks are worse than anti-maskers.

onethought 6y ago
Some people have actual breathing conditions (pollution sensitive, allergies etc) that require a proper sealed mask, without the valve the seal will often break. Valves with a diffuser cap that stops the air jetting out are probably the best if you have this restriction.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  If those people need a proper sealed mask now, they also needed a proper sealed mask before covid-19. In actuality they were not wearing a mask at all unless they were either Japanese or usually in a hospital/nursing home/hospice and on a short trip outside to see a specialist. That being said, I have breathing problems and the combination of masks and cold weather is awful. I'd love to wear something that released the moisture. It wouldn't be nice to the people around me, though, and I can just get away from people to take a break if I need it.
  - onethought 6y ago
    Yes. I meant people who wore masks before Covid.
pinky1417 6y ago
Worse than anti-maskers? At least someone wearing a valved mask is reducing the risk that he/she will get COVID in the first place and, thus, become a spreader. Masks that don't filter exhalations can still contribute to reducing R0.
- ulucs 6y ago
  Anti-maskers mostly don't acknowledge COVID as a risk. Valve-wearers do acknowledge that COVID is a risk, but choose to disregard others' health anyway. One is dumb, but the other is malicious.

GuB-42 6y ago

> a search for N95s yields a welter of vendors hawking KN95 masks, a Chinese-made equivalent that researchers say is less effective Any source for that? From what I've seen, N95, KN95, FFP2 and others are pretty much equivalent. There are some small differences but none that significantly affect the level of protection. There are certainly differences between manufacturers, and maybe there are more fake KN95 than there are fake N95, but that's not an issue with the certification.

Scoundreller 6y ago
For reasons I don’t fully understand, NIOSH absolutely requires head bands to be N95 certified. NIOSH believes a good fit is difficult enough with ear loops that they’ll never certify them.

wiradikusuma 6y ago

Sorry maybe I missed this from the article, but why not sell to common people through Amazon? In some Asian countries, it's freely available from online marketplaces. The price now down to 1/10 of what it was during the early days of Covid, but since mask is mandatory whenever you go out, it's like staple.

zajio1am 6y ago

I do not really understand why hospital workers and others that use masks daily for whole shift still use single-use N95 masks and not half-face respirators with reusable filters, like 3M 7500 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5zbj3_ezqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5zbj3_ezqE). They are more comfortable and fit much better.

deleted 6y ago
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iguy 6y ago
I don't know either, but lots of stuff in hospitals is disposable, because this is easier than figuring out a system to disinfect & re-use it. Although perhaps that makes more sense in an operating theatre than many of the lower-risk places people now wear them, all day.
goldcd 6y ago
My guess is that it's to prevent cross-contamination. 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.

Semaphor 6y ago

Is there still a shortage in the US? Here in Germany (we need surgical masks or (K)N95/FFP2 masks to go to the store or for public transport) they have been available easily for a while. Prices for Made in Germany ones were (and are) high, but getting Chinese-made masks shipped from EU or German warehouses was easy, and now one of our discounters (Lidl) started selling them for 0.88€ ($1.07) per piece. I bought 20 FFP2 and 50 surgical masks in a pack from a German medical equipment importer for 25€ ($30).

wil421 6y ago
You can buy packs of kn95 masks on Amazon with same day delivery so I assume the shortage is gone.
HelloMcFly 6y ago
It's quite easy to get KN95 (even ones approved by FDA and tested by CDC) and KF94 (same). N95 and N99 are not as easy come by, but I think people fixate on those a but to their detriment. My Powecom KN95 and Dr. Puri KF94 are far, far, far superior to any N95 mask I've ever had in the way it seals my face, and their effectiveness is similarly good (https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/respirators/testing/NonNIOSHresults.html https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/respirators/testing/NonNIOSH...).

whalesalad 6y ago

This guy isn’t hustling as hard as he should be. If you can’t get deals because of the old boys club of buyers and suppliers you gotta do some guerrilla marketing. Learn which hospitals are struggling with masks. Lease a bunch of U-Haul/Ryder trucks and fill them with masks. Park them in front of the hospitals with massive banners on the side: “50,000 made in USA n95 masks inside. Call 555-555-5555” Pretty soon you’ll be selling every mask you make. Or start selling direct to consumer using marketplaces like Amazon.

deleted 6y ago
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vegannet 6y ago
> you gotta do some guerrilla marketing 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.
- whalesalad 6y ago
  Yeah after this article they'll be fine.
- throwaway81523 6y ago
  > Like getting a piece in the nytimes? Back in my day we called that a slashvertisement.
mschuster91 6y ago
> Learn which hospitals are struggling with masks. Lease a bunch of U-Haul/Ryder trucks and fill them with masks. Park them in front of the hospitals with massive banners on the side: “50,000 made in USA n95 masks inside. Call 555-555-5555” This is glorious.
55873445216111 6y ago
"Hustling" tends to get viewed as "price gouging". Reminds me of a story from 2006 during Katrina. https://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1954352 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.

lrossi 6y ago

> Another obstacle comes from companies like Facebook and Google, which banned the sale and advertising of N95 masks If this is true, these companies are responsible for thousands of deaths, and should be prosecuted.

hereme888 6y ago

No shortage at any of the hospitals I've worked in over the past several months. A regular surgical mask is enough for the average street walker, and a month ago in NY there were people handing boxes of them out to people in the streets for free.

josefresco 6y ago

I recently ordered N95 masks from http://clinicalsuppliesusa.com/ http://clinicalsuppliesusa.com/ (no affiliation) I actually didn't know they were even available, after being told by officials to use cloth masks for 10+ months I stopped looking. I was surprised how easy and available they were. EDIT: As others have pointed out their website is down. It was working as recently as 1 month ago. Sorry!

MockObject 6y ago
I go there and I see "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"
- josefresco 6y ago
  Ha! Good catch. It was working on Jan 4th which is when I placed my order.
ardy42 6y ago
> I actually didn't know they were even available, after being told by officials to use cloth masks for 10+ months I stopped looking. I was surprised how easy and available they were. 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.
- josefresco 6y ago
  I bought N95 NIOSH masks. Like most US consumers I searched Amazon occasionally to see if the market was again offering them to consumers but it took a post here on HN, for me to Google and find a US-based supplier. I'm happy to have them, and have given some to my elderly parents.
  - ardy42 6y ago

hilbert42 6y ago

Fucking hell. Do we have to dig up General Groves and Oppenheimer to find people with sufficient organizing skills to get the COVID-19 Jobs done? What the hell's gone wrong with the US? (If this were the early/mid 1940s then the AXIS powers would have won!)

nikolay 6y ago

So, N95 masks are made by people wearing surgical masks [0]? [0]: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/02/09/science/09VIRUS-MASKS4/merlin_183326406_f64af596-5698-427d-836c-90db20bf3226-superJumbo.jpg https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/02/09/science/09VIRUS-M...

jdsully 6y ago

In Canada KN95 masks are easily available but nobody in the medical community will use them. I have friends going to work with vulnerable populations using nearly worthless surgical masks because there "aren't enough N95s" even though KN95 is basically the same spec.

observer987 6y ago

I searched for the N95 masks online for months without success - Ordered 20pc box from demetech and the us mask company referenced in the article within 5 mins of reading it.