ATLANTA — OneUp Innovations, the designer, manufacturer and marketer of Liberator and a portfolio of other consumer lifestyle brands, announced that it has retooled its operations to help combat the shortage of isolation gowns and masks for hospital healthcare workers.
To date, OneUp has received orders for 35,000 reusable PPE gowns from an Atlanta-based health system that has 2,800 doctors, 250 locations and 11 hospitals, the company says. The protective gear will be delivered daily to meet the critical needs of health care workers with additional orders expected shortly.
“In response to this COVID-19 crisis, I directed my design team to also develop medical facemasks that we could produce in high-volume from readily available materials,” Liberator founder and CEO Louis Friedman said. “That mask is now in production and we are ramping up.”
According to Friedman, the new orders for medical gowns has allowed the company to deploy its conveyor material handling sewing system and efficiently move the gowns from one operation to the next.
The masks are equipped with an internal three-part filter system and are intended for reuse when washed. The company says it continues to receive orders for medical facemasks with the largest order to date being 6,000 masks for a seven-state hospital network. The facemasks are now available on Walmart.com and AvanaComfort.com.
“As we gear up, the safety of our employees is our highest priority,” Friedman said. “No one is allowed in the facility without a temperature check and all work stations are being outfitted with isolation barriers. We are disinfecting all work surfaces during the day, and lunch and break periods have been added to increase the separation of employees in the dining areas.”
Friedman added, “For years I’ve been criticized for investing in large-scale cut-and-sew manufacturing in the U.S. As crisis has [now] created an opportunity to help, I’m really glad I did it.”
