When New Balance, the Massachusetts company which makes running and walking shoes, decided to switch from manufacturing shoes into producing high-end medical masks to fight COVID-19, it took just one week, and a whole lot of elbow grease and ingenuity, to change directions.
Now, the company is churning out 100,000 masks per week at its Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Norridgewock, Maine, plants and they may begin mask production at three other plants, now idle, that the company owns.
“We are really fortunate to be able to leverage our current supplier relationships and they all stepped up. Everybody wanted to make it happen and they worked day and night and through the weekends with us to get us samples and make sure we had the right volume. It was very inspirational,” New Balance Executive Vice President of Global Supply Chain, Dave Wheeler, said.
New Balance realized it had no expertise in making high-end medical masks, but partnered with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Massachusetts General Hospital to design the new mask the company planned to produce.
The New Balance mask is a five-layer mask and bears some interesting similarities with New Balance shoes. A “no sew” technique from the shoe line is used to bond the masks together, and New Balance’s “curly laces” are used as straps, which enables the masks to be pulled tighter to the face.
“I think it is a neat enhancement because not only does it tie to our footwear heritage, but also it is a performance capability that doesn’t exist on other masks,” Wheeler said.
New Balance said in a statement, “This is not a commercial opportunity. NB is pursuing break-even pricing and/or donations for the face mask. This initiative has kept many of our associates proudly engaged during this economic and public health crisis while our traditional retail customers are closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Wheeler said, “We wouldn’t have been able to start from scratch and go into production within a week without U.S. manufacturing and all the expertise that comes along with it.
“We are just humbled and fortunate to step up and make a difference.”
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