I decided to give you little overview of the work involved in making masks to order. When I started, I was still this one self-employed person with a sewing business that decided to make masks for those who needed to still get to work at the start of lock-down. My country made masks obligatory so I started making them for friends and family few weeks before lock-down started here. I am also in my 3d year of University Degree (Interior Design) so I was making the few while still attending courses.
As soon as lock-down started, I put them online not thinking much of it. Before I knew it, orders doubled then doubled again then gone completely crazy and I kept buying fabrics daily to satisfy the demand. This was not sustainable and deliveries were delayed, getting elastic and any other haberdashery was really hard due to lock-down. I found a supplier with lovely 100% cotton fabrics and decided to invest all the income into new fabrics to have bigger stock. I also asked a friend to help with sewing (of course paid). It was a plunge. Now, we are 5 of us working on this and the demand is not stopping. We are constantly behind with orders as we cant keep up. If I let the masks out of stock, I am getting too many emails still asking for masks and its even harder to deal with answering all the emails. So I simply slowed things down a little by giving little less options of fabrics at any one time to keep some stock but I had to speed up production process and offer only one universal size that fits most (that is somewhere in between most peoples sizes). In the gallery below you can see overview of the production process to better understand what is involved. One person can make well, around 4 full masks per hour. We are getting orders for 200 and more per day.We cant all work 8h a day every day of the week, some of my helpers have families and jobs to juggle still. I am the ones that works every day early start till after dinner. But, I cant keep going like this myself. I am neglecting my studies now and I didn’t have full day off in nearly 3 months. I really appreciate patience from my customers as I understand how important it is for you all and we will do what we can to work fast. I just wish we all had more hours in a day, more energy and more hands. Thank you and hope you enjoy your face masks!
