inPhorm Produces Masks to Help During Pandemic

inPhorm is a company known for his trendy tennis, golf and yoga apparel and athlesiure that has taken great pride in producing eco-forward active wear for more than 10 years.

But in the current landscape we find ourselves living in, with a global pandemic causing a health crisis the likes of which we’ve never seen before, inPhorm has pivoted a bit in order to do its part and help.

“In this time of crisis, we all need to come together to offer even a small measure of aid,” the company said in a note to its members and customers. “Since the outbreak was acknowledged as a pandemic, we have been researching and developing reusable protective face masks, not only for our inPhorm community, but hopefully for many others.”

The idea was to produce an effective mask that would be able to be washed and re-used up to 20 times. Saad Hajidin, inPhorm’s founder and creative director, got in touch with his partner who has a factory in Thailand, and discussed a way to manufacture masks with the lowest possible margins.

“The affects of this are obviously being felt globally, so they had a lot of people in her factory that needed work as well,” said Hajidin. “We talked, and asked her if there was a way we could do this quickly. She used a fabric they had in-house to knit with, and then put a water repellent finish on it, with an antibacterial bamboo fabric.”

Taking all the proper precautions, the plan was set in motion. The facility was completely sanitized, and each mask is decontaminated with heat at 80 degrees Celsius before being packaged.

The outer layer is made from tightly knitted sustainable hydrophobic cotton fabric that meets the international waterrepellency test of up to 20 washes. The inner layer, which has a soft feel to the

face, is made from eco-forward sustainable bamboo fabric with an antibacterial finish.

With its three-dimensional contour shape and stretch bands around the ear, the mask molds to the face as a filter against airborne particles and droplets.

Hajidin said that within 48 hours, they were sold out of the 2,000 initial masks they had made.

“I didn’t want to push it too much because I wanted to make sure we were able to deliver if orders came in,” he said. “We can produce up to 10,000 masks in the follow-up, and then expand on that depending on if the need grows. We can accommodate up to 100,000 masks, and I’ve begun reaching out to different states, just to see if this would be a product they were interested in using as an alternative for health care workers.”

One thing that Hajidin and inPhorm wanted to make sure of was that the masks would be affordable and reusable.

“From listening to the news, you can see how much some companies were gouging, and the prices of masks were going way up really quickly,” said Hajidin. “You had these big companies making millions off masks, some of which were just cloth and gave a false sense of security. So I wanted to make something

that would be as effective, and something we should do with the lowest margin possible.

The other factor was making sure these masks would be able to be used a number of times. We are an ecoconscious company, and we realized that with all of these disposable masks being used, it’s going to create so much garbage and waste. I think making an alternative that people can wash and reuse helps cut down the amount of waste produced.”

The production of affordable and effective masks is just the latest example of inPhorm’s desire to help support the community in which it operates.

“We don’t how long this pandemic will last, and wearing masks has become sort of a social norm,” said Hajidin. “I grew up in Asia and that was the norm. You wore a mask because you did not want to spread anything to people. But if you wore a mask here previously you got weird looks. I think this change’s people’s minds about that, and I think masks could be part of the culture moving forward. And I wanted to be able to offer a good, affordable mask, one that is effective and at a reasonable price. I think that’s how we can help people within our industry and community.”