GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. — Many Minnesota manufacturers who changed their operations to help produce personal protective equipnent, or PPE, for healthcare workers are still producing face masks and face shields to help meet a second wave of demand, from other businesses and non-essential personnel.
After decades making athletic apparel and cold weather gear for college and pro teams, in March, WSI sportswear in Eagan shifted it's focus to teams in other fields.
"Hospitals, health care workers, law enforcement tactical," said Joel Wiens, owner of WSI. "It's feeling a little bit like you're in war time."
And the front lines are now expanding. As demand for masks and gowns for essential workers began to plateau, WSI's traditional clients started calling in nontraditional orders.
"Our largest order right now is from the University of Miami for 30,000 masks for all their students," Wiens said.
The Air Force Academy just placed a similar order, and new requests are coming in every day from businesses.
"We've tripled or quadrupled in size, over the past month," Wiens said. "Just from PPE demand. What we're really seeing too, is a lot of the 'ma and pa's', the small, local stores, they cannot find masks."
And this second wave of PPE demand doesn't stop there.
"I hope that [the demand] goes down, and that means people are able to find it," said Stuart Lee, owner of Lightning Kayaks and Accent/Cannon Paddles in Minneapolis.
Lee started making face shields for healthcare workers when he was forced to stop making his kayaks and paddles in March, but just as he began to reopen he got an urgent order for face shields from a local dental office.
"It just opened the floodgates," Lee said. "I had no idea how many dental offices there were in Minnesota."
And word has now spread far beyond the border. Lee says they've taken orders from Wisconsin, Iowa and even New York.
His team is now producing up to 2,500 custom face shields a day, and then shifting to the kayaks and paddles that profits depend on.
Kent Erdahl: "So you're prioritizing the PPE first?"
Stuart Lee: "Yeah, because it's helping someone. It could save someone's life. I can't turn my back on that."
Lightning Kayaks has opened a donation site so that individuals can help donate face shields to people or businesses that might struggle to afford them.
For businesses that struggle to afford the masks they need to reopen or protect their employees, WSI has started the "Empower American Made" program. Deserving companies can apply to have the cost of the masks covered by WSI.
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The state of Minnesota has set up a hotline for general questions about coronavirus at 651-201-3920 or 1-800-657-3903, available 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
There is also a data portal online at mn.gov/covid19.