The Weekly - May 5, 2020 - 13

FEATURE
brands are furloughing workers
and reducing hours-and scuba
and snorkeling gear isn't moving at
retail-the company has retained
100% of its American employees
at full pay. "We are also including
our retail partners, small specialty
dealers, as well as chains like
West Marine and Dick's Sporting
Goods, in our processes so that
they can directly help their local
communities and receive sales
income during these hard times,"
says Jon Wilkins, Ocean Reef's
national sales director in the U.S.

CO U R T E SY J E F F D R E W/ M AS KO N .O R G

MEANWHILE IN BOSTON, DR.

Sanjay Vakil, a senior product
manager at Google, came across an
email in late March that caught his
eye. It was a request on a maker's
Listserv asking if anyone had the
skills or a 3D printer to build an
adapter for a full-face snorkeling
mask to work with an anesthesiology breathing circuit filter. Vakil,
who has three degrees in aerospace
from MIT, responded. That was
just the kind of tinkering Vakil
was good at. The effort snowballed
quickly as experts in medicine,
technology, and academia came
together to transform an outdoor
product into much-needed durable,
reusable PPE to be donated to
intensive care units and emergency
room workers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. The nonprofit
effort, known as MasksOn.org,
launched in late March, and within
a month, the group of some 50 volunteers had delivered 3,500 masks
to 440 hospitals nationwide.
MasksOn relies on individual
donors and a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds to buy up
existing stocks of masks. "We
bought around 10,000 Ocean Reef
masks," says Vakil, who serves as
the nonprofit's executive director. "And I basically cornered the
market on HEAD masks." Brands
and retailers, despite struggling
with closures due to the pandemic,
sold their masks to the group at

cost or wholesale. "Everyone was
incredibly supportive," says Vakil,
who also secured masks from Seac
and Wildhorn Outfitters.
Doctors have been an integral
part of the effort-in both testing
and fundraising. "A local doctor
contacted us wanting to buy masks
from our shop in Omaha [for
MasksOn]," says Christine Hughey,
CMO of Diventures, a scuba diving
facility with retail outlets in the
Midwest. Diventures hunted down
existing inventory of the Head
Sea Vu snorkeling mask across its
shops and helped facilitate an order direct from the manufacturer,
delivering approximately 2,350
masks at wholesale, forgoing any
profit. "It was cool to tie what we're
passionate about with helping
those in need," says Hughey.
Researchers at Stanford and
MIT helped test the masks and
adapters for seal, breathability,
fogging, and durability. At first,
the MasksOn group used 3Dprinted adapters. But, using agecycle testing, a polymer expert at
MIT (who had volunteered to help)
found that the surgical resin in the
3D adapters would eventually fail
after months of use and autoclave
sanitizing. But Vakil linked up
with Minneapolis-based Protolabs, which was able to create an
injection mold for the adapters in
under a week. The nonprofit has
raised $2 million of its $5 million
goal in order to produce 100,000
assembled masks. "That line on
the 'flatten the curve' infographic
is horizontal," says Vakil. "But we
learned from Italy and China, as
EMTs, doctors, and nurses get
sick, that line starts to dip down.
"We can't afford to have our health
care workers fall sick."
FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS

of Ocean Reef, Mares, a manufacturer of scuba diving gear based in
Italy, started making adapters too.
Sergio Angelini, chief technology
officer at Mares, was inspired by

"THAT LINE ON THE 'FLATTEN THE CURVE'
INFOGRAPHIC IS HORIZONTAL. BUT WE LEARNED
FROM ITALY AND CHINA, AS EMTS, DOCTORS,
AND NURSES GET SICK, THAT LINE STARTS
TO DIP DOWN. WE CAN'T AFFORD TO HAVE
OUR HEALTH CARE WORKERS FALL SICK."
-Dr. Sanjay Vakil, executive director of MasksOn.org

two Italian engineers at Isinnova
who had developed adapters for
full-face snorkeling masks from
Decathlon for use as ventilators in
patient therapy. He began working on retrofitting the company's
snorkeling masks to be used with
ventilators.
"We decided to pull our inventory, and we found a network of
companies that were willing to
provide us the parts through 3D
printing," says Angelini. Mares
was able to deliver the masks
swiftly at the height of the crisis
in Italy with 3D printing. "People
came together for the greater
good without asking for anything
in return," he says. "They just
wanted to contribute in some way
during these dire times." Ferrari even stepped up, producing
thermoplastic respirator valves
and fittings for the masks at its
Maranello plant.
To date, the Mares group has
donated 900 of its retrofitted

masks to hospitals. The brand now
has the capacity to scale up production of the adapters by utilizing
injection molding. As the crisis in
Italy begins to level off, Mares has
turned its attention to bringing
the mask to a broader market for
use as PPE for ambulance drivers,
dentists, and even consumers
making runs to Costco. "It can
filter your exhalation and inhalation from 99.999% of bacteria and
viruses," says Angelini. "Everyone
is a potential customer."
While companies like Ocean
Reef and Mares are looking at
potential longer-term applications for masks with adapters,
MasksOn is laser-focused on the
now. "Our goal is to cover the
window where the supply chain
for fully regulated medical PPE is
stretched too thin. Once it comes
back, we're going to shut it all
down," says Vakil. "Hopefully this
will be my shortest employment
cycle ever."

OUTDOOR RETAILER SUMMER 2020 / THE WEEKLY 13

http://www.MasksOn.org http://www.MasksOn.org

The Weekly - May 5, 2020

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