1/ We have sold/donating over 240,000 Atoms masks at cost. Congrats to the entire @WearAtoms team. From idea to roachblockers to execution so far.

Sharing some reflection and how it all came together:

2/ Towards the end March we all saw NYC becoming epicenter of COVID19 – and there were not enough masks, especially reusable ones.

We were debating to design Atoms masks to be comfortable, breathable and hand washable. Something that feels good too.

3/ At the same time, we were quite nervous that it is going to be a business distraction. We shared the idea on our board call with @alexisohanian & @aatif_awan.

Alexis offered $10,000 to make/donate the initial masks, Aatif did some quick mind modeling, we were ready to go!

4/ Initial development started with in house resources and while our shoe factories are clean, for masks we wanted to do even better.

Got connected with someone who pivoted their business from making beauty masks to face masks.

5/ We trusted the new partner to move quickly. Placed an initial order of 10,000 masks and gave heads up for 30,000 more.

6/ Soon after we sensed issues with the new partner, who was slow to meet our needs.quality standards, + communication issues for material vendors too.

Our expected delivery date was also approaching. We decided to end the relationship with that vendor and start over quickly.

7/ Our Asia team (2 people) was working in parallel on finding a better alternate to make masks + improving our materials, running lab tests, wear testing, packaging all of it. They were working round the clock to reduce the time and make up for delay with quality & comfort.

8/ Resulted in establishing a new production unit, and Atoms masks being anti-bacterial, comfortable, breathable, machine/hand washable up to 50 times, and have temperature regulation properties.

9/ So we decided to set up a whole new manufacturing facility, by working with a Korean businesswoman who sells stitching machines to Nike vendors. Because of COVID19 her main business was at halt, so she asked, “Why not use my machines to make Atoms masks?.”

10/ Our customers were let down by the delay (and everyone needed masks). We were also juggling with strict lockdown in South Korea, materials dying opened for just 1 day/week, Korean customs offices checking each mask shipment, hurdles in shipping antibacterial masks out of SK.

11/ Our support team was trying to handle all sorts of order changes requests and it was in 1000s per day, something we never experienced before. I wish we had done a better job at communicating the delays to our customers. https://twitter.com/AGreenDCBike/status/1261752962071834625

12/ COVID19 also affected services of our shipping partner USPS, reduced staff at many locations, masks arriving late, tracking URLs not being updated as quickly. This was again a big let down, thankfully we have since made changes and now delivering within 3-5 business days.

13/ Thanks to the @flexport ( @typesfast!) for taking care of our air freight shipping, our vendors on really going above and beyond working with our product & dev team.

Our fulfillment team, preparing our warehouse to start delivering asap. Our CS team answers 1000s of emails.

14/ Then the new Atoms masks started arriving and we immediately started shipping. We gave updates to our partners for donations @NYCHA, @yourrightscamp etc. @waqasali and I’ve been distributing these during BLM marches around Brooklyn. https://twitter.com/NYCHA/status/1258117189619593216

15/ Once customers started receiving their masks, we saw the increase in repeat customers, and tweets praising the quality. We were even doing phone calls with a lot of our customers to understand and share the context. https://twitter.com/i/events/1271235640911421442

16/ The whole project to this day has taught us many lessons. Our team even has been distributing our elastic masks to home-made masks makers so the more masks can be out. We started the project with all the right intentions and are continuing to improve anything that we can.

17/ We also shipped Atoms masks to our families in Pakistan, and it’s been nearly a month they are still stuck at the custom. The whole world is upside down especially on logistics and supply chain, and I wish all of us to come out stronger from this.

18/ I don’t have a specific link to promote except to encourage everyone to wear their masks (on face properly) when you are out.

And be more positive and patient while we are going through this together. Thank you