Posted by Deborah Leydig Pfaff on 5/15/2020 to
News
When I first decided to open a store that sold only USA made
products, I wasn't trying to be a protectionist. I didn't even know what
that meant. I just knew that certain products should always be made in
the United States. Test tubes, lab equipment, airplanes, rockets,
medical equipment, etc., etc., etc. Of course my little general store
wasn't going to carry any of those items because your average customer
didn't need those things, but I soon learned that the reason we don't
make coffee pots in America anymore is because we don't make borosilicate glass in America anymore and that is what you need to make a glass coffee pot ... or a test tube. Germany makes borosilicate
glass and so does China. I always felt well, gee, what if we get in a
fight with those countries, how will we get the equipment our scientists
need, let alone my cup of coffee.
Fast
forward 6 years, Norton's USA is open and doing pretty well. One day a
gentleman comes in and wants to sell me surgical masks. I laughed and he
said, "Well they're made in the United States." We talked for a long
time about how his masks are made and that almost all the medical
equipment is now being off-shored to China. He told me he lost a huge
hospital account because the Chinese masks were one penny cheaper, one
penny! He was kind enough to leave me a box and we said our goodbyes.
Surgical masks where not something I thought I needed to sell in my
store or what my customers would even be interested in. Wrong!
Fast
forward a few more years and my immune system starts to go haywire. I'm
told I need to wear an N95 mask when I do any cleaning, gardening or
when I am in my barn. I think to myself, hmmm, I still have those masks
that, that nice guy gave me. I search around the back of the store, find
them and low and behold, they are N95's! Bingo. The masks are great and
I feel so much better when I am in my barn cleaning, and grooming my
animals. I'm feeling pretty lucky.
Fast
forward a few more years and Covid19 strikes and we are in the middle
of a pandemic. My husband and I hear the cries for more PPE and that
they are desperate for N95 masks. I tell my husband, our masks are N95
and made in the USA. I wonder to myself if that nice guys company is
still in business. We both watch in horror as more and more people get
sicker and sicker, so many people are dying and so many hospitals are
desperate for PPE. We also hear how China is not letting our own PPE
leave the US factories in China, that they are confiscating it to use in
their hospitals.
Fast
forward to yesterday, May 14, 2020 and there is Mike Bowen, the vice
president of Prestige America, the company that makes the masks I've
had all these years, testifying on Capital Hill. During the whistleblower's testimony, Rick Bright said “I’ll never forget the emails I received from Mike Bowen,” who runs
Prestige Ameritech, the top surgical mask supplier in the country,
Bright said, “indicating that our mask supply, our N-95 respirator
supply was completely decimated. And he said, ‘We’re in deep shit. The
world is.'” Mike Bowen has been trying for years to get people to wake up and purchase masks made in the USA.
Listen to Mr. Bowen of Prestige
Ameritech as he testifies. It's hard to be shocked anymore, but I am so
saddened and disappointed. Oh, what we could have done for our Medical
Professionals and First Responders if the right people had done the
right thing.
2 Comments
Katie
Date
5/16/2020
Great. Keep up the good work
KC
Date
2/26/2021
Thanks for this info. But are you selling N95 masks, that first responders and hospital personnel are supposed to wear? Or are they KN95 masks, which are the next best thing? Because they don't look like N95 masks, which are typically stiffer and a different shape. Thanks again for selling your Made in the USA products!