Everyone is talking about face masks and lots of people are selling them!
Why we are selling them…….
Living in London our concerns escalated rapidly during March at the same time as news about shortages of PPE was circulating across the media. It was clear that this was a major issue and members of the public buying up medical grade masks was the wrong thing to do.
Luckily sewing is my thing so I decided to make some masks for us, family and friends. . I searched the internet for recommendations on fabric, design and construction of effective cloth face masks. I tried a few and settled on a design kindly provided by a specialist nurse in the US. This design fits to facial contours and securely covers the nose and mouth.
I had a stock of printed African cotton fabric for our range of patchwork print cushions, so I used some of that. I initially made 3 sizes for people to try out. Everyone seemed very pleased with them and after a few tweaks to fit and sizing we settled on templates for 6 sizes and made some more masks!
At the onset of the pandemic I was working as a social media consultant in the arts and performance sector and had also just launched Afrique Fabrique with my partner Olu. Like so many other people the lockdown decimated our main incomes.. it also stalled the development of our new venture.
By early April it was clear that our main income would be decimated for the foreseeable future. I won’t moan too much about the plight of the forgotten self employed in all this chaos, just ot say that, like many others, we had to come up with a survival plan!!
Over the next couple of weeks we made some more masks, bought a head mannequin, took some photos and built a new shop page on our website. I was grateful to be busy, doing something, in those first few weeks, as we were all trying to get our heads around what was going on.
Our first few customers were, of course, fabulous family and friends, keen to give us a start. After a few weeks it was very exciting to get our first non-family/friend order!
Over the last couple of months we have a few hundred customers from across the UK, who have found us in and amongst the 000’s of other sellers listed on Google and social media. Amazingly, about a quarter of these have returned to order more masks, for themselves or friends and family. That promotes a feeling of real job satisfaction for me. I make all the masks to order so I know who I’m making them for.
What some of our customers have said…
We regularly add new designs and this month have also added out filter pocket and nose clip design
