Our alums are adapting quickly to help during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here's what one alumnus, Bart Hill (97C), is doing at his company:
What do you do for a living?
I'm the senior vice president at Mohawk Home, a division of Mohawk Industries.
How have you been helping others during the COVID-19 pandemic?
We were eager to help in any way we could, so we started by making masks.
I called up my friend Chris Simuro, owner and president of Fabric Sources International (FSI), to see if he had any certified materials that we could use in the masks. As it so happens, they were looking for help creating medical gowns.
FSI had adapted their spunbond nonwovens to make them suitable for medical use and had rolls of it ready to go, but needed someone to cut and sew them into gowns.
We took FSI's fabric and a gown a local hospital had sent us, and worked with our team of engineers to create a template so we could start producing the gowns.
It was really just fate that Chris and I connected that day. We're now producing thousands of gowns every day, and are working hard to continue increasing production.
Every day, more hospitals call us with orders, and we're doing all we can to meet as much of the demand as possible. We donated the first 1,000 gowns, and are now selling the PPEs at cost.
Anything else to share?
This is the one business where I hope I get put OUT of business very quickly! The day that I can shut this line down will be one of the happiest days of my life.
We don't think we're doing anything other than trying to help. We know the heroes are the medical professionals out there on the front lines.
We just want to help our people keep working in this tough environment and help our community any way we can.
Watch Bart Hill's interview with Floor Trends below.
