Businesses sell handmade face masks
When interior designer Sarah Kotarides heard the surgeon general was recommending everyone wear cloth face masks in grocery stores and other places where it’s difficult to maintain social distances, she figured there’d be plenty of people scrambling to find one.
As the owner of The Designer Workshop in Virginia Beach, with five seamstresses on staff and loads of fabric samples to choose from, Kotarides was in a good position to help meet the demand. She texted her seamstresses that night and asked if they’d be willing to come to the shop the next day to develop a plan.
After researching the styles and materials recommended by health experts, the team created two templates. Next, they chose several fabrics, including florals, prints, solids and even a cheetah pattern. Each mask is double lined, washable and priced at $15.
“We wanted to make them fun and pretty, so they’d be a little less painful to wear,” Kotarides said.
They sold out their initial pre-order inventory of 600 masks in two days, with more than half going to a couple of businesses that needed them for employees who distribute goods to military bases. One of the companies has since requested another 100.
The shop plans to start taking pre-orders again next week, and expects to add some new patterns, including an American flag, Kotarides said.
Ibo Kesici, owner of Ibos TailorShop in downtown Norfolk, also started designing and selling masks in response to the surgeon general’s recommendation. He saw it as a good way to fulfill a need while also keeping his business going during the coronavirus pandemic.
He uses several unique patterns and solid colors for his masks. Each is triple lined and sells for $15. They’ve been snatched up by many of Kesici’s loyal customers, as well as a downtown law firm and a real estate company that bought them for their employees.
Many local individuals have been selling hand-crafted masks through social media platforms like Nextdoor, Instagram and Facebook.
Virginia Beach residents Luisa Guzman, and her daughter, Alicia Barr, initially made them to donate to essential workers, but started selling some to the public after they got requests from people who saw their masks. The two have been working long hours ever since, sewing and selling them out of the insurance office in Woods Corner Shopping Center, where Guzman works as an agent. As of Thursday, they’d made about 400 masks, Guzman said.
“We thought it would just be a couple of people in the neighborhood, but it’s been crazy,” she said.
Among their most popular designs are the ones with “a little bling” on them, with words like “blessed” and “loved” sewn with faux gemstones on them. Depending on the style, the masks sell for $6 to $8.
Kim West and her daughter-inlaw, Mary West, are selling childand adult-sized masks out of Kim’s Virginia Beach home for $5 to $10, depending on the size and whether it has a pocket for a filter.
Like Guzman and Barr, both women are artists, and started getting requests in response to the other masks they’d created.
“People saw them and said, ‘I want one. Can you make me one?’” said Kim. “And it just went from there. We really don’t make much money off of them. It’s really more about keeping people safe.”
Jane Harper, jane.harper@pilotonline.com