Local PPE supplier mixes business and virus protection
Firm making masks, sanitizer dispensers, disinfecting robots
When shortages of personal protective equipment began in March, Houston entrepreneur Omri Shafran saw an opportunity.
Medical workers were struggling to get the masks, face shields and surgical gowns they needed in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Shafran realized that hospitals would not be the only employers looking for gear, nor would they be the only ones contending with the disease.
With $1,000 in startup costs, Shafran and co-founder Dimitri Menin began Texas Medical Center Supply, a personal protective equipment supplier that works with city and state governments, public health
systems, school districts and corporate offices. The company, which opened in late March, provides items such as medical-grade surgical gowns, latex gloves, hand sanitizer dispensers and a robot that disinfects rooms.
Since then, sales have soared to $50 million and employment to more than 50 from the original four. The company plans to expand to a 144,000-square-foot plant to manufacture surgical gowns and other dis
posable equipment in Houston and hire an additional 1,200 employees next year.
It also expects to go public next year, selling its stock on public stock exchanges.
“Obviously, I’m a businessman and Iwant tomake money,” Shafran said, “but it’s very important to save lives.”
Shortages of personal protective equipment spurred local medical and health tech startups to pivot from their usual focus on developing surgical tools to making masks and test-kit swabs, and encouraged entrepreneurs like Shafran to build supplier networks from these companies. Hospitals and other institutions, meanwhile, preferred to use domestic suppliers rather than depend on shipments from overseas sellers.
At the beginning of the pandemic, those organizations struggled to find affordable personal protective equipment as demand soared globally and China, a source of many suppliers’ inventory, slowed production.
Shafran and Menin decided they would set up factories in Mexico to meet demand for disposable personal protective gear.
In the first month, the company sold $4 million of products, predominantly disposable items such as latex gloves and surgical
gowns. By the end of September, six months after the company opened for business, the company’s sales reached $50 million.
Customers span the country, from Harris County to state public health departments in Georgia and Mississippi to corporations such as Sony Studios and Qualcomm, both in Califor
nia, Shafran said.
Some customers are other medical supply companies who lost their own suppliers during the pandemic. Sourceline Medical Supply, an Atlanta medical equipment company that supplies the state of Georgia, turned to Texas Medical Center Supply after running into problems finding high
quality masks and surgical gowns.
“It was frustrating to keep chasing these deals and channels, coming up with bad products that just don’t meet our standard,” said Jad Shraim, Sourceline’s CEO.
Shraim’s company has purchased more than $1million in products from Texas
Medical Center Supply since its inception.
The Harris Health System, forced to look for new vendors as its regular suppliers dealt with shortages, is another customer. Since October, the health authority has ordered more than 8,700 cases of nitrile exam gloves, 40,000 disposable paper scrubs and 7,000 disposable lab coats from Texas Medical Center Supply, said Bryan McLeod, a Harris Health spokesperson.
While masks and social distancing are the most effective ways to limit the spread of COVID-19, businesses have also turned to sanitizing technologies and clear plastic barriers to make employees and customers feel more at ease.
In response, the company has developed a drone that can spray sanitizer onto unreachable nooks and crannies and over outdoor settings, a machine that wraps a disposable covering around a person’s shoe, and a robot that takes restaurant orders.
“I don’t think we’ll come to restaurants, hospitals or stadiums the same aswe did before,” Shafran said. “I think social distancing is going to disappear in a year or two. But we’ll seek sanitation and protection.”