The Weekly - May 19, 2020 - 9

The Pulse
# W E A R E C O M M U N I T Y

To watch
the full interview
with James
Morin, click on
this photo.

Be Flexible

Flowfold pivoted its entire business to manufacture PPE. This is how former COO James Morin made
the moves to rethink the company from the ground up in eight days. By Bevin Wallace
Name: James Morin
Company: Flowfold
Title: Former COO
Location: Scarborough, Maine

The Downlow: In late March,

Flowfold suspended production of its wallets and travel
accessories, and pivoted to
making face shields for front-line
medical workers. This shift has
allowed the brand-with its flexible, technologically advanced
factory and almost exclusively
U.S.-based suppliers-to keep
its facility open and its workers
employed, while helping meet
hospitals' unprecedented need
for PPE. Flowfold's James Morin,
who announced this week that
he will be moving on to retail
tech startup in Austin, Texas,
spoke to us about the moves the
company made to stay afloat.

We made a pretty abrupt transition, which was 100% to PPE.

Part of that was the moral and
ethical response of doing what's
right for our community. Part of
it was with outdoor retail shops
just completely closing up, we
didn't have that many orders.

able to really help our community.
We're grateful for that.

regard, I think, is probably the
most important thing.

We're anticipating needing to
put out hundreds of thousands of
these shields. Quite frankly, it's

I do think that when this is all
said and done, we're going to

We reached out to our local biggest hospital, and we asked what

staggering the demand that's
out there. It's nursing homes;
it's EMTs. It's people that work
at grocery stores, pharmacies,
and things like that.

they needed most. They sent us
a link to their catalog and were
like, "We need everything."

I think brands are going to have
to figure out, do they have the

As soon as we started making
hospital protective equipment,

we effectively became an essential employee of the state.
Hard work and luck kind of joined
forces here; we happen to have
production in-house in the United
States in Gorham, Maine. That's
presented us an opportunity to be

capability to act quickly and
put out a quality product? Because, again, you don't want to
give something to these hospital workers that's not going to
do the trick. Just know certain
things. Like, we can't make N95
masks. We can't make ventilators. We knew what we could
make, and that's face shields.
Just being self-aware in that

see a bit of a resurgence of
people going out and shopping. I think that's going to be
really, really good for the small
retail accounts out there.
Let's not forget about the brands
that have stepped up and made
these really dramatic shifts, but

let's also not forget about the
small mom-and-pop shops and
retail accounts who haven't
been able to make the shift.
Let's get out there and let's
support each other.
We will survive. We will get
through this. I think we will
come out stronger than
before.

OUTDOOR RETAILER SUMMER 2020 / THE WEEKLY 9

https://www.flowfold.com/

The Weekly - May 19, 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Weekly - May 19, 2020