Monterey Mills president battled COVID-19 while spearheading his company’s face mask production

Apr 30, 2020 12:13 pm

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Dan Sinykin, president of Janesville-based Monterey Mills, decided his company had to act fast once he saw reports of nationwide PPE shortages as the fight against COVID-19 ramped up in mid-March. To meet that need, he tasked his team on March 17 with developing a reusable, durable protective face mask – a slight pivot from

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Dan Sinykin, president of Janesville-based Monterey Mills, decided his company had to act fast once he saw reports of nationwide PPE shortages as the fight against COVID-19 ramped up in mid-March. To meet that need, he tasked his team on March 17 with developing a reusable, durable protective face mask – a slight pivot from the company’s usual product of knitted pile fabric used in paint rollers and other products. Shepherding the launch of a new product is a heavy lift in ordinary times, but adding to the challenge, Sinykin and his family were at home battling COVID-19 themselves. “I was working 18 hour days, putting all this together, trying to justify and manage cash flow and fill out new product spec sheets, trying to get our factory redesigned to be able to make fabric for a product that we hadn’t even finished creating yet,” Sinykin said. “All during the time when I was forbidden to go into my factory.” Sinykin suspects he and his wife caught the coronavirus while traveling back from a visit with their son who was studying abroad in New Zealand. The couple flew to New Zealand on March 7 and returned to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on Sunday, March 15, the day after President Trump’s suspension on travel from Europe to the United States went into effect. When he returned, Sinykin was prepared to self-quarantine for two weeks in accordance with his company’s mandate for employees who had traveled by plane. “I was going to work from home for two weeks and go to the office at the end of the month and it was going to be fine,” he said. “But … that Tuesday I lost all sense of taste and smell. And by Thursday, I was miserable. I was coughing, had congestion, I had lost my appetite, I was weak. I didn’t have a fever or any trouble breathing, but, by Thursday, I was miserable, and so was my wife.” Earlier that week, he went to the hospital for an unrelated eye issue, and was told he likely had COVID-19 but couldn’t be tested because of limited testing supplies. Throughout the week, Sinykin's four children returned home from Texas, Chicago, Madison and New Zealand. They all experienced COVID-19 symptoms, including dry cough and congestion. “It was like allergies on steroids times 10,” Sinykin said. “We were just exhausted, very, very tired. My wife had a slight fever and my daughter had a fever, but the boys and myself, we mostly had congestion and a very dry but persistent cough.” A self-described foodie, Sinykin said the loss of taste was particularly difficult. “Everyone who knows me knows I love to cook and I love to eat,” he said. “I could not taste food. I had a spoonful of horseradish sauce and I couldn’t taste it. That’s how bad it was.” The coronavirus ran its course in the Sinykin house and each of his family members has now made recoveries, with some lingering coughs and allergy-like symptoms, he said. Sinykin said he and his wife plan to donate plasma this week for an experimental treatment that could help current COVID-19 patients. He also continues to wear a mask everywhere he goes. And his company has expanded its capacity, through a partnership with Oak Creek-based Eder Flags, to supply businesses and individuals with masks as they begin reopening. In the first month of producing face masks, Monterey Mills and Eder Flags focused on filling orders for first responders and health care workers, including Advocate Aurora Health and UW Health. With capacity to now produce 65,000 masks daily, last week, they began taking online orders from individuals and businesses. “We didn’t start selling to businesses or the public until the 17th of April, and we’ve sold tens of thousands of units to that group,” he said. “We have plenty of capacity to support that group.” Sinykin said he expects the mask-making operation to remain a component of his business “well into the future.” “I’m sure we’ll get competitors but we do have some uniquenesses to our product that our competitors really can’t match,” he said. Meanwhile, Monterey Mills has worked to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 among its own employees, including staggering breaks and lunches, cleaning high-traffic areas, switching to touchless time clocks and swipe cards, providing masks to all employees and laundering them daily, and taking employees’ temperatures daily. Sinykin said employers should be thinking now about how they will reopen in a way that’s safe for customers and employees. “They need to take precautions and keep their employees as safe as possible, with PPE, with sanitation devices, with gloves, with hand sanitizers, with masks, with whatever it takes, so when they get back to work they have these things,” he said. Get more news and insight in the April 27 issue of BizTimes Milwaukee. Subscribe to get updates in your inbox here.

Monterey Mills president battled COVID-19 while spearheading his company’s face mask production

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