Julie Acevedo-Lopez normally runs a company that makes and sells baby equipment, but the coronavirus outbreak has inspired her to change products. Now she’s making masks with intriguing visual designs. In early April, Acevedo-Lopez launched JuJu Mask, a temporary offshoot of her company JuJu Band, which uses layered cotton and Velcro to make belly binders that help prevent colic, gas and umbilical infections in infants. Both companies are subsidiaries of Acevedo-Lopez’s LLC, The Julie Group, which she operates out of her home in Glendale. During the day, she does marketing and sales for Spectrum Business. “I stopped JuJu Band for about a year, but I’m in the middle of relaunching the company so I had all of this fabric. And then I saw a need for facemasks,” she said. “I figured since the hospitals can’t get facemasks, what is the public going to do?” The leftover fabric from the baby venture differentiates a JuJu Mask from the competition. “When you see my fabrics – blue jacks, pink jacks, green squiggles – that’s because it technically was for a baby company,” Acevedo-Lopez said. Despite California’s mandatory face-covering rule, she said she noticed cashiers and security guards – essential workers under the state’s executive order – wearing ineffective makeshift masks or sometimes forgoing them altogether. That’s the target consumer for Acevedo-Lopez. “It wasn’t necessarily for hospital workers,” she said. Even so, nurses and doctors could wear JuJu Masks on the job if they’re so inclined. Acevedo-Lopez said the masks are constructed with hospital-grade materials. The process starts with a rectangle of 19-ounce cotton – as heavy as it gets before technically becoming a canvas rather than a cloth. This component does most of the mask’s work. The microfibers allow air to pass but are thick enough to serve as a filter for particles or droplets expelled through breathing, talking or coughing, which are those most likely to carry COVID-19. Masks are then outfitted with a second outer layer of colorful cotton fabric and finished with a soft elastic ear loop. Acevedo-Lopez pays a manufacturing contractor in Los Angeles to produce batches of between 500 and 800 masks every day. She heads south to the facility daily to help cut fabric and package orders. “At first I didn’t think it would go anywhere,” she said of the venture. “But then I started getting requests.” Now, she is selling up to a thousand masks a day to such clients as film production companies, bank branches, insurance brokerages, and even cities that need masks for city hall meetings. Because demand outweighs supply, she has added a notice on the JuJu Mask website warning customers that it could take up to 72 hours after an order is placed for it to ship. Two-packs of adult- and kid-sized masks are both selling for $18.99.
