Although the “paravents à postillons ” are new to the company’s inventory, the production process remains well known to this team of 25 employees. “Basically, the idea was communicated by our customers. We received a lot of requests. People told us that we made nice pockets and that we could make nice masks,” answers Anthony Vendrame spontaneously, President of Poches & Fils.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the company was forced to reduce its team to only nine employees. Anthony Vendrame explains that they needed to boost online sales: “We were looking for any means to survive,” he says, “After a few brainstorming sessions, we decided to launch a special pocket with the image of a nurse with a rainbow tattoo on her arm.” Moreover, the company decided to donate 25% of the profits to different foundations such as the Ste-Justine Hospital, the Montreal General Hospital and the Montreal Children’s Hospital. As of today, the company is proud to see that $6,000 has already been raised. Moving forward, Mr. Vendrame plans to donate future profits to the CHSLDs, where donations are most needed.

After the special COVID-19 pocket, the Poches & Fils team decided to start the production of the “paravents à postillons” of which $1 per unit is donated to Tel Jeune. “In just one week, we sold 11,000 units and donated $10,000 to Tel Jeune.” says Mr. Vendrame proudly.

The young Poches & Fils President says that the biggest challenge came when the government announced that all nonessential businesses had to be temporarily shut down. The company had already incurred significant expenses and about a million ongoing orders could not be fulfilled. “In the current situation, everything had become a challenge. We had to make arrangements with suppliers, employees, the bank, and so on. At the same time, we had to be creative, go into solutionoriented mindset, produce with less manpower and combine this new reality to the newly found challenge of working remotely,” he explains.

To come up with a satisfactory product, they had to choose fabrics from a range of samples, go back and forth between conception and design, find a supplier for the elastics, find a professional printer that could work with their new layouts and finally, find an open and available production shop to produce their masks. The time spent in the development of an alternative solution that would be beneficial to the population while profitable for the company was therefore a very stressful period. “It’s going to take us a good year-end to get through it,” according to Anthony Vendrame.

With gradual reintegration, further challenges lie ahead. “We have to respect social distancing in the workshop. We can’t have 10 seamstresses as we did before,” he says.