Like many in the pandemic's early days, Luke Mack found his mask cluttering seemingly every corner of his house and car.
An entrepreneur, health care worker and father, Mack was looking for a way to keep track of the masks he and his family were wearing and help fellow frontline workers who were having to reuse masks when PPE was in short supply. The solution: M Case, a line of mask cases.
“There were masks in the car on the gearshifts; kids had masks everywhere, it was hard to keep up with everyone’s masks, so this was just a great way to get everybody’s masks centralized and to have somewhere to store it and keep it safe,” Mack told NTX Inno.
The four-person team at M Case launched the company in Dallas over the summer, not wanting to focus on making masks, which had saturated the market. Within months of the pandemic reaching the U.S., several companies had either cropped up or pivoted to make urgently needed PPE items like masks and hand sanitizer.
Currently, the company has six case styles, ranging from one designed for the N95 masks many frontline health care workers use to one designed for students, which is clear so that parents and teachers can see from afar whether the student has a mask with them. M Case also sells a UV sanitizer box that disinfects masks and the cases with light often used in hospitals to disinfect rooms between patients.
“It’s a smaller microcosm of that, but it's trapped inside of a box,” Mack said.
Mack, who has bootstrapped the company so far, said the main goal of M Case is to help keep communities safe and help clear some of the stress that comes with finding every surface covered with masks. In keeping with that mission, M Case has a one-for-one donation model. For every purchase, the company donates a mask case to a school or individual in need.
“Our overall goal with what we’re trying to achieve is no kid, no adult should go without having a mask,” Mack said.
With vaccines for COVID-19 slowly rolling out, Mack recognizes the long-term PPE market remains uncertain. However, he notes that even with vaccines, masks, and by default, ways to store and clean them, will likely be in widespread use for months to come. And in that time, he said M Case is focusing on e-commerce and digital marketing to get M Cases to as many people as possible. If the opportunity arose, Mack said he’s not opposed to physical retail options.
“Even as the vaccine comes out, it’s still important to have somewhere to store it and keep the masks, and I don’t see it going away. Everybody who wears a mask, which is pretty much our entire population… all can benefit from having a mask case holder,” Mack said. “We’re just a little small company that kind of took off and took some strides. For the future, we’re going to try to ride it out until the wheels fall off, and try to get a mask case to everyone.”
