"America, it’s time to mask up!"
America has always been known for its resiliency and ingenuity in the face of great turmoil and tragedy. In March 2020, our country faced an unsettling reality: after years of reliance on foreign manufacturers for our own personal protective equipment supplies, there was now a huge shortage amid a global pandemic. Our frontline workers were in desperate need of PPE. With our country facing a national shutdown, brothers Vincent A. and Lawrence (owners and founders of East Coast Orthotic & Prosthetic Corp.) faced this grim reality while Vincent also battled a positive COVID-19 diagnosis. For nearly 25 years, East Coast Orthotic & Prosthetic Corp. (ECOP) has supplied many hospitals and physician groups with orthotic and prosthetic devices, employing 240 employees in the tri-state area. Based in New York, the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States at the time, the two brothers were tasked with getting necessary supplies for both their company’s frontline staff, as well as assisting the hospitals he worked with in obtaining PPE. Many administrators knew that the brothers also co-owned a manufacturing company overseas, Span Link International, and had contacts abroad that were able to source PPE.
Soon Vincent was supplying hospitals and nursing homes across the country with PPE from overseas. He also worked on a design of a face shield with New York City’s Health Department. Because of the urgent need for these face shields, the brothers started a new manufacturing company, Secure Wear USA, to produce these face shields on Long Island.
It was Vincent’s dream to bring more manufacturing here to the United States. While ECOP successfully produced custom orthotics and prosthetics in the USA since ECOP’s inception, for years he struggled to bring Span Link International’s manufacturing to the United States. This attitude, however, is what got our country into the position we are presently in. As soon as they were able to do, the brothers and Vincent’s eldest sons, Jack and Vinny, established Secure Wear USA in an effort to bring PPE manufacturing back to America. While we still source and develop some items in our own factory in Thailand, the majority of our PPE is being produced in our brand-new facility based in Ronkonkoma, NY.
Secure Wear USA is a proud manufacturer of "made in the USA" 3-ply surgical masks, face shields and N95 masks. It is our hope to add 30 new manufacturing jobs at Secure Wear USA by 2021 and double that by 2022. In our new Ronkonkoma facility, we can currently produce 240 3-ply masks per minute.
Secure Wear USA's 3-ply surgical masks have been tested and approved by the FDA for level 1, level 2 and level 3.
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