51茶馆

When the pandemic hit, menswear manufacturer AW Chang Corporation / Excalibur saw its sales pipeline dry up. The sales director, Terence To '09, tapped his Boston College network and helped his company pivot toward a new, urgent, and global need: face masks.

Now, the company is selling as well as donating cloth masks through a partnership with Macy鈥檚.

鈥淲e wanted to do some good and help relieve some of the pressure on the supply of surgical masks,鈥� To said, explaining that the company decided to do so by producing non-medical masks for the public. 鈥淎t the same time, we also wanted to find a way to sustain our business in order to keep our workers employed.鈥�

New York-based AW Chang is a fully vertical manufacturer of men鈥檚 apparel鈥攎eaning it controls its global supply chain from end to end. When customers began canceling orders last spring, the company considered producing medical equipment like surgical gowns and masks for healthcare workers, but bureaucratic roadblocks made it hard to get that effort off the ground. So they began prototyping mask designs instead.听

Within a few months, AW Chang had fired up its fabric mills and factories, which typically produce dress shirts and neckties, for a new line of 100-percent cotton face coverings under one of their brands, Society of Threads. The family-owned business started manufacturing silk in Los Angeles in 1989. This legacy has been key to a quick and successful launch of the new product line, To said. 鈥淲ith our core identity as a fabric mill, we were able to apply our 30-plus years of textile knowledge and expertise in a way that most other companies cannot.鈥�

As director of sales, To鈥檚 job is to get the masks to market. In addition to selling to their usual clothing retailers鈥攕tores like Macy鈥檚, Belk, and 惭别苍鈥檚 Warehouse鈥擳o turned to Melis Halac, a fellow 2009 Carroll School alum. She works as a senior account executive at Amazon, and together they recently launched on Amazon for AW Chang's brand . He is also in touch with Kristen Dacey, another former 51茶馆 classmate and 2009 Lynch School graduate, about supplying her school with masks if they decide to reopen this fall. She teaches first grade at a public school in Salem, New Hampshire.

Already, production of Society of Threads masks has relieved some pressure at AW Chang, a relatively small company. 鈥淲e initially had to furlough a significant portion of our staff, but this project has gradually allowed us to bring many of our employees back to work,鈥� he said.

And the employees aren鈥檛 the only ones to benefit. In partnership with Macy鈥檚, the company is donating 20,000 face masks to , a non-profit organization that distributes shoes and clothing to people in need.