Forbes Under 30 Leaders Create Retail Site For Cheap And Safe Protective Gear As America Reopens

Face masks, hand sanitizer, latex gloves—once essential gear for mainly healthcare and emergency workers—are now the new national currency as the U.S. rushes to reopen after the Covid-19 lockdowns. As business and society attempt to resume under new social distancing rules, these protective products are now as necessary for leaving your house as, well, clothing.

Ever since the coronavirus pandemic gripped the U.S., these usually cheap and common products (Purell! Clorox! Charmin!) have become hot commodities. Surging demand, panic buying, and opportunistic hoarding have rocked the entire supply chain for personal protective equipment. Because of the strain, medical masks, latex gloves, and cleansers—tools now required to open your business, or even walk into one—are hard to find and expensive to buy. This is especially true for long-underserved communities already disproportionately suffering during the Covid-19 outbreak.

To address the problem, six young founders gathered virtually during the Forbes Under 30 Detroit Hackathon: Accelerating Change, in partnership with Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans and Major League Hacking. They created a prototype for a retail site that sources cheap and reliable protective gear. “These goods normally sell at a flat and consistent price. But now it’s functioning as a spot market,” says Chloe Alpert, the cofounder, and CEO of Medias Health. “A 3M mask that would usually sell for $1.30 is now going for as much as $8 in some regions.”

Called GruupBuy, the new e-commerce site will pool small PPE orders from local businesses, non-profits, and individuals into bulk purchases large enough to source directly from factories. By teaming up for large orders, customers get lower prices from high-volume price breaks and avoiding retail mark-ups. With poor quality and counterfeit goods flooding the market, GruupBuy will carefully vet suppliers to ensure products are safe and effective. “It’s going to be an accessible, equitable, and easy-to-use platform,” says Chase Minnifield, former NFL defensive back and founder of real estate tech startup EZ Turn.

GruupBuy works like Groupon and Kickstarter—but for N95 masks. The sight lists buying campaigns for single items, say a ten-gallon bottle of hand sanitizer, and how many more orders are needed to hit the buying goal. Customers enter the amount they need and pay directly on the site. Once the volume target is hit, the order goes straight to the factory. If GruupBuy doesn’t have an active campaign for an item you need, you can create one on the site. Social media and email buttons will be added to each campaign to spread the word.

“Over the last few months, the supply-demand dynamics that have existed for these products have been incredibly perplexing,” says team mentor Josh Kushner, the founder of VC firm Thrive Captial, and cofounder fo healthcare startups Oscar and Capsule. “I think its an incredible idea that is going to make a big difference… I’m surprised someone else hasn’t built it yet.” Kushner suggested GruupBuy could add to the site dynamic pricing that would automatically update the cost of a product when new volume levels where hit (usually the more you buy, the lower the price). He also recommended adding a donation button at checkout letting users buy extra equipment for people or organizations in need.

And because protective medical gear is an obscure subject to more of us, GruupBuy is out to educate consumers too. Its site will provide jargon-free descriptions of each product, the level of protection offered, and the best use-cases for each. “Someone working in a cafe doesn’t necessarily need an N95 mask because they’re not interfacing directly with a patient,” says Alpert. “An N95 is three times the cost of a surgical mask. If you’re buying 10,000 units, the difference is meaningful.”

The site will also include details about its partner factories, listing their products, regional location, lead times, and a grade for efficiency and quality. The next challenge: solving how to get the single bulk orders to hundreds of different customers. The team is looking to create pick-up sites in different Detroit neighborhoods and potentially teaming with the city’s most prominent corporations—GM, Ford, Chrysler, Ally, and others—to use their transportation fleets to deliver products to at-risk customers. Says EZ Turn’s Minnifield: “We’re bridging the access, opportunity, and education gaps for anyone and everyone looking for the PPE needed to get back to business.”

Team Members: Chloe Alpert, Cofounder, Medinas Health; Jason Chen, Cofounder, Verge Genomics; Tim Growney, Cofounder, Medinas Health; Chase Minnifield, Founder, EZ Turn; Staff Sheehan, Cofounder, Air Co.; Anna Wan, Director of Ops, Bird