“Even without any clear end of the coronavirus in sight, demand for fabric face masks is already beginning to subside.”
Last fall, Adam Bluestein wrote about how a broad swath of retailers gave themselves an unexpected revenue lifeline by plunging into face mask production in the wake of a severe N95 mask shortage. Gap sold 3 million fabric masks in May alone while online crafts marketplace Etsy sold over 29 million face masks and generated roughly $350 million in gross merchandise sales by Q2. Even unlikely purveyors like custom-printing company Vistaprint, known for selling corporate swag and business cards, got in on the action. The unprecedented surge led many to wonder whether a mask bubble was inevitable.
“What makes the mask-making moment so extraordinary is the sudden surge of demand, matched by the nearly instantaneous surge of supply to match it — with the foreboding sense that the demand could stop at any moment,” Bluestein wrote. Now, nearly a year into Covid-19, the face mask landscape has drastically altered and may usher in a new mask economy — one that dethrones fabric masks altogether as Bluestein forewarned: In recent days, medical experts have become increasingly more vocal about upgrading cloth masks to medical-grade masks in light of new, highly contagious coronavirus variants.
