How I Built This with Guy Raz - HIBT Lab! Armbrust American: Lloyd Armbrust

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

Lloyd Armbrust spent the bulk of his career in newspaper operations and advertising...until early 2020 when he started hearing about the spread of a dangerous new virus and a critical shortage of surgical masks. Most masks at the time were made in Asia, and when supply chains started to break down that March, many Americans had a really hard time finding them. This week on How I Built This Lab, Lloyd walks us through the whirlwind journey of launching a mask manufacturing business at the height of the pandemic, along with some of the factors that hold us back from producing more goods within the United States.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we break format and experiment with ideas and stories that you might not hear on our Monday episode. So remember the early days of the pandemic when we were all freaking out when you would literally see someone walking towards you on the sidewalk and you'd cross the street because you thought you'd get COVID just by passing them. The days when we were disinfecting packages and mail and even vegetables from the grocery store. Okay, maybe that was just me, but it was a scary time.

And even scarier was the shortage of things like hand sanitizer and lysol. and most importantly, surgical masks and N95 respirators. And the reason for the shortage was because most of these products are made overseas, particularly in China. And the demand for personal protective gear skyrocketed so high that Chinese manufacturers, at least at first, couldn't keep up. So Lloyd Armbrust, an entrepreneur who ran a company that sold ad sales software to newspapers, decided to make a pivot and try to try to, to tackle the problem. And within a few short weeks, he literally set up a manufacturing business making surgical masks in the U.S. He named it Armbrust American, and by the summer of 2020, Lloyd's company was making a million masks a day. So how did he do it? Well, he's here to tell us.

Lloyd Armbrust, welcome to the show. Thanks. It's great to be here. All right, so let's first talk, before we talk about masks and what you're doing now, I want to talk about your your background and your career, because you came from, this is not the first company you founded. You actually started in the newspaper business and I think in the ad sales part of it, right? Yeah, that's correct. It was more of a software company, really. I mean, we were a Silicon Valley back startup. We raised about $10 million. And it just was one of those startups you don't hear about because we didn't have like some crazy exit. We didn't IPO. It was called Own Local, right? That's right. And actually, the company still exists today.

And what do the company do? So what we do is we automate the building and buying of advertising for about 3,000 newspapers. All right. So tell me about the decision to create a surgical mask company. How did that idea, I mean, did that come purely from the pandemic? Yeah, 100%. I, you know, I was just looking around at all these articles and all these people saying we can't get masks. And I was like, this is a really stupid problem for America to have. I grew up with my dad was actually in manufacturing. He was a plant manager. And I would hear him talk about how things are being outsourced and how, like, this could be eventually really bad for the country because if we don't maintain the skill set set here, what happens to us. And I think I just had that in the back of my head. You know what really kind of set me off was an investor from my group of investors kind of sit around this email and said, we're going to raise $350 million to buy.

masks and import them into the United States because we can't get masks here. And I was like, that's really a dumb solution. I was like, I did the math and I was like, I'm pretty sure for like $5 million, you could make the capability of making that many masks. And that's actually what put me over the edge and I ended up pulling the trigger. Yeah, I mean, let's sort of go back to that moment in sort of February, March, really March of 20, I think of March 11th is the date, because that was a date. The NBA shut down the season. I think that was a wake-up call for so many people.

That was the date. And first of all, we didn't know to use masks. We were told not to use them because nurses and doctors needed them. And then when it came time for, you know, when the CDC was like, yeah, actually everyone to wear a mask, it was really hard to get them. We always remember that, you know, trying to scramble to get masks. But most of that capability had been outsourced a long time ago. Like most hospitals had been buying their personal protective gear from China. these companies for a while because it was cheaper, right?

It was so much cheaper. I mean, they sold it for less than the cost of actually making the mask at this point. Yeah. And I remember around that time, like, distilleries and companies that did spirits were transitioning to make hand sanitizer and everybody's kind of focus on sanitizers and cleaners and bleaches. So we were all caught up in this, understandably. We all wanted to do something. And so for you, it was, well, let me see if I can figure out how to make math.

here? That was basically what you asked? Yeah, I mean, I think I've just become more of like a, I really became focused on like the core financials, like do the unit economics make sense? And so what are masks being sold at before the pandemic? And how are they being made? And I found that mostly masks were being made manually one at a time by hand, at the time. And so I said, okay, if we, if we inject some like modern manufacturing here and we put this to work, we had some robotics, we remove like the 10 or 12 people that touch a mask to actually make it. Can I make that work here?

Like, can I sell it for the price that was being sold before the pandemic? And if I do those things, and I have some other things like we were actually vertically integrated, so we make some of the fabric ourselves, which shaves off some of the cost. And I was like, man, I could really compete with the Chinese model.

And I could sell to, you know, to hospitals. I could sell to governments. And previously I'd been selling to newspapers. I was like, what could possibly be harder than selling software to newspapers. Like, surely I can sell to governments and hospitals. So you were, you're based in Austin, Texas. You have this idea. But then what? Like, what do you, I wouldn't even know where to begin. You got to, where's the factory? Where's the money to make it? Where's the, where's the equipment? I mean, where did you even

start? I did a lot of research in terms of reaching out to current mask manufacturers and not just, not just China, but in, you know, Taiwan, in India, and got relationships with folks on WhatsApp. And then I started looking into the actual machines themselves. And then I found a factory that was just starting to do a fully automated line. And so I got all the documentation. I put it together. I actually worked, I found a robotics guy because I don't have any experience in robotics. Well, I do now.

Yeah. Found a robotic sky. in Flugerville, Texas. And we got together. We looked over the plans. We said, hey, I think this works. And we actually, we actually ended up flying this thing. Flying this, like, production line?

Yeah. That's like a, or this machine? Our first production line. Yeah. Okay. We had it produced. So it was, you flew it from China. Okay.

And by the way, it was like, I want to say that the base cost of the machine was $140,000. And so I remember when I was like, you know, I went to, friends and family. I was like, all right, here's my idea. You know, maybe I lose all of our money. Maybe I get it back. Everyone was like, okay, let's do this. So I wired the $140,000, really hoping that that money wouldn't go to nothing. Because I don't, right? No, maybe this is a total scam. You know what I mean? And yeah, I mean, it was on, you know, while they were producing the machine, we were doing FaceTime with the manufacturer every night, you know, seeing their progress, seeing it run all together. And we got it packed up and sent here. And I think it was April. I think it was the first week of April that we got the, that the machine landed in the United States. Wow.

So for the time that you, I'm assuming you came to this decision to start a mask manufacturing business in March of 2020. Yeah. I was thinking, I think I actually tweeted in like February, like beginning of February, I said, I think thinking about spending $140,000 on a. on a mask machine, bad idea or terrible idea. And everyone was like, this is a horrible idea. But I, you know, over the course of the next 15, 20 days, I eventually convinced myself. And I think we actually did send the money. And I think it was the first week of March. So if you came to me at that time and said, how am I to do this? I would say, okay, well, it will be up and running in a year.

From the time you thought of this idea until the time you actually got delivery of a manufacturing line, until the time. it arrived until the time you were making, actually it was making masks was like six weeks. Yeah. In fact, my son was born two days before the machine produced the first couple of masks off the line, which was in early May. So yeah, we did get it up in six weeks. And then we had the governor's office, his response team for COVID, came through probably a week after we launched. And they were like, this is great, do more of this. They're like, we'll give you a big order. Well, right, you get the machinery from China. So presumably there was off the shelf, right, this off the shelf production line that you could get shipped to you. But where did you set it up? So I, you know, I had a pretty decent size, like 80 person startup in Austin.

And so we had before the pandemic. And actually, funny enough, I had just decided to shut down our office right before the pandemic started. But I had good relationships with real estate brokers. And I said, hey, I'm looking for like a thousand square foot. to set this thing up. And I mean, I didn't really know a lot about manufacturing and how much warehouse space I need. But what ended up happening, to be honest,

I think like, I think like the companies that are successful, they end up doing a lot of things right accidentally. Like, there's a lot of luck. Yeah. And one of the super lucky things that we did was we stumbled on this facility that was 15,000 square foot, half of it was warehouse,

half of it was lab space. They were making weapon sites in there before and the company went out of it. a business. And it was just sitting there for like two years unused and they just had a lease, someone that was going to take the lease, and then it fell through because of the pandemic. And so we went to the owners of the property and we were like, look, we can't afford the whatever they wanted, you know, 25,000 a month for this, a beautiful, pristine manufacturing space. I was like, but we're going to make masks. We're going to save lives. Can we do a deal here?

And so they gave it to me for $5,000 a month. Wow. Which was incredible. And, That gave us this amazing space that we could. We actually eventually were able to produce a million masks a day in that facility. Unbelievable. All right. Lloyd, hang on for one second. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back with Lloyd Armbrust and the story about Armbrust American in just a moment.

Stay with us. You're listening to How I Built This Lab. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. And I'm here with Lloyd Armbrust of Armbreast American hearing the incredible story of how he built a manufacturing business in just six weeks. All right. So the machine arrives and you've got the space for it. And I mean, I'm assuming maybe you're a little handy. Maybe you could use a wrench and a screwdriver and maybe get some power tools. But how do you build it? Who did you get to help you? Did you get a bunch of people

from your other business, your other company that you had started? So I had reached out to a couple of folks in the area, some people who were, had worked at a automation line of. I think it was a former Toyota production line here and just outside of Boston. And that plant had shut down. And so they were looking for work. And again, this is the beginning of the pandemic. Like no one's working, right? And so I got some really, really smart guys who knew automation. And they were able to help me hook it up. But it was funny because the machine was so temperamental. And they are used to like manufacturing. These guys are used to like making something that you plan and plan and plan. And then after a year you have this thing up and running. And I was like, guys, like, I, I just spent like a lot of,

there's a lot of money for me. I just spent a lot of money. We need this thing to be making masks now. And they're like, well, this takes some time. And so I was there in that mask lab, that first mask lab for 18 hours a day. I kid you not. I just had a kid. So my, my wife was a trooper on that decision. And we were just figuring it out, you know? It's like no one is an expert really in sonic welding, which is the kind of thing that melts the plastic together in the United States. And so I had to learn it. I was like reading manuals and documents to figure out like what frequency I should be tuning this thing to. The logistics of this are mind boggling, right? Like to that you did this so quickly. But I guess the urgency of the situation just kind of, you didn't have time to like think about this. You just to get it done. Oh, yeah, because we didn't have to just make masks. We had to get it to make masks so that we could submit it to the FDA so that we could actually sell these as surgical masks. Because it's a regulated thing, right? And so I had to get them made and then shipped right away to a lab and then get them tested. And one of these tests, guy, takes like 12 weeks to do.

Yeah, yeah. It's like they put it on rabbits and make sure there's not a reaction. Like, I'm not even kidding. Right. So what happened? How did you get approved quickly? So the FDA actually did this thing called the emergency use authorization for masks. they let us in that right away. And then we actually, like I said, we did a lot of things and we got

lucky and the batch of masks that we had created lined up and we were able to get our 510K very, very quickly from the FDA. I think they were wish. Look, I think the government at the time was really trying to make things happen and they were pushing things forward. Yeah. Where did, by the way, where did you get the material to make the surgical masks? Oh, that's, that that is another story. I mean, we actually make the material now. But the journey to making the material was trying to find it. The mask has five pieces, but the most important piece is the melblown layer, which is the filter layer. And you want to have a really, really great quality filter later because that's the whole reason people are wearing that mask.

Yeah. And at the time, before the pandemic, you would pay probably about, I would say, $10,000 a ton in China for that melbourne layer. You would pay about $17,000 in the United States for that melbourne layer. So that kind of gives you the idea. It was selling for $120,000 a ton in China. Wow. And it was going up every day. And I couldn't get it.

And so I told my COO, I said, look, you need to find this. I don't care how you do it. This is your only job. Figure it out. And he contacted anybody that had anything to do with masks on LinkedIn. It was like 300 people. And I kid you not, I'm not making this up. The last person he gets a hold of, the guy's like, well, actually,

I do have some milk loan. But we were thinking about making some masks with it. And we were like, look, we will pay double whatever you paid for it. And so we paid $100,000 for this actually made in America a melt loan. How did you finance this whole operation? I mean, you had to buy this equipment. And I don't think you were independently wealthy, right? No, but just, I mean, I know you raised some money from family and friends, but presumably

needed a couple million bucks. Yeah, actually, we, so I raised just a couple hundred thousand dollars from, from friends and family. That was enough to get the, the first machine in. And I think when we said, when we were showing that we're making these masks, um, is when like, I went to the investors and I was like, look, we were trying to make masks, we're trying to bring mask manufacturing back to the United States. And I think a lot of the folks, it was, it was like an altruistic thing, you know, it's like local angels in Austin and San Francisco that I had known. before and they were like yeah and so we raised actually raised three million dollars in a weekend i did the worst PowerPoint presentation in my life i recorded a voiceover seven minutes long i sent it to

all these people and uh yeah we closed about three million dollars based on that wow and and and i'm just from a business perspective when you raised the money are you do you are you feeling under pressure to to to give your investors a return so we actually structured the deal as as a loan for that reason. Got it. I named the company Armbrust really after my dad. My dad passed about five years ago. And he was really the inspiration, to be honest, for all of this.

And I named it Armbrust because I didn't want it. That was the other thing, too. Like startups, the thing they don't really tell you is when you raise VC, it's like you have to sell it. So you're building this thing. You put your blood, sweat, and tears into it. And your job is to, if you're successful, is you sell it. I mean, it's like, you know, raising a kid and then being,

like, all right, it's somebody else's kid now. I mean, it's insane. I mean, just emotionally wrecking. And I've seen so many other founders that I know personally just go through this depressing thing. And so I purposely named it Armbrose because I did not want to sell it. I did not want to have that exit. Wow. That's incredible.

All right. So you are now, you go from being a guy who's doing ad sales and trying to sell software newspapers to being a mask manufacturer in like six weeks. I mean, complete pivot of career. And you're doing something that people really need. At that point, you know, April, May, June of 2020, was it just easy to kind of sell them because governments wanted them, hospitals, wanted them? Or did you have to do any marketing? Did you have to go on Amazon?

Or was it just like people had heard about you and the demand was so intense that it was just like they were flying out of the door? Yeah, I think the Wall Street Journal quoted us and saying, like, you were selling masks in a pandemic. It's not that hard. something like that. That was in a four-hour conversation. He pulled that one out. But no, I mean, to be honest, like we, I call us the accidental consumer brand because we really tried to get traction with hospitals and governments. But those existing supply chains, like, they already exist.

The relationships are with 3M or with overseas providers. That's kind of, it's very entrenched. We still haven't broken into it, to be honest. Yeah. But the consumers, what I love about, the consumers. What I love about the consumer mentality is that if you can give them this story and you could say, like, look, like, we're providing jobs. We're giving living wages. We're giving health care.

And all of the stuff is made in the United States. It's supply chain proof. What happened before? It can't happen with this in place. You're not just a customer. You're an investor in the future of this American manufacturing. Like, people just love, I mean, they bought into that. And guy, like, I opened up our sales because.

the day we had a local newspaper story and I was like you know wouldn't it be funny if I just started a store and people could buy because you couldn't get masks because you were saying from anywhere. Yeah. And I was like, wouldn't it be funny if like people who read the story can just buy our masks? Like that would be that would be funny. I'm going to go ahead and do that. And we did, I think, I want to say in the first week we did like a million dollars in sales. Wait, you just had like an e-commerce site. You just put it in your website.

This is not an advertisement, but I swear. I signed up for Shopify at 7 a.m. And we did $320,000 in sales that day. Wow. And this is in your website's Armbrust USA and you just put on, because you can shop to the website and that was it. That was your store. That was the store.

Yeah. All right. It's amazing. I want to you to get another quick break. We'll be right back and hear the rest of the story of how you stood up a multimillion-dollar company a matter of six weeks. Stay with us. You're listening to How I Built This Lab.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. Guy Raz and with Lloyd Armrest of Armrest American talking about the amazing story of how he built a mask manufacturing company in like six weeks during the pandemic. Lloyd, once you were manufacturing masks and the demand, you know, went through the roof and people were ordering from the website, how did you find the human personnel? People were scared. They didn't want to work indoors. How did you find all the people to make the masks and to package them and to send them out? Again, this is one of those things that was just, I think, super lucky. Like we, We happened to hire somebody, and I think it was a referral from somebody who, I think, worked at a nail salon. And all the nail salons were closed in Texas at the time. And they were like, well, hey, I know these other people. They all work at the nail salon. They're really hard workers. And actually working in a nail salon, you have this, like, technical thing where you're trying to, you know, paint something that's very precise.

And the customer will get mad at you if it's not correct. And it's the same thing with masks, because it is actually more of an art than a science to be on. honest, like putting this mask together. That's something that was the hardest to learn was how do we get the fold right in the machine, how do you adjust the static electricity, like how do you get the weld points right? And these folks are really, really adept to it. And so our entire staff was almost wholly coming from the local nail salon industry. Wow. Yeah. All right. So you are full steam ahead and you've got this crazy demand. And of course, the summer of 2020, everybody was wearing masks. I mean, the demand must have been crazy. Your basic argument was, look, these are made in the U.S., and it means that the supply chain can never be disrupted because we're here in the U.S. Everything is domestically produced. And by the way, these are really well-made masks. We're not cutting corners, but presumably they were more expensive than imports from Asia.

Well, not at the time. I mean, at the time, you couldn't really get them for any price. That's right. And in fact, I purposely, priced them at a price that was lower than what was being sold at the time. And all of those customers that came in, I limited it to one person per order because I wanted to get it out there to as many people as possible. For me, it was like, I just want people to be protected. I don't want somebody who is flipping masks on eBay or Amazon to take advantage of this situation. Yeah. And we haven't changed our price since. In fact, during Delta and Omicron, Amazon went really high on their prices. people were complaining, but we have stayed exactly the same. But it is expensive because it costs more money to make it here.

Yeah. All right. So this is kind of an obvious question, but, you know, you have, you're creating a product that is in demand. And there were several waves of the coronavirus that presumably created even more demand. But we are once again in a moment where mask mandates have lifted pretty much everywhere in the United States. fewer people are wearing them. And I have to assume that that has a huge impact on your business. Yeah, the boom and bust cycle of the mask business is not something that I would recommend to anybody.

Yeah. We had to lay off. I mean, the last, before the last Delta wave, we had to lay off like 70 people. That's heartbreaking to do, you know. But it's like I was making masks and filling up our warehouse. And it's like, well, I can't keep doing this. It doesn't make sense, right? So that is the one thing that, you know, I think when we can connect with a consumer base with this story over something that they want and need, it makes sense.

But the moment that they don't need it anymore, to your point, like that connection is broken. And so that's one of the reasons why we're taking our actual same technology and we're launching an air filter business like for home HVAC unit because that's something that everybody needs. And that's where the conversation's going. like, you know, you need something in your home that actually can filter the air for you at a quality level. And I have to assume that most of that industry is also sourced from overseas manufacturers. I know 3M does filters for air conditioning systems, but is it the same thing? Yeah, it's the same thing. A lot of filters are actually surprisingly, they're formed here in the United States, but the fabric is made overseas.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I wonder about – in the past, we've had from time to time manufacturers who are committed to making things in the U.S. because for a variety of reasons, you know, it provides jobs and decent wages. But there are enormous tradeoffs when you make something in the U.S., right? I mean, the costs are higher. Your profit margins are lower. At the same time, politicians, of all stripes, say, buy American, make stuff in America. We need to return manufacturing to America. but the incentives are there for businesses and corporations to manufacture overseas because it increases their profits. So when you hear politicians say, hey, buy American, let's make stuff in America, let's do that. What's your response to that? I mean, it's just easier said than done. And to be honest, I did not realize how far the United States was behind. I was kind of shielded from it, to be honest, because we, you know, we're so great at.

things like Hollywood and we're so great at, you know, marketing in the United States, but we don't realize that just about everything is made overseas now. I mean, everything. So, like I'll give me an example, we had a single sensor that cost about a dollar overseas. That sensor took out my entire line. I couldn't, I was done. I was, I could not make any masks. And I called our manufacturing partner and actually the manufacturer of the chip in Taiwan. And I was like, look, we need this thing super fast. I was like, I want you. I'm, buying five of them and put them on five different carriers, see who can get it to me the fastest, because we were down. And I was talking to them and they were like, that's crazy that this sensor

has you down because there's a 24-hour market here. And you could go, and there's five different companies that make this sensor. And you could get it 24 hours a day. They have that infrastructure in place in places like China and Taiwan that we just don't have here anymore. And so it is so hard for us to be actually successful because we do not have the infrastructure to actually make stuff anymore. Yeah. I mean, here's here's the thing that I find interesting. When people talk about Chinese manufacturing, they'll say, oh, well, of course, you know, you can't compete because it's cheaper. But the realities, that's that, that never made sense to me because Germany and Japan are manufacturing powerhouses. And they pay high, high wages and have very strict

standards, environmental standards, and they are, they produce a lot of stuff and export a lot of stuff. It's infrastructure guy. We just do not have the infrastructure to do it here. It's like even though we are sort of like supply chain proof and that's something we talk about a lot, we're not really because of some of our parts, like our robotics, like our pneumatics are all Japanese. So what happens if we can't get our Japanese parts? Like they don't make them in the United States. They just don't. Yeah. So there are all these things that make it really impossible for the United States to be successful because we just do not have the parts for the parts, you know, and we don't have the knowledge base. We don't have like I was saying earlier. It's like I had to become an expert in sonic welding because there just aren't any experts in sonic welding where you could go in China or you could go in Taiwan and like there would be just like there's people that, you know, are experts in plumbing. They're experts in welding. You could call them

into your factory and they'd be like, oh yeah, here's the problem. But it just doesn't exist here. Wow. Lloyd,

given the fact that the, you know, the mask business is a boom and bust business, in order for

your business to sustain itself and to thrive and to succeed in the long term, beyond the air filters, will you have to

diversify further? Will you have to create other products? Yeah, I think so. I think it's like when you build some pieces of your own infrastructure, it just makes sense to add on. Like if I have, you know, we do our own shipping, right? We do our own packing. We do. We have our own warehouse. It's really not trivial, but it's it's a lot easier for me to add on product lines to that than it is to start from scratch. And so I think you have to do that and you have to diversify in order to, you know, survive. It's amazing, an amazing story about how you built an entire business in six weeks, a manufacturing business in the United States. It's like a blueprint for how to do it and you did it despite the difficulties. I appreciate that.

I think that like when I look back on it and hearing you say that, honestly, the thing that hits me is like, yeah, I was like not thinking through it. I think that like many successful entrepreneurs just don't think how hard it's going to be. And you just jump in and then you're there and you figure it out. And I think that's that's the hallmark of entrepreneurship. Lloyd Armbrust, founder of Armbrust American mask manufacturers. And now air filter manufacturers, Lloyd, thanks. Thanks so much, Guy. Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built This Lab.

You can follow how I built this on Apple Podcasts, Amazon. Amazon music or wherever you're listening right now. If you want to follow us on socials, we're at How I Built This on Twitter and Twitter and at guy.orgas on Instagram. If you want to contact the team, our email address is hivt at ID.wondery.com. This episode was produced by Chris Messini with editing by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Maggie Luthor. Our music was composed by Rumptine Arablewey. Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, J.C. Howard, Liz Metzger, Sam Paulson, and Carrie Thompson. Our intern is Margaret Serino. Neva Grant is our supervising editor. Beth Donovan is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.