By now, you’ve seen the stories: thousands of businesses are turning their factories into mask makers, creating protective face shields, hospital gowns, and more needed supplies for frontline workers worldwide. But how does someone actually do that? Claire Coder knows. The founder of Aunt Flow provides tampons and pads to schools, businesses, and those who can’t afford the much-needed products, and she does it with the tagline, “People helping people—PERIOD.” (Yes, we’re jealous we didn’t think of it.) And now, she’s using her manufacturing facility to make thousands of masks.

While Claire navigates this new wave of work, she tells us what it’s like to turn a small business into an essential service overnight.

When did you decide to pivot your manufacturing?
When businesses started closing and everything started going remote, we started struggling. We’re a small business, and our customers were [gone]. We didn’t know how to support [the recovery effort]. At this point, we were staring down the end of our company, and we had to do something. We started thinking and realized the main necessity right now is personal protection equipment [otherwise known as PPE] and masks… It’s very much in line with our company and our values to respond to that kind of need.

What was the final thing to move the needle?
Aunt Flow is already a Class II medical device supplier and a Food and Drug Administration-registered importer, so switching to producing FDA-certified three-layer disposable masks was a natural option.

What does it actually mean to shift your resources to produce masks? How long does it take? What kinds of experts do you need?
Aunt Flow manufactures its pads in Shanghai, which made it an around-the-clock process to organize the pivot to mask production in China while responding domestically to the demand here. We partnered with a Johnstown, Ohio-based apparel design and manufacturing company Atrium Corp., which already had relationships in China, for quality assurance.

Do you get paid by the government for masks? How can you keep your factory open and people working?
We are proud to be a vendor to the Department of Veterans Affairs and to many state governments.

How long do you expect this transition to last?
We initially planned just a few weeks, but we’ve adjusted our time frame. We will be supplying masks for as long as there is a need. We are here!

What have you learned as a business owner during this crisis?
I played competitive softball for 10 years. My coach always said, “It’s better to go down swinging than to go down looking.” When we were facing critical loss at the company, I knew we were going to “go down swinging.” That’s why we spent all the money in our bank account to transition to masks. We focused, relied on our training, swung really hard, and hit it out of the park.

How do you take your mind off work when you get home?
I start the day with CrossFit, which is my outlet for all of my pent-up stress, anger, or pessimism. I leave it all at the bench press. To end my day, I typically devour some chocolate cookies.