PIQUA – Isaiah Industries, a roofing manufacturer based out of Piqua, has recently pivoted its core business from roofing materials to face masks during this time of uncertainty. CEO Todd Miller said they have produced and shipped approximately 500,000 metal nose strips for face masks to over 3,000 people at no charge. Requests for the rust-free strips are coming in at a rate of 40,000 per day at www.metalnosebridge.com.

“Our current production capacity is around 100,000 strips per eight-hour shift,” said Miller. “With a total shipping cost thus far approaching $25,000, we have been blessed by several individual and company contributions to our effort. As a company, we did receive (PPE) funding, which has allowed us to stay open and be able to contribute to COVID-19 crisis relief in a meaningful way.”

According to Miller, the company has had several commercial requests to produce strips for large manufacturers of face masks.

“Interestingly, we’ve always dreamed of having a division of our company producing products for the medical industry,” said Miller. “Much as we all regret the COVID-19 crisis, it could be the unlikely route to achieving that dream.”

As the daily demand for face masks continues to grow exponentially, Miller and his team have gone into overdrive to help hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Miller said the requests are coming in so rapidly (several a minute) that he had to pause the website temporarily so his team could catch up with orders. He also said they will be charging for shipping, but not for the product, moving forward.