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22 n e w h a v e n B I Z | S e p t e m b e r / O c t o b e r 2 0 2 0 | n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m "I t w a s M a r c h 2 2 , a S u n d a y a f t e r n o o n . T h a t ' s t h e d a y I c a m e t o t h e c o n c l u s i o n w e w o u l d g o i n t o b u s i n e s s m a k i n g f a c e - m a s k s h i l e d s " Opportunity vs. Disaster By Michael C. Bingham How COVID-19 strengthened one company, destroyed another C O R O N AV I R U S O ne of the most frightening elements of the economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus crisis is that its actual toll on the state's pri- vate sector cannot be known until the crisis has passed. And half-a-year aer the pan- demic erupted in late winter, still no one knows when that will be. In Connecticut the COVID-19 pandemic forced thousands of com- panies large and small to curb or suspend operations. "Non-essential" businesses — from retail shops to restaurants to entertainment venues — were shut down in late March, and no one knows which ones will survive being closed or having restricted operations. Nationally, in the small-business sector alone, between April and June as many as 1.3 million com- panies with annual revenues of less than $10 million closed or suspend- ed operations indefinitely, accord- ing to the Wall Street Journal. And the casualty list could top 4 million for calendar 2020. e same report, based on data compiled by Oxford Information Technology Ltd. of Saratoga, N.Y., also ranked Connecticut the second most at-risk state for small business failures, trailing only Hawaii. e fates of two respected area companies — both multigenera- tional family businesses — serve as bookends for the spectrum of outcomes experienced by busi- nesses struggling to cope with an unprecedented public-health event that, in the space of just a few weeks morphed into a global economic meltdown. Success story: Modern Plastics, Shelton It started with a seemingly in- consequential post on the Facebook page of Bing Carbone, president of Modern Plastics in Shelton. "It was March 22, a Sunday af- ternoon," recalls Carbone who was alone in his office thinking about what the shelter-in-place order that had taken effect six days earlier in Connecticut meant for his compa- ny, and the world. "at's the day I came to the conclusion we would go into the business of making face-mask shields," he recounts. "ey were desperately needed, it was a PPE product, they were not available at the time," he reasoned. "We're a plastics company, we know how to manufacture things, so I thought, we can do this." To get the word out, Carbone posted on his personal Face- book page that his company was mass-producing its infection con- trol face masks. Within a few hours he had his first order — for 500,000 shields from the state of Connecticut. "We had to quickly repurpose the company," Carbone explains. As a defense subcontractor supplying plastic components to a range of weapons systems, Modern Plastics had remained open as an essential industry. e 75-year- old company also supplies med- ical-grade plastics for healthcare applications, including medical devices and surgical implants for clients like Johnson & Johnson, Medtronics and others. e plastic face shields offer total face protection for workers in hospitals, healthcare settings, restaurants, grocery stores and other close-contact spaces. Within 36 hours of that initial order, Carbone's team had "repur- posed" the Shelton plant. "To make a half-million shields every other day, you really have to be creative," he said. "We had to do a lot of creative and inventive things," including repurposing existing machinery and reinvent- ing a number of manufacturing processes. Modern Plastics has also begun manufacturing acrylic plexiglass barriers used in retail, restaurants and casino settings to separate workers from customers. Most of these are custom-ordered to ac- commodate specific size and shape requirements. Another new product intro- duced during the crisis was Mod Modern Plastics President Bing Carbone models one of the face-mask shields his Shelton company began manufacturing in late March.

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