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The Masketeers for Covid-19 Outbreak Relief

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The Masketeers for Covid-19 Outbreak Relief

Categories: Essentials Maintenance Care Planning Residents Safety

Published 04/08/2020

Dear Friends & Fellow Citizens:

We are a group of individuals with resources and connections in Asia for Mask and PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) supplies. This campaign is to help fund the purchase of these vital supplies and deliver to those service providers in the most urgent need during this pandemic outbreak. We are ordering masks and PPE as we speak, and fundraising on the backend to help multiply our purchases by way of large quantity discounts.

We are contacting all hospitals and clinics in the hot spots initially to understand their situation for supplies and will prioritize based on the needs accordingly.

We will be mainly helping them find the following supplies:

  • Gloves (exam and surgical)
  • N95 Masks
  • N95 Mask Equivalents
  • Surgical Masks
  • Procedural Masks
  • Goggles/Eye Protection/Face Shields
  • Thermometers
  • Hand Sanitizer

We have been trading internationally for over 10 years so we can quickly mobilize our networks to source supplies. However, due to the FDA's ever-changing requirements for import, it's frustratingly slow to get supplies in. Plus, they require an import license for medical devices which will cost a lot of money and time to obtain. Therefore, we've strategized to import into the US via smaller batches as private individuals, then donate them to hospitals and healthcare professionals. We have to do this to bypass red-tape and bureaucracy, expediting the delivery of essential supplies to the frontline of the battlefield.

Currently, we are having more successes sourcing FDA certified and NIOSH (CDC certified) masks, so we are calling ourselves “THE MASKETEERS.” So you can call us that too.

For now, we are aiming to raise $25,000.

No amount is too small, but we encourage you to be more generous than usual. We need to keep our doctors and nurses safe and healthy to keep our healthcare system from collapsing. Therefore, we must do our best to support our frontline warriors in this battle with this nasty Coronavirus (COVID-19). We are all in this together. Please donate and help share this message!

Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay hopeful!

Welcome to the Crusade!

The Masketeers

P.S. We are building this page as we go. We wanted to start the campaign now. Please check back with us for updates. Or send us messages with any questions you may have. Thank you so much.

THE ORIGIN

Michelle and Aaron have known each other since 1999 when they were co-workers in Silicon Valley. Michelle moved to Shanghai with her husband Ivo in 2007, and founded GREEN & GORGEOUS, a natural beauty distribution platform, promoting safe and healthy beauty lifestyle brands in Asia. After the dotcom crash, Aaron returned to his roots in real estate investing and business consulting.

Aaron and Michelle have kept in touch over the past 20+ years but mainly through Facebook. In 2018 Michelle moved back to the Bay Area with her husband and prepared to launch a wellness lifestyle brand Hygiene Hero for global markets. Aaron recently launched the 777 Promo Agency to assist clients to build brand awareness via sourcing unique logoed promotional marketing pieces for tradeshow giveaways and client premiums.

After China announced the Corona outbreak, Michelle started social distancing almost immediately. Originally she was going to buy some face masks for her and her family’s use through her supplier connections in Asia because the US inventory was quickly depleted. While she had no problem finding suppliers in China or Hong Kong, she became increasingly frustrated with the news showing how the government wasn’t providing enough supplies to the hospitals in the US. So she started doing more research and quickly realized that the red-tape and bureaucracy in the US regulatory system are slowing everything down.

Coincidentally during a recent WhatsApp chat, Aaron and Michelle discovered each other searching and sourcing masks for their friends and families using their supplier networks and shared the frustration with the dire situation in US hospitals when they saw plentiful supplies in Asia.

They quickly decided to join forces by combining resources of their companies Berry White, Inc. (maker of Hygiene Hero Hand Sanitizers), 777 Promo Agency and Advent Properties, Inc. to start this campaign. They want to go beyond taking care of their friends and family, maximizing their joint resources and networks to help raise funds and source supplies for hospitals and healthcare professionals. Michelle's new brand Hygiene Hero, an organic hand sanitizer, is in the final stage of FDA registration. She plans to donate some of her initial stock to this crusade as well.

Instead of feeling frustrated and helpless, we believe we can all take the matter into our own hands and do something to help. You too can help by donating and sharing this campaign with your friends, family and business network. You can donate to the campaign by clicking the link below:

WHO WE ARE

Michelle Yeh

Michelle is a natural cosmetics and wellness lifestyle entrepreneur, who has 25 years of international business experience. After working for some of the largest health and beauty companies in the US, Michelle struck out on her own and launched GREEN & GORGEOUS in 2009 and has devoted her career for the past 12 years promoting natural and organic wellness and beauty brands in Asia.

She moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2018 and founded Berry White, Inc., a wellness lifestyle company focusing on organic hand sanitizers and natural oral care products.

She normally flies between her home in the San Francisco Bay Area and Shanghai, Taipei and Hong Kong every two months. She received a Master’s degree in Integrated Marketing Communication from Northwestern University. She and her husband Ivo, both avid animal lovers, live in the Bay Area with their six fur-babies.

Aaron Chan

Aaron Chan is the Managing Director for Community Property Reinvestments (CPR Pacific), a real estate investment company, and the President of 777 Promo Agency, a promotional marketing firm helping businesses source unique branded promotional products. Mr. Chan graduated from UC Berkeley with a double major in Economics and East Asian Languages, and a minor in City Planning. He currently holds a CA Real Estate license as well as a California Life and Health Insurance License.

Darryl Glass

Darryl Glass, an executive for Advent Properties, Inc, a Real Estate and Property Management firm in the Bay Area of California, holds health and safety near and dear to his heart. He grew up in a family of First Line Responders, mom was an ER nurse and dad was a firefighter. He went on to work in the medical field for 10 years before moving into the real estate field. He has the utmost admiration for those on the front line defense of this virus and wants everyone to be able to access masks and PPE to be safe and protected. Darryl received his BS from UC Davis in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior. He is a Certified Orthotic Fitter, previously certified Emergency Medical Technician, and currently, a Licensed Real Estate Broker in the State of California.

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