Adjustable Face Mask designed by Speakeasy team

“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

-Rahm Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff

Over 110,000 small businesses are permanently shut down in the US since the coronavirus outbreak was declared in March 2020 resulting in layoffs and pay cuts across the board.

However, a resilient entrepreneur finds opportunities in the midst of the crisis and figures out how to not just survive, thrive but also help the community and the state in tackling the public health challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bethany Salvon from Speakeasy Travel Supply in Cape Cod Massachusetts is one of those rare resilient entrepreneurs.  Speakeasy is a family run business specializing in manufacturing travel scarves for consumers. The company was founded in 2013 by travel enthusiasts Bethany Salvon and her partner Randy. The innovative scarves from Speakeasy garnered publicity and took off shortly after their launch. And then, this year, the pandemic turned everyone’s lives upside down. Since the travel industry is one of the worst-hit industries by the pandemic, Speakeasy’s business was drastically affected as people weren’t buying travel scarves anymore.

The COVID-19 outbreak and rising positive cases created a tremendous shortage of medical supplies and PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). Since Team Speakeasy already had expertise in cutting and sewing they decided to produce some masks and donate those to the local hospitals in the state of Massachusetts.

The initial success led to some creative thinking and team Speakeasy launched a promotion for “buy one and get another mask free” while continuing to donate masks to the local hospitals. Learning quickly from the market and improvising, team Speakeasy started selling several designer face masks.

In response to the pandemic, The Innovation Institute at Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MassTech) launched a Face Mask Challenge and Accelerator. The accelerator was aimed at helping manufacturing companies in Massachusetts to pivot and produce PPEs that are essential for public health. The Masstech’s Face Mask Accelerator focused on the ability to create innovative face masks, helping participants to get ready with a solid business plan to ramp up the production of PPEs.

Speakeasy Travel was selected as one of the 10 finalists to participate in a 5-week virtual business accelerator for the Face Mask challenge. Bethany and other finalists benefitted from the Accelerator program conducted by Lever on the StartupWind Virtual Innovation Platform. The participants used the platform to quickly learn, ideate, conduct customer discovery, create prototypes of the Face Masks, create a business model canvas, connect with mentors using virtual mentoring, and get their feedback on their business plans.

At the end of the accelerator, after the final pitching session to the judges, Bethany and Speakeasy were announced as the winner of the challenge for her innovative adjustable face mask design and business plan. The state of Massachusetts awarded Speakeasy with a $25,000 grant to help speed up the production of the general use face masks.

The Virtual Accelerator program not only helped the small business to keep the lights on during a challenging economic environment but also guided them to pivot their business and ramp up the production of PPEs to meet the PPE demands of the state.

In a nutshell, Bethany, the resilient small business entrepreneur transformed her business nimbly to identify an opportunity in the midst of the crisis. It was remarkable that the Speakeasy team was not only able to pivot their business swiftly but also helped local hospitals and communities in fighting the public health crisis.