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SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) — Inspired by his children, Silicon Valley father and tech entrepreneur Kevin Ngo is helping to build a better Bay Area by thinking of face masks.
“Our mask looks like this,” Ngo said as he took Flo’s mask out of the box. “Here’s the user manual.”
Ngo is a founder and father of three. In the year In 2018, before the outbreak, he started designing the mask for his young children. At the time, the campfire was tearing through Butte County and affecting air quality.
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“My children used to go to school without any protection. They came home and complained of headaches and nausea,” he explained. But here I am, wearing my N95 to work.
Ngo says he has spent 20 years developing products in his career, and is able to use this experience in the design process. He was looking for a better solution for children’s face masks.
The Flo Mask was originally developed by Air Flo Labs, LLC for children – a reusable, rubber-like product designed to be comfortable and effective to wear. When Covid hit, the pandemic brought an even more urgent need to use masks.
“The mask industry hasn’t innovated for decades. It’s the same stuff they’ve been selling for years,” he said. “And no one has even thought of 3D scanning a person’s face to see if it really fits them or not.”
Incorporating, part of Ngo’s process involves 3D scanning the faces of dozens of children from different ethnic groups. This was Ngo’s way of enhancing the fit and filter for any face shape.
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It expanded its inventory in April to include masks for adults as well. During that development process, Ngo said, 3D scans involved hundreds of adults’ faces.
The company’s website says: “The world is very different from when we started our journey in 2018, but our mission remains. Build the world’s best face mask for everyone, period.“
ABC7 Special Correspondent Dr. Alok Patel said, “I’m not surprised that the world of biology and innovation is now looking at masks and saying, ‘How can we improve on these?’ Surgical mask. “They are very old at this point.”
Dr. Patel continued, “And to be completely honest, we’re living in a world where another respiratory virus could happen very soon. There may be other times when you go somewhere and you need that extra level of protection. And, sadly, there are more wildfires every year.
When asked about Ngo’s efforts, Dr. Patel said it was comforting.
“It’s reassuring to see individuals out there taking this and saying, ‘How do we make a mask that has the right level of filtration, and is comfortable, that people can wear for a long time, but also fits well? It’s reusable,'” he told ABC7 News. “So we’re reducing waste.”
Ngo added, “Our masks are made to last 20 to 40 hours. So one filter can last you a whole week.”
“And these masks don’t end up in landfills and oceans. I’m very happy to see such an effort being made and to see the next generation of masks being released,” said Dr. Patel.
Ngo said the process was made more challenging by not being able to physically develop the product in collaboration with his team during the Covid-19 pandemic. He and his partners were forced to work remotely.
He said the filters are made in the US, in Southern California, and the company’s warehouse is located in the Bay Area, to mitigate potential problems due to supply chain delays.
“I’m trying to do as much as we can locally,” he shared. “Because it’s often easy for people to think about profit. But that’s not what this mission is about.”
Flo masks are not normally N95 certified. However, Ngo said his company is working directly with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health as a finalist in the BARDA/NIOSH/NIST Mask Innovation Challenge.
Air Flow Labs, LLC is one of 10 remaining groups across the country. The FloMask team is comprised of award-winning product designers from around Silicon Valley, who have spent their entire careers building products for the world’s best tech companies.
“It’s been a challenge, but we’re here to protect people,” Ngo told ABC7 News.
“What we’re trying to help now are the immunocompromised users,” he continued. “They feel somewhat left out as the rules around masks change and if it’s ‘everyone for themselves’ they really need to improve and develop the best masks available today.”
Click here for more information about Flo Mask.
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