The Ledger, every show
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks, across all 44 shows. Pick shows below, then mix any filter with any other.
shows 
every show 44 of 44
Chinese manufacturers sell surgical masks below production cost, Armbrust says
“I mean, they sell it for less than the cost of actually making the mask at this point.”
Armbrust predicts manufacturing is the last industry technology will eat alive
“I really think that ironically, manufacturing is, is the last area that technology is going to eat alive.”
Pre-pandemic surgical masks were mostly made by hand globally
“And I found that mostly masks were being made manually one at a time by hand at the time.”
Pandemic meltblown fabric prices in China surged to $120,000 per ton
“It was selling for a 120,000 dollars a ton in China. Wow. And it was going up every day”
Medical supply chains remain entrenched with 3M and overseas providers
“We really tried to get traction with hospitals and governments, but those existing supply chains, like, they already exist. The relationships are with three M or with overseas providers. That's kind of, it's very entrenched. It was, we still haven't broken int…”
Armbrust generated $320,000 in direct-to-consumer Shopify sales on day one
“I signed up for Shopify at seven a.m. And we did 320,000 dollars in sales that day.”
Many US-assembled air filters rely on overseas-manufactured fabric
“A lot of filters are actually surprisingly they're formed here in the United States, but the fabric is made overseas.”
Armbrust: Sam Altman organized effort to import 1B masks at $0.38 each
“I remember Sam Altman put out you know, a call to buy a billion masks from China at 38 cents a piece because it was really hard to get masks.”
Armbrust: Armbrust American generated over $10M revenue in six months in 2020
“It was just over ten million dollars in about six months of time.”
Armbrust: Mask manufacturing in China was not fully automated before pandemic
“None of this before the pandemic was fully automated.”
Armbrust is the only surgical mask manufacturer with a dedicated sales team
“We have a 15 person sales team. We're the only surgical mask manufacturer that has a 15 person sales team.”
Hospital groups are now mandating 30% domestic procurement for PPE
“We have some hospital groups who have come to us and said, look, 30% of our PPE needs to be purchased in the United States next year, which was not a thing ever before, so they're looking at that strategically.”
Armbrust American built a fully operational mask production line in six weeks
“Yeah, we did get it up In, in six weeks.”
Armbrust's Austin facility eventually scaled to produce one million masks daily
“We actually eventually were able to produce a million masks a day in that facility.”
FDA rapidly granted Armbrust American an Emergency Use Authorization for masks
“The FDA actually did this thing called the emergency use authorization for. For masks, and they let us in that right away. And then we Actually, like I said, we did a lot of things, and we got lucky, and the batch of masks that we had created lined up, and we …”
Pre-pandemic meltblown fabric cost $10,000 per ton in China
“And at the time before the pandemic, you would pay probably about, I would say, 10,000 dollars a ton in China for that Melbourne layer, you would pay about 17,000 dollars in the United States for that Melbourne layer.”
Armbrust recruited its initial factory staff almost entirely from Texas nail salons
“And so our entire staff was almost wholly coming from this the local nail salon industry.”
Armbrust kept mask prices flat despite surges and higher domestic costs
“And we haven't changed our price since. In fact, during Delta and Omicron Amazon went really high on their prices. People were complaining, but we have stayed exactly the same, but it is expensive because it costs more money to make it here.”
Armbrust American raised approximately $5M in a single weekend in 2020
“And yeah, we raised about five million dollars in a weekend.”
Armbrust: Armbrust American has ~2,000 customer investors funding PPE machinery
“We've got about 2000 customer investors who are using the money to buy other machines. We bought an N-ninety-five machine. We were buying machines to make the, you know, head coverings that folks wear, the boot coverings.”
Armbrust says most of OwnLocal's 170,000 monthly ad campaigns are 'uniquely terrible'
“We process about 170,000 ad campaigns a month, and I would say probably a hundred and 60,000 are uniquely terrible.”
Armbrust: OwnLocal generated $11 million in revenue in 2017
“Yeah, we did eleven million dollars in, in in 2017.”
Armbrust: OwnLocal serves 4 billion monthly ad impressions
“So we do, you know, about four billion impressions a month on this ad network that we basically own and operate.”
Armbrust: OwnLocal generated roughly $110M for newspaper partners in 2017
“In 2017, I think it was something like a hundred and ten million dollars. We made our newspaper partners with that ad position.”
Armbrust reveals 50% of OwnLocal advertisers churn after a single ad
“And this is something like 50% of our ads. So we'll see that customer one time. And those customers, that, that is a really high churn rate for us. So month over month, like we're looking at almost 50%. We never see that customer again. But then we have this c…”
OwnLocal works with over 100,000 businesses per quarter
“We're working with over a 100,000 businesses a month or a quarter rather.”
Armbrust's first automated mask manufacturing machine cost $140,000
“And by the way, it was like, I want to say that the base cost of the machine was a 140,000 dollars.”