EVOLVE Business and Professional Magazine May 2020 | Page 23

SPONSORED BY HALIFAX HEALTH
Troy Olson
we were making samples.”
A couple of days later, Olson said the company was ramping up
production and taking orders.
“We were getting orders from hospitals and health care from
around the county,” he said.
FitUSA began producing around 10,000 masks a day and
doubled that by the end of March. Olson said his goal is to put out
30,000 masks a day to keep up with demand.
But before that conference call took place, Olson was already
thinking about making the switch and was even hearing the same
thing from employees. And when a growing number of athletic
events started to get cancelled, Olson was sure.
“We were going to have to change our game plan,” he said,
adding it wasn’t just his family he was thinking about, but how to
keep his employees on the job earning a paycheck.
Olson also wanted to help the community after hearing that
some restaurants were shutting down and other businesses began
laying-off workers.
Needing to hire people to increase production, Olson said he
wanted to bring in as many displaced workers as he could.
“We’re trying to utilize them, until the can go back to their
regular jobs” he said.
For Olson, that spirit of community is the key to getting through
the current crisis.
“When emergencies happen, we come together to work through
it,” he said. “That is who we are as a people.”
SERVICE INDUSTRY SHIFT
Reaching out to the community is also central to Florida Supply
& Cleaning Products’ efforts to get through the pandemic.
The company on Mason Avenue in Daytona Beach serves hotels
and resorts throughout Central Florida and up and down the coast
with cleaning supplies, linens and other bulk items. But the impact
of Covid-19 on tourism and travel forced the company to
change plans.
Office manager Steve Towsley said the family-owned business
knew it had to act fast once the theme parks started shutting
their gates.
“Once Disney announced closing, we realized we needed to
shift gears,” he said.
Placing an ad in local media offering their product to the general
public started the ball rolling.
Towsley said while the company has always been open to the
public, “but because we sell by the case and in large quantities,”
average consumers don’t usually want that much of even a good
thing like toilet paper.
“Even toilet paper comes in a case of 96 rolls,” he said.
To make it easier on consumers, the company began breaking
down the cases and packing the items in smaller amounts.
As word spread of the company’s shift, more residents looking
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