Frog Mask
The Frog Mask team: Jay Trivedi (right), James Dowell (middle), Will Porter (bottom left), and Kinh Pham (top left)
TCU student Kinh Pham is balancing a lot more than just classes and extracurricular activities these days.
That's because, since June, he's been running his own supply-chain company, Frog Mask, which he started during the COVID-19 lockdown. The company has since donated nearly 30,000 masks.
According to Pham, launching a mask company was less of a business idea and more of a way help the local community. Frog Mask got its start inside Pham’s house with the help of his family and friends. Using surgical grade cloth and sewing the masks themselves, Pham and his friends made masks for people they knew in the medical field, as well as people who simply could not acquire any masks.
Frog Mask pitched its products to clients, started a website to reach more people, and delivered to local customers. The company has now sold over 100,000 masks via its website, using the proceeds to make more masks to donate.
Pham and his friends are now balancing a full-time business while being full-time students. In between classes, they email clients, attend their weekly Zoom call, and deliver the masks.
“I figured this was a great way to really help the community because as you know, during COVID-19, people can’t help charities in conventional ways,” Pham says. “You can’t donate money because there’s no excess money around. People are helping the community by ordering from local restaurants or buying gift cards from boutiques, but we focus on the people you can’t support — local health care providers, local food kitchens, etc.”
