When you call the phone number associated with Township T-Shirt Company, a local graphic design and screenprinting shop that opened in 2018, the voicemail throws you a bit of a curveball.
The voice on the other end of the phone directs you to the company’s website and walks you through the process of how to buy … masks.
Not T-shirts. Masks.
It sounded just as odd as a cupcake specialty shop hawking pies or a local tire shop selling steering wheels. But in the spring of 2020, anything goes, and Township T-Shirt Company — back in the T-shirt business after a brief stoppage during the coronavirus pandemic — is salvaging some lost business by selling masks. More importantly, they’re donating masks to first responders in the township and at the shore, too.
Dale and Sarah Biebel, the husband-wife team that owns Township T-Shirt, estimated they’ve distributed around 6,000 to 7,000 masks in the last three weeks.
They’ve supplied masks to the Washington Township Police Department, the fire department, township public schools and the Ocean City Police Department, too.
The Biebels spent back-to-back weekends hand delivering masks in the township and in Ocean City, where they also own property. Since they only took one vehicle to the shore, Dale delivered by car while his wife biked through the sleepy beach town with masks in tow.
The deliveries were made possible through the help of their customers, too.
“When we first started it, nobody could find masks and this was an easy way of finding masks,” Dale said. “What we wanted to do was to give people the opportunity to spend an additional $5 if they wanted, an option when buying on the online store, and if you added that, then it went to the money we were using to buy the masks that we ended up giving to (first responders).”
The Biebels were initially hesitant about getting into the mask business.
For one, they were in the T-shirt business because they enjoy graphic design; Dale, a 2000 graduate of Washington Township High School, has taught graphic design at the school since 2006. And despite the knowledge that one of the wholesalers they get T-shirts from was making masks, they were uncomfortable because they didn’t want to come off as people trying to profit from a pandemic.
But they also couldn’t ignore the needs of the community.
“We were on Township Talk one night on Facebook, and there was a thread that had 20 to 30 people saying they couldn’t find masks and asking where they could find masks,” Dale recalled. “And on the other end, I know my wholesaler is selling them, and, to me, at a discounted rate …. And that’s kind of where it began, basically buying from our wholesaler in bulk in a discounted rate and packaging them up in packages of 12 and passing them out in the community so they have something to cover their face.”
Through word of mouth and the media, the mask business exploded and the couple could barely keep up.
“I was expecting maybe the 20 people that were on Facebook to order some, but then it was 100, then it was 150,” Dale said. “We were surprised by how many people needed masks … I woke up one morning to 65 phone calls from people in Ocean City and my phone was off the hook the rest of the day.”
Thus the new voicemail at Township T-Shirt Company. In addition to supplying the township and the shore, the Biebels have shipped masks everywhere from Maine and Michigan to Virginia and Nevada.
Surely the orders will slow down as demands are met, but for the time being, it’s helped the Biebels deal with the financial hit when schools closed two months ago. A large portion of their T-shirt sales are from regular clients within the athletic departments and teams of area high schools.
Until those regular clients return, the mask deliveries will continue, helping make up for lost business and enabling the Biebels to do their part in helping out their own community, too.
