Paso Robles company known for its tree houses now makes plastic gowns to fight coronavirus
The coronavirus outbreak is forcing San Luis Obispo County businesses to get creative to stay afloat — and, in some cases, completely change the products they make.
Daniels Wood Land in Paso Robles — known for manufacturing high-end, custom tree houses and theme park props — was forced to close and temporarily lay off 47 employees due to the local shelter-at-home order.
However, after talking with local emergency services providers, the company found a way to pay workers and help the community at the same time.
Instead of crafting playgrounds and tree houses, employees would make plastic protective gowns for first responders and emergency medical workers.
“It just is so natural for us to be able to step back up and go from non-essential to really essential and help these first responders who are on the front lines,” said Ron Daniels, the company’s president.
Protective gown assembly line
The single-use, non-sterile gowns are made to protect emergency responders coming into contact with patients outside of hospitals, which have different requirements for their equipment, said Andy Dauterman, executive vice president of business development.
The company’s facility has become an assembly line, and employees are responsible for executing the different steps required to make the gowns.
First, employees roll out the clear polyethylene used to make the gowns. They lower a mechanical template made in-house and use razor blades to cut the gowns.
Then, another employee lays out the pieces of the gowns, which are pressed together and folded for shipping.
Workers are supposed to complete their tasks within a target time, which will allow the company to eventually produce tens of thousands of gowns per day, if it gets enough orders.
“At this point, we’re just getting the first group of people together working as a well-oiled machine,” Daniels said. “The production line is just kind of getting ramped up.”
Twenty workers will begin staffing two shifts per day, which could “scale up” as needed, Daniels said.
“It’s just all a function of what the orders are going to be,” he said. “We know this has to happen fast, because the gowns are needed now. There’s people calling right now that need help. We don’t know two, three weeks from now — it’s probably going to be a lot less. Hopefully.”
Serving the company and the community
Highly skilled employees are accustomed to working on complex, creative projects, Dauterman said. But getting retrained to manufacture the gowns is allowing them to stay employed and keep the business running.
“It’s like telling a chef to make a burrito,” he said.
The company is proud to be bringing back employees and serving the community. Daniels compared his business to companies that started manufacturing tanks and other equipment during World War II.
“It’s something that we can keep our people doing to keep them productive,” he said. “We’re not the kind of people that want to go home and sit and vibrate while everybody else is solving the problem. The desire to jump in this fight and fight back against this world pandemic is there. It’s real with all of us.”
So far, the company has made gowns — which are sold in cases of 100 — for the Paso Robles Fire Department, in addition to other California customers and those in New Jersey and Illinois, among others, Dauterman said.
“We see it all over the place,” he said. “People who don’t normally do this stuff are seeing the call to action.”
Customers interested in purchasing Daniels Wood Land plastic protective gowns should contact Andy Dauterman at andy@danielswoodland.com.
