Austin construction company founders work to resource, supply masks, PPE for Texas

AUSTIN, Texas - In three weeks, the founders of an Austin construction company have changed their business model completely, now focusing on providing masks and other personal protective equipment to the state of Texas.

“Ted and I started in the construction real-estate world, and we did a pretty hard pivot among this COVID-19 crisis and now we are focusing on PPE,” said Logan Sligar.

Sligar and Ted Coleman are founders of Eminent Commercial, a construction company in Austin, but instead of building, these two have been delivering PPE to Texas.

“The transition was that we thought we could help and that's what we started to do. We started resourcing and supplying masks to the State of Texas through the Texas Department of Emergency Management,” said Coleman.

What they do is buy any masks they're able to find and sell them at cost to Texas. Those masks are then handed over to first responders.

“We're getting [the masks] worldwide. We've gotten some here, we've gotten some from other countries, we are working with China around the clock to get as many as we can here,” said Coleman.

For these two, they say this isn't a new business model they're trying. They’re doing it to help and have, so far, delivered approximately 500,000 masks to the state. Coleman is a veteran who served in the Army for 12 years. He says when he served, people helped him so now this is his time to give back.

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“When I was deployed as a veteran, we were the front line guys that people were supporting, that people were helping. Now we have the opportunity to do the same thing. I have the ability to reach out and help the front line heroes,” said Coleman.

Sligar and Coleman have a plan to donate the PPE not given to the state to privately owned entities that need it.

“I've never saved a life during my normal hours of operation in construction job sites in the real world, but it's cool to be able to do our part here and have the people on the front lines reach out and thank us,” said Sligar.

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