In Corona times, the shirt manufacturer van Laack is doing brilliant business. That was absolutely not due to his core business, but to a new additional division: the masks. The obligation to wear ends soon – what does the company boss say? The boss of the shirt manufacturer van Laack wants to wear a mouth and nose cover when he goes shopping even after the end of the mask requirement. “I don’t want to get infected – neither with the corona virus nor with other pathogens,” said company owner and managing director Christian von Daniels of the dpa in Mönchengladbach. He finds it regrettable that the mask requirement is no longer applicable at the weekend – “this means that there is no important protection for employees and customers”. However, the manager expects that many people will also want to wear mouth and nose protection voluntarily. “Willingness should be high,” he estimates. The manufacturer has its own branches in Germany, and the fashion chain SØR also belongs to the company. In these stores, von Daniels could continue to require the wearing of masks as part of the domiciliary rights. But the manager doesn’t want to do that. “If we were the only ones to make it mandatory to wear masks and the other retailers didn’t, that would be a competitive disadvantage – you can’t do that.” Van Laack has only been known to many people since Corona: According to the textile manufacturer, it sold 130 million masks during the pandemic, and the company logo on the fabrics was at times omnipresent in Germany. When the use of medical mouth-nose covers or FFP2 masks became mandatory at the beginning of 2021, van Laack’s mask business collapsed. Daniels is currently working on a kind of revival of this additional business. The textiles have been further developed and their protective function improved with sewn-in fleece. The company recently launched fabric masks on the level of medical disposable masks, and in a few weeks an FFP2 mask made of fabric should also come out. The manager continues to believe in the business potential of protective masks. “On the one hand, the corona virus will not go away, on the other hand, such textiles are also good protection against the cold wave in autumn.” However, von Daniels also said: “It is clear to me that we will never reach the mask business level of 2020 – but there will still be a fundamental need in the future.” (dpa)