Letter from Lutema CEO: The Delta Surge, Back to School, our Shortcomings, and more! Save 40%!

by Amir Tafreshi September 29, 2021

Dear Valued Lutema Customers,
I wanted to take a few minutes to truly thank you for your business and for choosing Lutema masks. We thank you for opening your homes to our products and we are very grateful to have the opportunity to protect you and your family with our “Made in USA” masks.

We started this journey in Q1 of 2020 in the midst of news coming out about a potential new virus. We began to search for a better, more protective, more comfortable, and a more fashionable mask. Just like many fellow Americans, it was nearly impossible to find a product that met the needs of our families. We started by sourcing masks from China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan. Sale after sale, reviews after review, we found that the products we were sourcing had major shortcomings. None of them met what we would call the ideal mask. They were flimsy, inconsistent, dirty, and 50% of the earloop elastics would snap off before we got them out of the box! The remaining 50% snapped when you pulled the mask down under your chin to sip on your Starbucks beverage! We became weary and started to test these masks for filtration levels and one batch would pass and many many others would fail. Inconsistency in raw materials, production lots, and quality control was driving us nuts. The researchers at ECRI found that 70% percent of imported KN95 masks did not filter 95% of aerosol particulates, the basis for the very name of the product.

We decided to manufacture our own masks with our own American Standards in mind. Masks that were comfortable, protective, and fashionable for the whole family. Our goal was very customer-centric and we were seeking to make products that met the needs of our fellow Americans. We had to move quickly in the middle of an out-of-control pandemic...and we did just that!

We have had extensive experience in manufacturing and eCommerce for the last 20 years. Taking our products directly to the end consumer has always given us the advantage of creating a product and improving it very very quickly to meet our customer’s needs. Thanks to your product reviews, we have worked to improve our manufacturing process and customer experience daily. We react to the market needs and we take every negative review very personally. We believe that our success as a company heavily relies on the satisfaction of our customers.

We appreciate all our fans and critics alike. We improve our products based on our critics and our fan base continues to grow.

With all that being said, we are in no way perfect. We do make mistakes and we do experience quality issues on some batches. This was especially apparent during the Delta Variant and the opening of our schools. The spike in order volume set new records for the number of products shipped, but it also set internal records of shortcomings on quality and customer response times. We want to apologize for these shortcomings and own up to our mistakes. We strive to provide not just the best product our fellow Americans expect, but the type of customer service that is expected of an American company.

If you have had a bad experience with our products, I would like to ask you for another chance. Before doing so, I will list a few of the most common issues that some of you may have faced with our products, the core cause of those issues, and what we have done to resolve these issues.

Elastic ear loops coming off of our kids or adult masks
Front weld of M95c small-sized kids masks separating too easily

These two issues were caused by overheating ultrasonic welding systems as we ran our machines and people 24/7 to meet the demand. The surge caused a 100x spike in demand, thereby causing us to scramble to add and train new people very quickly. We were running 3 shifts a day, 7 days a week, which caused inconsistencies in weld quality in certain batches. We offer free replacements to all customers experiencing these issues. We have always offered an elastic earloop warranty. If a single mask elastic prematurely snaps, we offer a free replacement of the whole pack. That is how good our elastic welds are expected to be!

Other potential issues that we own up to:

Delayed email response times
Really bad responses to your emails and a lack of problem-solving on first contact
Delay in order shipments
Incorrect colors shipped
Incorrect products shipped

Along with a spike in orders, comes a spike in shipments, calls, emails, and our lack of properly trained customer service reps may have led to a bad customer experience. We apologize for that and we assure you that this was not intentional at the company level. Once again, our customers are our employers and we strive to provide the best service possible. We hope your next interaction with our reps will leave you with a different impression of Lutema.

We acknowledge that we are not by any means perfect, and even less when our customers want their products before school starts and our order volumes are overwhelming our staff capabilities. We own up to these mistakes and we will make things right. Just reach out to us and if we do not resolve your issue quickly, contact our support team at support@mitechnologiesinc.com.

We are one of the only mask manufacturers in the US operating under ISO 9001:2015 certification and seeking an ISO13485 Medical Manufacturing certification. We are doing this with a single objective, to provide consistently high-quality products to our customers. In order to do that, we believe that the manufacturing process must follow the gold standard. We have experience in ISO, Lean manufacturing, and six-sigma - we are applying our expertise on these subjects in our mask production facilities as well. The results should speak for themselves.

We have proudly donated millions of masks to the needy during the pandemic and we will continue to donate to ensure public safety all over the globe. Our mission is still to manufacture high-quality, highly protective, comfortable, and fashionable products for our customers...and to follow our products with the level of customer service expected from an American company. The kind of service you will not find anywhere else on the planet.

While we don’t want to brag, we can tell you that Lutema was the first in many ways to lead the American Mask Manufacturing Revolution. We released comfortable and colorful masks that tested above 99% filtration month after month - sized for kids and adults. Innovating in the face mask industry in a way that even our Chinese counterparts couldn't keep up with our product mix. Our molds, designs, and colors were copied but too little too late...each time we released a new product, it emerged to the “Amazon Bestseller” list quickly and sold out days later. It has been a wild ride and we thank you for being a part of it.

We continue to innovate and bring on new products 18 months after inception. Let me give you a sneak peek into what we will be releasing in the coming weeks and months:

M93i - 3-Layer M-Style Mask (standard)

M93c - 3-Layer M-Style Mask (small)

M94k - 4-Layer M-Style Mask (x-small)

That's right, for those that needed a smaller mask than our M95c for the little ones, we have heard you and we are working on it...so stay tuned.

If you had a bad experience with our products or services, I kindly ask you to give our products another shot. We are dedicated to continually improving our products and your experience should be much different the 2nd (or next) time around.

Use Coupon Code: CEOLETTER2021 for a one-time 40% discount.
**Minimum purchase of $40, only for return customers only. Expires Oct 15, 2021.

Regards,
Amir Tafreshi
Chief Executive Officer
MI Technologies, Inc.
Breathh, Inc.