Keep forgetting your mask? Bluffton man came up with a trendy solution
When Tim Hickman moved to Bluffton from the San Francisco area earlier this year, his plan was to spend time boating, not starting a business.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic changed daily life as we all know it.
“I’m definitely a mask wearer, but I just forget it constantly,” he said. “... I always have a hat, keys, phone. Somehow I can always remember those.”
Hickman figured this forgetfulness problem wasn’t a unique one, so, finding himself “a little bored” with stay-at-home-because-of-coronavirus life, he started tossing around ideas with business partner David Adam, a California industrial designer.
“There’s a lot of ideas that get thrown back and forth,” he said. “Most of them don’t get very far.”
One idea that stuck — quite literally — was the Hide-a-Mask.
Hide-a-Mask is a cap with a pull-down mask tucked under the brim. The mask can be removed and washed. Magnets keep it stuck to the brim when it’s not in use.
“It’s good for those who forget stuff or for those people who are constantly taking their mask on and off,” Hickman explained.
He gave the examples of a mechanic who doesn’t need a mask when working on a vehicle but does need one when interacting with customers, or someone who is playing golf and needs a mask only when close to other players, or Amazon Prime drivers who don’t need a mask behind the wheel but do at each stop.
As of Friday, a Kickstarter campaign had raised just over $23,000 for production of the Hide-a-Mask. That’s almost double the inventors’ initial goal with 20 days still to go.
Hickman, 49, has a career history laced with innovation.
He first worked at Netscape as a project manager and later started Speck phone case company, which was sold to Samsonite. He also started and then sold Gumdrop Cases, which makes cases for tablets and laptops.
“I didn’t really have an intention to start something else,” he said.
One of the biggest challenges with Hide-a-Mask was dialing in the strength of the magnets so they hold the mask in place but are easy to separate when it’s time to pull the mask down.
“The brim is sort of the magic that makes it work,” Hickman said.
Hickman said he expects production to begin in the next few weeks at a factory in China. Making the caps overseas was the quickest way to get started, but that could change once the company is off the ground.
He said they may consider selling the components of the Hide-a-Mask so sporting teams or companies can create Hide-a-Mask versions of their own caps.
And, if all goes well, Hickman will be getting back to the boating part of his plan real soon.
