LAS CRUCES – Five weeks after COVID-19 prompted the shutdown of New York City, Amer Jandali sat in his Brooklyn apartment, gazing down on the city’s empty streets. It was April 28 — five days into Ramadan — and Amer, who is Muslim, was sipping tea and enjoying a post-fast snack of peanut butter and apples.

“It feels like a movie,” he said.

Unlike many New Yorkers, Amer has a car. Every once in a while, he’ll drive around the city or go for a bike ride.

“It’s super weird,” he said. “The weather’s starting to get nicer, which is usually the time that the city comes to life. Springtime in New York is the coolest thing ever. People come out; roof-top parties everywhere; people chilling on their stoops, playing music. But that’s just not happening.”

New York City’s first recorded case of SARS-CoV-2 – the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 – was diagnosed on March 1, in a 39-year-old healthcare worker, a resident of Manhattan, who had returned from Iran on Feb. 25. On March 20, Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office issued an executive order closing down nonessential businesses.

Get to know DJ Amer

Amer was born and raised in Las Cruces. For many years, his parents owned and operated Casa Luna, a popular Italian eatery.

During his college years, Amer established himself as one of the city’s most popular nightclub DJs. For more than half a decade, DJ Amer packed local nightclubs and outdoor music festivals. He provided the soundtrack to summer pool parties, and frequently appeared on local radio stations. Everyone of a certain age, it seemed, knew Amer.

There’s another thing you should know about Amer — he has always been bent toward activism. Syrian by descent, he organized “Free Syria” marches in Las Cruces for several consecutive years.

In 2010, he graduated from New Mexico State University. Three years later, he was hired by the prestigious Memac Ogilvy in Saudi Arabia — part of the global communications firm Ogilvy & Mather. In 2014, he returned to the states to attend The School of Visual Arts New York City.

“My program was Design for Social Innovation,” he said.

An idea is born

During his first semester of grad school, Amer enrolled in a shop class. One assignment was to design a tool to address a social issue.

“It was taught by this designer named Kevin O’Callahan,” he explained. “He had this huge, curly mustache and was known for making these real wild pieces — like a huge table shaped like a giant hand.”

Amer, who is passionate about global climate change, let his passion guide him.

“I was thinking of those rubber bracelets that people used to wear — like the #LiveStrong bracelets,” he explained. “I wanted something wearable that also represented a social issue. So, tying that intention — of wanting to wear my values around my wrist — I didn’t have anything that represented reusable bags. I Googled ‘bracelet tote bag,’ and didn’t find anything. It didn’t exist.”

So he invented the Braceletote — a durable, reusable tote bag that could be worn around the wrist. He describes it as “like a bandanna sleeve — imagine the thin part of a tie. So you have this bandanna, and there is a bag inside it.”

Then, in his second year, he took a social entrepreneurship class.

“That’s when I got to develop a business plan, and put together a marketing strategy and a profit/loss statement — that kind of thing,” he explained. “That’s when I realized I could actually turn this into a business.”

From prototype to production

After earning his master’s degree in 2016, Amer spent two years working for a Dutch company called Dopper — a benefit corporation that makes reusable water bottles.

“While I was working for Dopper, I was developing my bracelet tote,” Amer said. “It was cool, because they supported my Braceletote idea and allowed me hours every week to work on it. So I worked the full-time job and the startup, side-by-side, for two years.”

He spent those years developing a supply chain — “where I’m going to get my materials from, who’s going to make them, how am I going to get them to the customer.” The bags are made of 100% recycled nylon; no virgin material — meaning none of it came from oil.

“It’s all post-consumer material,” he said. “That material was very hard for me to find. Because everything that I would find that was eco-friendly or recycled didn’t hold strength, and it would fray very easily. It was just not good quality. Finally, I found a supplier in Japan, and that’s where I get my nylon from.”

The sleeves around the nylon bag are made of deadstock fabric, Amer explained.

“There’s a supplier here in New York called Fabscrap, and they just have rolls and rolls of misprints or excess goods — anything that otherwise would’ve gone to waste. Imagine like a Marshall’s for fabric,” he said. “So I make my sleeves out of deadstock material, and the bags out of recycled nylon. It’s taken me a long time to get that part of my supply chain together, and then I interviewed dozens of factories that I was vetting to make my bags for me.”

Because the material he uses is very, very thin — a necessity, to keep it from being too bulky around the wrist — a lot of factories he contacted couldn’t work with the material.

“I finally found this lady in Virginia,” he said. “We were refining her samples, making sure her quality control was good, delivery was on time, product strength was really good and making sure it worked really well.”

New York City banned plastic bags on March 1, which was Amer’s proposed launch date.

“I had just sent out samples to about 20 close friends, who could use them and give me any feedback before I really launched,” he said.

It had been nearly five years in development — and then the whole world just seemed to stop.

Pivoting before launch

As the severity of the pandemic began to set in, Amer was visiting with a friend.

“She said, ‘You should make masks. The state needs them, people need them.’ And I realized she was right. I have factories — I have two, now. One in Virginia and one in Kentucky,” he said. “So I reached out to my factory in Virginia, and she said, ‘You know, it’s funny. We actually just started making them last week. We’re already in production.’ So I told her to stop all of my work on Braceletotes, and we decided just to focus on this for now.”

He asked for some samples, which looked really good.

“I got some pictures put up on the site, put up an announcement, changed the pictures on my web shop. At first, I just wanted to make sure they were delivered on time, they fit well and everything,” he said.

In almost no time, he was selling much-needed, reasonably priced face masks at FutureMeetsPresent.com.

“They’re cotton versions of surgical masks. They’re washable and reusable,” he explained. “They do have a liner of waterproof material on the inside, which helps. Because the masks, when you wear them, are to protect the other person — not you. If you sneeze or cough, they catch your particulates. You can actually hold water in ours, like a bowl.”

The response, so far, has been fantastic, Amer said. He has already sold nearly 3,000.

“Now that the cities are starting to reopen, I’ve been getting inquiries from different restaurants and brands that want to put their logos on the masks,” he said. “I just got a quote request from LIM College here. It seems like that’s going to be the next trend.”

Doing something good

For each $5.50 mask sold, Amer is donating a tree to be planted as a way of stemming climate change.

“The trees are through a nonprofit called trees.org,” he said. “They have a super good program where you can donate 40 bucks and plant 400 trees. So, we take 10 cents from each mask we sell and plant a tree. So far, we’re at almost 3,000 trees.”

Amer decided to donate 50 percent of the profits from mask sales to nonprofit organizations. The friend who suggested the mask idea to him, Soledad Haren, has a nonprofit media company called Build a Better Planet — where she does reporting on climate news.

“Since she was the one who told me I should start making masks, I decided to donate 50 percent of the profits to her organization. At a certain point, we’ll switch and I’ll donate to another nonprofit. It might be a certain date, or when we’ve achieved a certain donation level. But the idea is to use 50 percent of the profits and do something good with it.”

Looking ahead

A month later, on May 29, Brooklyn remained quiet and still. Ramadan is over.

“I haven’t left the house much,” he said. “About two or three times a week, I’ll go for a bike ride. I’ve been able to work from home, and I’ve taken up gardening, actually. I’ve got a little balcony. I built a planter, and I’ve got a palette wall up here that I’m going to turn into an herb garden.”

He’s growing his beard out. And he’s had a lot of time to think.

With a global effort underway to contain COVID-19 and develop a vaccine, he’s hopeful that this crisis may eventually give way to a silver lining.

“Now that the entire world is talking about solving problems on a global scale, we’re going to find ourselves in a position in which we’re primed to start addressing climate change,” he said. “That’s the level of functioning that we need to solve climate change.”

Amer has not yet set a firm release date for Braceletotes. But, with the success he is seeing in face mask sales, he’s considering launching a “bundle pack,” he said.

“For instance, if somebody wanted to buy ten masks, they’d get a free Braceletote — or something like that. As long as we’re continuing to see this type of web traffic, why not take advantage of it?”

Damien Willis is a reporter and columnist for the Las Cruces Sun-News. His biweekly column focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis in Las Cruces and around the region. Have a story to share? Contact him at dwillis@lcsun-news.com or @DamienWillis on Twitter.

This story originally appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News on May 4, 2020.