Shield, EBW strive to be 'innovation arm' with women-led glove plant

ALPHARETTA, Ga.—Last year, Ingrid Vanderveldt and her company, EBW (Empowering a Billion Women) Worldwide Inc., announced a plan to create 800 jobs, increase business owner success for women and boost supply chain resiliency for personal protective equipment with a state-of-the-art NBR facility in Texas.

At the request of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response and Health and Human Services, and by partnering with "world-leading companies," EBW would build an NBR plant—dubbed the "Rosie" facility as a nod to the Rosie the Riveters of World War II—that would be led by women.

It was slated to be the first of a series of plants that would "help transform the delivery of domestically created and distributed critical PPE products," the Feb. 8, 2022, news release said.

But plans changed in a hurry.

Exactly one month later, on International Women's Day, Vanderveldt walked off stage after speaking to an audience of health care leaders in Nashville, Tenn.—only to receive notice that the plan would not proceed.

"We got to the last stage of the funding on that—that was a $192 million project—and we were informed that it was not going to move forward," Vanderveldt told Rubber News.

"From everything that we know, they did not move forward from that point on, on any projects," the EBW CEO said.

Due to non-disclosure agreements, Vanderveldt could not disclose all stakeholders involved in the project and further details on its discontinuation.

So, she and her team took a step back.

"(We) said, 'Where is the market now? And how do we take all of the successes and learnings that we have and continue to bring that out into a successful business into the marketplace that impacts America and beyond?"

Fast forward a bit, and Vanderveldt is introduced to Alison Bagwell, founder and CEO of Shield Technology Inc. and Shield Manufacturing L.L.C.

And on International Women's Day this year, March 7, the two companies announced that Bagwell's Shield Manufacturing would acquire Vanderveldt's EBW Cares Distributors Inc., a subsidiary of EBW Worldwide.

The deal, estimated to be valued at over $100 million, will work to "revolutionize" health care innovation and women-led manufacturing, the companies said in a press release.

And to do this, the companies are building a $70 million, 200,000-sq.-ft. clean room nitrile glove facility in Sandersville, Ga.

Vanderveldt said the project expects to produce 2.2 billion gloves annually in its first phase. Upon completion, the plant will consist of 20 dipping lines and produce 6 billion gloves annually. It expects to hire 500 employees.

Construction of the facility already is underway and is expected to be completed by mid-2024.

Exact terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but Shield will become a majority owner in EBW Cares Distributors, Vanderveldt said, noting that she is now a partner of the manufacturer.

She said Shield and EBW are negotiating the final terms on the capital for their future funding, noting the companies have a phased approach to their growth plan with a team of about 50 people working on the project.

And the NBR for the plant, Vanderveldt and Bagwell said, will come from "multiple sources" in the U.S., though they could not yet disclose who these sources are.

"We are prioritizing American-made," Vanderveldt said, adding that the companies will have ample sources for back-up overseas should the need ever arise, thanks to Bagwell's deep relationships from her history in the industry.

To have the messaging that the "Rosie" plant would no longer proceed on International Women's Day was a perfect storm, Vanderveldt said.

"We were very excited to bring (that project forward), not only as a great solution, but a women-led solution," she said. "But now we're doing it. In a different way."

Bagwell formerly worked with Kimberly-Clark Worldwide Inc. for 25 years as a senior R&D manager for Class 1 and 2 medical devices and PPE.

In 2020, she found herself stuck in Malaysia during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. While she spent the "better half" of six to eight weeks trying to get home, she spent the other half thinking back to a conversation she had with other members of Kimberly-Clark.

"I had this conversation in 2014, saying, 'Does this really make a whole lot of sense to offshore every bit of our PPE supplies business?' And then they said, 'Alison, supply chain is not your thing. You're R&D, get back to your job,' " Bagwell said.

Reflecting on this conversation and witnessing firsthand the supply chain bottlenecks and PPE shortages affecting the U.S., Bagwell found herself thinking she could better serve the American public by helping other clients get up, and started with their own PPE businesses.

So, in 2020, Bagwell started Shield Technology, a consulting firm that helps companies—including some "pretty large organizations" in the U.S.—get regulatory approvals, quality records and quality management systems up and running.

"Then I noticed (at the time) that nobody was really taking on the whole elephant in the room, which is gloves, because it's not easy to do," she said.

Fortunately, Bagwell is no stranger to the medical glove manufacturing industry.

When she first started with Kimberly-Clark, she said, the company was in the process of buying its first glove manufacturing company in Thailand. And Bagwell was on the integration team of this initiative.

"I felt pretty comfortable in that," said Bagwell, who has over 50 patents in the health care industry—75 percent of which are used today and have driven over $500 million in combined sales over the past 10 years—including Purple and Sterling nitrile gloves.

"I said, 'Well, I'm going to write a business plan, I'm going to present that business plan and go from there.' So we started Shield Manufacturing."

Far from a startup, Shield Manufacturing calls itself a "restart" company comprising seasoned professionals with more than 100 years of product development experience. It plans to be "a leader in manufacturing premium nitrile gloves for the medical, non-medical and industrial industries," according to its website.

Vanderveldt, a financier, operations expert and technology entrepreneur, has built and sold different companies across multiple industries that use technology and data to optimize business supply and demand.

She was the former Entrepreneur in Resident at Dell Technologies Inc. for three years, working closely with the company's president, Steve Felice, and founder, Michael Dell. In this role, she led ventures and initiatives that, combined, have driven over $1 billion in impact and have reached over 700 million people.

"I basically took what we did at Dell and began to apply it to our own business of Empowering a Billion Women," Vanderveldt said.

"In business, women will often say that the thing that holds us back is actually access to capital," she said, noting this was the first thing she set out to tackle with EBW. "I teamed back up with Dell, we launched a $100 million fund for women, and for the next three months not a single woman applied. The men did."

In response to this, EBW built "an ecosystem" to educate and provide mentorship to women across the globe. Today, this has resulted in more than 300,000 business owners in 88 countries across five continents, she said.

Then, not long after COVID hit, EBW got involved in the PPE space, Vanderveldt said, noting half of her family works in the health care industry.

"I did as we always do, and I looked at things from a technology and finance standpoint and said, 'Why did they break in the first place, what happened to the global supply chain?'

"We figured out where the holes were, plugged those holes, unlocked our network and we built EBW Distributors."

Over the next couple of years, EBW became the No. 28 fastest growing company, according to the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America, and No. 1 in Austin, Texas, catching the attention of the government.

EBW got involved with ASPR and HHS to inform women across the U.S. to adopt the vaccines for COVID, as women make 80 percent of health care decisions for families, Vanderveldt said.

"It was on the request of the government that we continue to get deeper and deeper involved (in the health care industry)," she said.

Which brings us back to the discontinuation of the "Rosie" facility and Vanderveldt's introduction to Bagwell.

"I pride myself in my network and knowing … who's the best in the industry," Vanderveldt said. "But when Alison and I were brought together, she was operating under the radar screen. And I was like, 'How is it possible that this woman and this team is so accomplished, doing the amazing things that they're doing in the world, and I have not met them yet?'

"For us, it was a no-brainer decision when Alison expressed interest in partnering and acquiring (EBW Cares Distributors)," she said. "We knew that with what they have and what we have, hands down, we would have something that would be successful and sustainable for the future."

Bagwell, a born-and-raised Atlanta native, said the state wasn't actually her first choice for the clean room glove facility.

Not because it wasn't what Shield wanted, but because when her team sat down and determined the facility's needs, they knew they needed 6 million gallons of water per day and to consider access to rail, interstate trucking, electricity and power, and proximity to ports, among other requirements.

She looked at places one would commonly think of for these needs, like Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina and New Orleans.

"Georgia was not really on my mind," Bagwell said, noting she found the site after her cousin happened to get her in contact with a socioeconomic developer during a hunting trip in southern Georgia.

"That's really how we ended up where we ended up," Bagwell said.

When she visited the site, she was "blown away" by the economic development team's commitment to helping establish the plant, as well as the area's access to transportation, such as a shortline railroad, and supporting industries—kaolin clay and timber.

"If you know anything about gloves or elastomeric articles, kaolin clay can be the backbone in a lot of medical devices," Bagwell said.

The economic development team also is closely connected to area colleges and technical schools, so Shield already is working to establish classes to teach students about polymer chemistry and getting the next generation interested in materials engineering.

The project also has received support from the QuickStart Technical College System of Georgia, a training program available to companies investing in the state's work force.

Bagwell said she and her team are excited to get involved in educating the next generation on the industry, as well as bringing more glove manufacturing back to America.

Yes, there is a surplus of gloves in the market, Bagwell said, noting she has carefully kept track of all 28 companies that have received government funding to onshore the production of nitrile gloves in the U.S.

But these companies are mostly pursuing exam gloves.

"A glove is not a glove is not a glove, right?" Bagwell said, noting clean room and surgical gloves must meet much higher ISO and comfort-fit standards.

And all the "big dogs," she said, listing companies such as 3M, Cardinal Health and even Kimberly-Clark, are returning their production to Southeast Asia.

While getting gloves overseas is no longer as big a challenge as it was in the height of the pandemic, "every seven years in my career there's been a pandemic, or epidemic or mass crisis injury somewhere," Bagwell said.

While these crises may not have directly impacted the U.S. like COVID, the first thing that happens in countries that are impacted is imminent domain, especially for medical supplies.

"If I'm building something in Thailand, the king of Thailand is going to be like, 'Guess what, we need those supplies. We'll pay you for them, but we're going to keep them,' " she said, which could lead to a shortage in the U.S. without today's efforts to onshore production.

"And I'm sick and tired of the same story of 'OK, … the pandemic's over.' COVID is only one of 900 known zoonotic pathogens. We're going to have another pandemic, but we need to be prepared for it."

The "big dogs" don't have a reason to innovate or change their ways, Bagwell said, claiming some may just meet the standards and protect the bare minimum.

"I keep telling people to have (their gloves) tested, because I guarantee you, they just maybe barely meet the minimum standard—if they do at all," she said.

But for Shield and EBW, this won't be the case.

"We're going to give you innovative solutions in your PPE space that is going to protect you so that you can take care of the sickest loved ones that you have," she said. "This is not a cost savings initiative, but a life savings initiative for the future."

The work happening with Shield and EBW is setting the companies up to be the "go-to innovation center" for health care companies that want made-in-America PPE, Vanderveldt said.

"It's just a night and day difference from what's out there and what Alison with Shield—and now us (EBW)—have been doing," Vanderveldt said.

"We're taking a play out of the playbook of when I oversaw … the Dell Center for Entrepreneurs," she said. "We're using the same success model … to team up with and work with the top brands in the health care space, and we're beginning to tap some of the other related markets.

"Our total focus is being that innovation arm to bring to the market sustainable solutions, not only for now, but for the future."

Bagwell is hands-on in different projects and plans with some of the top brands globally and in the U.S., Vanderveldt said, noting the company's phased approach for growth will be driven by "what our customers are asking us to do."

And with Bagwell's patents, including nitrile gloves, endotracheal tubes, tracheostomy tubes, enteral feeding tubes, pain management devices and more, the partnership has an entire portfolio of potential on where to go next.

"Those things are being negotiated and talked about," Bagwell said. "We hope to have a full portfolio one day."

But for now, Bagwell said, they're taking it one product at a time.

And Bagwell and Vanderveldt are determined to bring top quality gloves to market in the U.S. that not only meet the standards but exceed them.

And while the COVID-19 pandemic is waning, Shield and EBW will be ready for when the need for critical PPE spikes.

"I want to protect America. I can't protect you today, but I want to protect you in the future," Bagwell said.

"Because if not me, who?" she asked. "And I'll put my resume against anybody in the industry any day of the week."