A Diamond in the pandemic rough Athletic medical supplies company trying to keep up with demand as pro sports leagues come back to life By: Mike Sawatzky Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Thursday, Jul. 23, 2020

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/07/2020 (1620 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In hindsight, the signs were ominous.

Beginning in January, sales staff at Winnipeg’s Diamond Athletic Medical Supplies noticed a growing demand for disposable masks.

Local customers were visiting the company’s south Winnipeg store to order masks to be shipped back to family members in China, which happened to be the epicentre of the COVID-19 virus outbreak and was experiencing a shortage of the protective devices at the time.

“It was like 7 1/2 years worth of inventory we sold in that month span,” says Hannah Diamond, whose father Gerald serves as the company’s president.

Six months later, the demand for masks has levelled off, but the market for medical gloves and disinfectant products remains hot.

Diamond Athletic, touted as Canada’s leading provider of orthopedic braces, sports medicine and rehabilitation products, is at the forefront of meeting that demand, selling approximately 100,000 masks and more than one million gloves so far in 2020.

The company services clinics and a variety of health-care professionals along with the public. It also has close ties with the Jets and several other Canadian NHL teams and five of the nine CFL franchises, including the Blue Bombers.

The NHL is scheduled to open hub cities in Edmonton and Toronto within the next few days while the CFL has put the wheels in motion to bring all nine of its clubs to Winnipeg for an abbreviated regular season and playoffs.

In short, it’s expected to be a busy few months.

“As well as doing all the CFL, NHL level (teams), we’re also the main supplier in this province for physio, athletic therapy and massage therapy,” says Gerald Diamond. “So all those guys are coming to us, trying to get their products for the clinics.”

Finding suppliers to provide their product while maintaining a level of quality is important.

“We’ve reached out to more suppliers than we typically would use,” he says. “We’ve got, I think, over 1,000 different suppliers that we deal with anyway. But for COVID supplies, we reach everywhere we can. But we don’t want to get in a cycle of buying overpriced, inflated stuff or low quality, right?”

Cleaning supplies are at the top of most shopping lists and Diamond Athletics basement warehouse, home to approximately $1.3 million in inventory, is a go-to source.

“A lot of the hard-surface disinfectants, the stuff that clinics need to clean tables properly between patients, because that normal stuff they used to be able to buy as part of their ongoing practice has been sucked up by the consumer now, so they can’t for normal functional stuff — that’s been hard,” says Diamond.

“Getting those different hard- and soft-surface disinfectants has been a major challenge, but we’re getting them back now, which is great.”

Jen Kusie, the company’s inventory manager, admits the relaunch of the NHL and CFL will raise expectations.

“(The teams) can’t go if they don’t have proper sanitation or things that they require, like hand sanitizer and stuff like that,” says Kusie. “We had a bit of a struggle, procuring some stuff (early on), obviously, because of the demand from hospitals and primary-care areas. So everybody kind of would get their certain allotment — teams obviously weren’t going at that time.

“It wasn’t as big of an issue but now that we are kind of into a groove and actually can maintain stock — we’re able to supply that.”

Sales manager Calvin Penner is in daily contact with dozens of trainers and athletic therapists from across the country. He could soon also be on call from U.S.-based NHL teams, once they arrive in their hub cities.

“The teams will come into Canada (and) will bring X amount of stuff in their training trunks that they’ll have already,” says Gerald Diamond, “but beyond that, every time a team progresses to the next round, they’re going to call us and say, ‘Hey, we need a shipment of tape, wrap, gels (or) we need a shoulder brace for this guy that hurt himself. We need those types of ongoing supplies.’

“So the normal stuff that we would do on an ongoing basis for each team, we’re expecting to see many times (over)…. For us, it’s a fun part of the business, you know, helping to provide the the top level of support with their needs.”

Certain parts of the business are tougher. Isolation gowns and shoe covers are difficult to find but hand sanitizer and masks are now made locally and are more readily available.

A consistent supply of medical gloves is more elusive. Most gloves are made in Malaysia, which remains a hot spot for the virus.

“It’s been a real shortage across North America for gloves and it’s getting worse,” says company vice-president Ben Diamond. “So really, once they get over COVID there, then the production will come back up again.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14