The team at Zenbooth used to spend the workdays designing and building sleek, minimalistic office phone booths for technology companies. Now they make and install sneeze guards and other plastic barriers for hospitals, retailers and restaurants.
Before Covid-19 decimated the office phone booth business, Zenbooth CEO and founder Sam Johnson told me the company pulled in between $5 million and $6 million in 2019 and 2018, and was on track to grow 11% this year. Pivoting to sneeze guards was a way to survive, but the revenue is nowhere close to pre-Covid levels.
"It brings in around 20 to 50% of the revenue we were pulling in before Covid," Johnson said.
It's not as sexy, nor as lucrative, as the Berkeley-based manufacturer's previous work, but the work instills a sense of duty and purpose in the crew as the barriers help safeguard essential workers, said Johnson.
The company also received a loan in the range of $250,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program, which Johnson said was essential in "ensuring the company's continuity during this time." The loan allowed Johnson to rehire most of his staff, but not all wanted to come back. Currently, 15 employees are working.
Founded in 2016 with $1,000, Zenbooth has grown into a steadily successful manufacturing business selling elegant, minimalistic phone booths to tech companies like SpaceX, Uber, Dropbox and AngelList. The sound-proof booths, which sell from $3,695 to $14,000, are meant to offer workers a private oasis to make calls or work in quiet among the open-floor office layout commonly found at tech companies these days.
“Our bread and butter used to be tech companies in California and they're not in their office at the moment,” Johnson said.
With its new business selling sneeze guards, which it has dubbed Good Guards, the company has sold to Bay Area retailers, hair salons, restaurants and health systems, like Alameda Health System and Dignity Health.
Since Covid, many companies had to quickly switch their business model in order to make ends meet, often getting involved in the high demand products, like sourcing PPE or making hand sanitizer.
Early on in the pandemic, Johnson and team thought about making face shields, but that idea didn't get much traction from local hospitals. Hospitals and others responded that what they really needed were plastic, unintrusive barriers to protect essential workers from the coronavirus.
Already, the company has sold around 500 plastic guards to more than five hospitals, providing barriers at intake stations, front desks and in administrative work areas, as well as other key areas where essential workers interact with each other and with the public.
“The sneeze guard thing was booming so we followed that train,” Johnson said.
While pricing varies for the plastic guard, the most common cost is $280 for a 48-by-36 inch piece of acrylic with a 4-inch clearance at the bottom for papers and whatnot to pass through.
For organizations low on funds but in need of a plastic barriers, Johnson said the company will consider donating some.