Yesterday Fanatics and Major League Baseball announced an agreement to stop producing jerseys at an Easton, Pennsylvania factory in order to make masks and hospital gowns for healthcare workers. There is currently a need for masks and gowns due to the response to the Coronavirus.

Fanatics is owned by Lafayette Hill native Michael Rubin and the company has some staff that works out of an office on Conshohocken’s riverfront (it is based in Florida). If you are not familiar Fanatics, it produces and sells official merchandise for major sports leagues and college sports.

Below is the announcement from Fanatics it posted on Instagram:

We’re proud to partner with @mlb to launch a new initiative supporting healthcare workers and emergency personnel who are fighting against COVID-19 surges and face a drastic need for masks and hospital gowns. We are utilizing our manufacturing plant in Easton, PA to immediately begin making masks and gowns out of the exact same jersey fabric that the players wear on the field. These items will be distributed immediately to hospitals and emergency personnel in Pennsylvania with the goal to extend across New York and New Jersey.

Rubin shared the below on Instagram:

Woke up in the middle of the night last week with idea of converting our @Fanatics factory in PA that makes official @MLB jerseys into a facility that makes much needed masks and gowns and then donating them to help fight this horrendous virus. This past weekend PA Governor @governortomwolf and Attorney General @joshshapiropa each called me saying they desperately needed help getting masks and gowns to the frontline workers across PA. Fast forward to today – @Fanatics and @MLB have halted production of all MLB jerseys and instead using that same fabric we make the jerseys with to make masks and gowns!! We have approx 100 associates working (extra distanced and in a very clean and safe environment of course) and plan to make one million masks and gowns then immediately donate and distribute them to hospitals and emergency management personnel across PA with the goal of extending this to NJ and NY – the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the US!! Thanks to @MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred for not only agreeing to halting production of MLB jerseys, but also doing everything possible to make this happen as quickly as possible!! And thanks to our incredible associates who raised their hands and wanted to be part of the effort to help the frontline heroes in this war stem the spread of the virus!!

Photos: Fanatics

Disclosure – Rubin is an investor in Burb Media, LLC the parent company of MoreThanTheCurve.com.