Best Mattress Company, a mattress manufacturing facility located in West Columbia, SC, has been in business for 92 years.

They have continued to keep employees on payroll despite a dramatic decrease in sales over the past several weeks.

With few mattresses needing to be produced, owner Buddy Delaney has turned his employees from manufacturing handcrafted mattresses to manufacturing desperately-needed face shields and donating them to local hospitals and first responders.

Delaney reached out to SC Emergency Management in March after reading about the shortage of personal protective equipment.

With the introductions from the state agency, Best Mattress has made and donated nearly 1,000 Face Shields to local hospitals, nursing homes, and law enforcement agencies in less than 2 weeks.

The employees have also sewn and reinforced more than 1,000 face masks for one of their local healthcare system in order to make the PPE meet current standards.

Components of the Face Shields made by Best Mattress were donated by Acco Industries, Cayce Ace Hardware, Lorick Office Supplies and Spectrum.

Buddy Delaney can be contacted at 803-429-6024.