Amazon selling in-house developed face shields at cost

Amazon is adding to its exclusive offerings a personal protective product that was developed by its Amazon Prime Air drone engineers — with no plans to turn a profit on it. The Seattle-based e-commerce giant is offering a 25-pack of its Amazon PNWS Protective Face Shield on its site at cost ($66.25, or $2.65 per shield), noting that the price is roughly two-thirds the cost of most other face shields on the market

The company said the drone engineers took feedback from medical personnel to improve the quality of materials in the face shields — allowing them to be reusable — adding a snap feature to keep them in place, reducing sharp edges and thinning the forehead band to reduce pressure on a person’s forehead. Their changes also managed to shave time off the printing process, making them quicker to manufacture. The shields also received approval from the National Institute of Health for its design. 

The designs have been published as an open-source design package for both 3-D printing and injection molding, making anyone able to access and manufacture the frames. 

Amazon also said that it has been donating face shields throughout the pandemic — exceeding its initially anticipated donation by 30,000 additional face shields and putting it on track to donate 15,000 face shield’s by year’s end. The shield donations are in addition to the $10 million in-kind donation of PPE Amazon has made to organizations. 

For a profit, Amazon does sell its own brand of face coverings under its Quality Durables apparel brand. The four-pack of cloth masks, however, are currently out of stock and it's unclear when the product will return.