Column: His business is body bags. Thanks to COVID-19, it’s booming

Your 2020 was in all probability horrible, however this previous 12 months was the most effective ever for Laguna Hills-based Salam Worldwide — moneywise, at the least.

Weekly group conferences become each day ones on account of all the additional work. The corporate’s warehouses in Orange County and New Jersey emptied of bestsellers many times.

After I visited Salam’s headquarters some weeks in the past, shrink-wrapped packing containers on pallets sat prepared for supply to the East Coast. A earlier cargo was already on its method to Tarrant County, Texas.

“Most individuals have a sure color and style, however they’re taking something on the cabinets,” defined proprietor Abdul Salam as he laid out one in all his hottest objects proper now: physique baggage.

In operation since 1992, Salam Worldwide’s enterprise is loss of life. Its 337-page catalog lists every part from post-mortem tables to cadaver lifts to three-body fridges to an economic system embalming station that’s on sale for $3,500.

For the previous 12 months, physique baggage have made life hectic for Salam. Shoppers can purchase them in 16 colours, from black to child blue to emerald inexperienced. With zippers down the center, across the prime or on the perimeters. Grownup- and child-sized. In orders of 1 or by the tens of 1000’s.

They’re produced in Thailand, and Salam has 15,000 in inventory. An extra 150,000 are within the works. Shoppers embrace faculties, counties, states, the navy and the Federal Emergency Administration Company.

So in case you nonetheless don’t consider COVID-19 is actual, then hear it from the person whose product will inevitably envelop you.

“Get up.”

I reached out to Salam after information emerged that Gov. Gavin Newsom bought 5,000 body bags in anticipation of a pandemic surge we’re now in the midst of. I figured his administration would purchase them from a California firm. As a substitute, Newsom went with producers from Illinois and Florida. (Hey, Gavin: Purchase small and native subsequent time.)

Salam by no means bought an opportunity to bid, however he didn’t must. His agency is busy sufficient as it’s — and he’s not completely satisfied about it.

The coronavirus has been “good for our enterprise, however it’s not good for the group,” stated the 67-year-old grandfather.

Salam is warm-natured and apologetic any time he makes use of a loss of life metaphor, which is understandably typically. “File earnings, sure, however the emotional toll is extra. Ultimately, you’re human and you’re feeling.”

He got here to his career comparatively late in life. The son of a rich household from Karachi, Pakistan, Salam migrated to america in 1972 as an 18-year-old seeking to show himself. He bounced round from Chicago to Florida to Southern California, beginning and shedding corporations and jobs and “attempting to make it with one thing.”

That’s how Salam discovered himself at some point speaking to somebody on the Orange County coroner. The employee advised him post-mortem saws have been a “very profitable market” with little competitors.

After studying up on the commerce and constructing some prototypes, Salam designed a easy flier, a duplicate of which nonetheless hangs in his workplace, with the tagline, “Now Post-mortem Blades That Final, That Save.” He mailed them out to morgues, coroners and medical faculties throughout the nation, then adopted up with chilly calls and samples.

His first two shoppers — Los Angeles County and New York Metropolis — allowed Salam to parlay his lack of expertise into nationwide success. He shortly expanded past saws as a result of “there’s solely a lot of a marketplace for one thing that particular. It was do or die, so to talk.”

He says what distinguishes Salam Worldwide from the competitors is superior customer support and costs that don’t rise with a calamity as a result of “we’re not ambulance chasers,” in addition to funding in higher supplies. Salam’s physique baggage, which vary from $5 to $42.50 every, function a clamp to make sure zippers don’t slip open.

“You don’t need a bag that if you raise it, the handles tear or it begins to leak,” stated his vice chairman, David Cameron. “That’s not the time to have an affordable bag. You gained’t be in enterprise very lengthy in case you’re like that.”

“You’ve got Levi’s denims, or you will get pretend denims,” added Salam. “You need Levi’s.”

One glad buyer is Donnell McCullough, post-mortem companies supervisor for the Maryland Workplace of the Chief Medical Examiner.

“We give them the size and the standard we wish finished, and so they make it,” he stated. His company has contracted with Salam for six years. “They supply what we’d like, and their bids are persistently decrease than others.”

Responders have used Salam’s gear in many of the main U.S. disasters over the previous 30 years. Earthquakes. Fires. Hurricane Katrina. False flags like Y2K.

4 days after 9/11, he overnighted plastic pouches to floor zero as a result of regular-sized baggage have been too massive for the scattered stays. When the Ebola virus threatened to overwhelm Gotham in 2014, the corporate assured the New York Submit that it had 100,000 physique baggage readily available.

“The hope is we’re completely satisfied to produce you with what you want,” stated Cameron, who has labored at Salam Worldwide for 2 years. “The hope is you don’t want all of them … We all know immediately when one thing massive occurs, sadly.”

All that have gave Salam “a sixth sense” about what the coronavirus was going to unleash final January, when he was in Australia to barter how a lot materials he wanted for physique baggage in 2020.

He requested double his regular take.

“Everybody was caught off guard,” Salam stated. “Nobody anticipated [the coronavirus] to be as dangerous because it was.”

Cellphone calls started to flood his workplace by February. By March, walk-ins confirmed as much as Salam Worldwide’s small headquarters at the back of an industrial park, subsequent to an ambulance dispatch middle — one thing that just about by no means used to occur.

Proper now, customers in Southern California are driving to choose up their purchases as a substitute of ready for supply.

Firstly of the pandemic, Salam requested larger shoppers to ration their orders all year long so smaller ones who wanted baggage instantly had entry to some.

“We paced it out in order that nobody ran out of luggage,” stated Cameron.

“We did fairly good,” added Salam.

Salam sees the coronavirus rampaging via at the least the third quarter of 2021 and the fallout to final a number of years afterward. That in all probability means one other banner 12 months for his firm — he wouldn’t disclose how a lot revenue that entails.

However he’s not completely satisfied.

“It’s a recession-proof enterprise,” stated Cameron. “This trade doesn’t change with the economic system. However if you see the pandemic, you study that life is particular.”

“Life is treasured, and we’re all a part of the life cycle,” added Salam.

Then, he sighed.

“All of us want cash, however you may have solely a lot.”