An Affordable High Quality Air Purifier? And It's Assembled in the US?! Q&A with CEO Peter Mann

It’s here! After years of planning and hundreds of prototypes, we’ve released our Assembled in the USA air purifiers: the AirMend. 

We asked our CEO, Peter Mann, to share the story of how our engineers worked their magic to develop an affordable air purifier that can comfortably sit on your desktop and clean your entire room! 

So first, why was it important to you to bring manufacturing back to the US? What made this possible?

We believe this was important for several reasons. Manufacturing traditionally has been influential in building out the middle class. The loss of manufacturing has contributed to income inequality and economically hurt the Rust Belt. It’s generally provided good paying jobs, innovation, and a sense of pride in making something.

We used to make a lot of things in the US and during the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s a large number of jobs were lost to overseas manufacturers. 

This affected many communities like where I grew up in Syracuse, NY. My dad worked for GE and he recalls going to Electronics Parkway where they made color TVs with 17,000 employees. All gone now.

Also, during COVID, we saw how fragile the global supply chain can be and the uncertainty associated with not having control over production. That uncertainty made an already difficult time even more difficult.

What made all of this possible for us was the invention of our motor technology — the engine that powers our products. The highest cost components in a product like an air purifier are the motor and associated electronics. Our team is world-class and has all of the skill sets to create the product from scratch and design it in such a way to eliminate any price premiums.

How is this different from what others are doing?

We’re unique in that we’re an electric motor technology company. We have our own motor technology that has performance advantages. We are vertically integrated and make the motor in-house, which keeps costs low as well as the cost of the air purifier assembly. Since we have complete control over the software, electronics, and motor we can optimize our products in ways that our competitors cannot.

In general, our competitors don’t have their own technology, most of them assemble their products in China and they source components like the motor from other companies. They are not as vertically integrated, they don’t control their own supply chain and instead rely on external companies, which adds cost.

So what exactly makes a high quality air purifier? 

The reliability of an air purifier is primarily based on the quality of the motor. It’s the only moving part in the air purifier and the main part that can break down over time. We use the highest quality components such as ball bearings that are designed to last for many years. Our proprietary motor technology is designed differently and in such a way that it is more energy efficient and lasts longer than others.

The performance of an air purifier is a function of the volume of clean air that passes through the air filter. We’ve optimized our HEPA filters to balance with the air flow to maximize the CADR (clean air delivery rate) which is the most important measure of an air purifier’s performance.

What makes the AirMend a high quality purifier without it costing more?

We’ve streamlined the supply chain as much as possible and designed the air purifiers to assemble with as little labor as possible. The component cost is similar in the US as other parts of the world, and we’ve chosen to locally source as many components as we can. 

The primary cost driver is labor. We design our products from the ground up so they require minimal labor to assemble. Products assembled in China tend to have many more parts and therefore a much more involved assembly process. 

Our assembly process is very streamlined. And since our assembly process is in-house in the United States we can guarantee safe, healthy working conditions and that our employees are fairly compensated. 

Why are air purifiers so expensive in general? 

Air purifiers have historically not been regulated and consumers have a difficult time comparing products. Price has been used as a way to convey higher product quality in the absence of objective performance information. 

Since you cannot see how well an air purifier works and many brands are not transparent with their performance, in many cases there is not a correlation between price and performance.

Price is also influenced by brand. Some well known brands have high prices because they can charge them and customers are willing to pay a premium. There can be status in paying more. We’re much more interested in providing safe, reliable clean air to as many people as we can. 

So why keep our prices down? Why was that important to you? 

Our philosophy is different. We believe that clean air is a human right and should be as accessible as possible. We price our air purifiers competitively. In fact, our assembled in USA products have a lower price for the performance compared to the imports.

For proper indoor air quality, there should be an air purifier in every room where you spend time. To achieve this, an air purifier has to be affordable and the filter replacement costs need to be low.

Everything is expensive in our current inflation state. And customers are paying more to receive even less.

We don’t want to be another company that’s trying to squeeze as much money out of our consumers as possible. We want to be able to meet people where they are and provide them with clean air that’s going to help them breathe more easily both literally and financially.