Think of a toy store, only instead of toys you have every Covid-19 accessory imaginable, from hand sanitizers to no-touch door openers. That’s the COVID-19 Essentials pop-up store in a nutshell.
Located on the second floor of Miami’s Aventura shopping mall, COVID-19 Essentials is described as a one-stop shop for all your Covid-19 needs. From a plethora of hand sanitizers and disinfectants to really niche gadgets like portable UV light sterilizers and shoe cover dispensers, this specialized store really has it all. According to the entrepreneurs behind Miami’s currently most talked about business, the demand was there and all they had to do was give the people what they wanted, but the shop has been getting some criticism online, with people calling it an opportunistic cash-grab.
“The demand was there. Everybody was kind of looking for masks and sanitizers and anything to do with COVID,” Nadav Benimetzky, manager of COVID-19 Essentials, said. “Anything that’s COVID-19 related, we have it.”
You can call COVID-19 Essentials what you want, but not cheap. A two-ounce bottle of simple sanitizer costs $5.99, and if you’re looking for something special you can spend $9 on a bottle of grapefruit-scented sanitizer. Simple face masks go for $29, but if you want to stand out, you can spend $45 on a Black Lives Matter mask, or customize one however you see fit.
“People want to have their own masks customized in a couple minutes. Everyone wants to express their own fashion, and we’re here to really customize the mask, A to Z,” Nadav Benimetzky said. “Entering Aventura Mall, it is mandatory to wear a mask, and if you’re already in Aventura Mall, might as well make it a fashionable mask. So we carry every single mask you can imagine.”
Every product COVID-19 Essentials carries, from the simple gloves and face shields, to smartphone sterilizers and infrared thermometers or designer face masks, is sold at a premium. This is a mall after all, and there aren’t too many alternatives around. Still, some people have already accepted it as a normal consequence of our new reality.
“With all this situation and everything, it’s like a toy store. That’s our reality right now. We need to protect ourselves, and we need to be very careful,” one shopper told WSVN.
However, COVID-19 Essentials has been getting some criticism online, with some social media users accusing its creators of trying to profit from a crisis that has so far killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
Nadav Benimetzky told Miami reporters that COVID-19 Essentials will stay open for as long as the products its sells are needed. That may be a while…
