Libby Diament has turned her bedroom into what she only half-jokingly calls a “shipping facility.” As the owner and founder of Diament Jewelry, a craft retailer with a brick-and-mortar store at The Wharf in D.C., she’s now working from her home in Virginia to fulfill orders for carefully designed face masks, puzzles, and care packages. She relies on the U.S. Postal Service to ship them.

“Every day I have close to 60 to 100 orders that are pending,” Diament says. “And I’ll get to maybe 40 or 50 a day. Some days, we’ll send out maybe like 80 packages. It’s pretty comical.”

On Wednesday, with the brick-and-mortar closed under the city’s shutdown edict, her business started selling hand-sewn face masks online for $25 a piece. The masks are made by one of her oldest childhood friends, whom Diament describes as a “very seasoned” sewer. They currently come in two styles (“roses” and “triangles”), have two ties each so wearers can custom-fit them to their faces, and are 100-percent cotton and washable.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said cloth face coverings can help prevent the spread of the coronavirus by blocking coughing and sneezing, even among people who aren’t showing symptoms of COVID-19. (Health officials warn that face coverings don’t supplant maintaining social distance as an anti-viral strategy.)

Regional leaders are calling on residents to don masks. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser recently ordered local grocery stores to post signage encouraging patrons to wear masks while shopping, and strongly suggested that public transit riders do the same. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is requiring people who are inside retail locations or taking public transit to wear masks as of April 18. And Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has recommended that people wear masks while shopping, but so far hasn’t required it.

For Diament, the masks have been a hit. In the first 24 hours, she says she sold $800 worth of masks, or more than one an hour. Each takes her friend 30 minutes to make. Diament swears by the quality. “I went down to my store yesterday and I wore it for two hours straight,” she says, adding that she and her friend have masks designed for kids and men in the works. (The men’s masks are gray.)

Diament Jewelry is one of a number of local retailers selling creative masks amid the pandemic (see sidebar), in the latest sign that the coronavirus has changed what people want and what they wear. Small-business owners like Diament are waiting to see whether this shift in demand will persist as the outbreak continues—and potentially once it cools down.

“The Safeway grocery store near where [our shop] is won’t even let you go in without a mask,” she says. “If we can continue this, we could easily be on track to sell a couple of thousand.” Still, packing boxes all day long isn’t easy, and Diament says she misses interacting in person with customers at The Wharf. As for the “corona care packages” her business is offering—they range in items and prices—she says she and her two employees have placed 650 over roughly the last three weeks, sourcing their products from other small brands.

With plenty left up in the air by the coronavirus, Diament Jewelry and other D.C. retailers are trying to navigate both economic changes and government bureaucracy. The business has applied for federal assistance available via the U.S. Small Business Administration, which is handling a tsunami of claims.

“It’s really challenging as a small business because it looks like ‘wow, they’re making money hand over fist,’ but the reality is you’re paying taxes, payroll, so many different expenses,” explains Diament. “We still need the help, even though the orders are coming.”