After the coronavirus hit Shawnee County earlier this year, the owners of one local company jumped at the chance to leverage their international supply-chain experience to get disinfecting devices and personal protective equipment to area schools and businesses.

That company was Otentic Global, a self-described “international sourcing company” headquartered in Topeka that also has regional offices in Singapore and Bangladesh.

The owners, CEO Rehan Reza and chief operating officer Linda Aziz, have more than 20 years of experience importing goods. But according to Doug Kinsinger, Otentic Global’s senior vice president, the business is much younger than that, as it got started just a few years ago.

“It’s been fun,” Kinsinger said, “because while it’s had a couple of decades of experience, it’s been very much like an entrepreneurial startup that we’ve been growing quickly.”

According to Aziz, she and Reza formed Otentic Global in 2017. They had another business prior that supplied uniforms to companies and provided international consulting and development services.

“We became somewhat of a middle man to kind of connect North America to different countries in Asia,” Aziz said.

And that experience would come in handy as they began a new business venture.

Through Otentic Global, Aziz and Reza still provide consulting services and international product sourcing, but their sourcing has taken a new form during the coronavirus pandemic.

In April and May, they began working with government entities to get face masks to Kansans.

“Then we started talking and said, ‘Well, masks people will be supplying, but I’m sure there is something beyond masks that we could look into,’” Aziz said.

Because the coronavirus began spreading through parts of Asia before becoming prominent in the U.S., Aziz and Reza were able to work with their international contacts to determine what other supplies, such as disinfecting equipment, were being sought out by organizations and businesses around the world.

“That is when we discovered some of these products we’ve brought in,” Aziz said. “And we just sort of took off from there.”

Around the same time, she and Reza joined forces with Kinsinger and Sam Nasser, Otentic Global’s information technology director.

“We joined forces with Doug because of his networking,” Aziz said. “And Sam because of all the technical things that come with these products.”

The products being supplied by the company include contactless temperature-checking stations that can measure a person’s temperature from inches, or even feet, away without having someone operating the device.

They also supply a commercial portable fogging machine that can be turned on and left alone while it disperses disinfectant throughout a room, as well as multiple hand-held disinfecting devices that can be used to rid surfaces of germs.

“This year has been the year of focus on COVID-related and disinfectant-related products,” Kinsinger said. “They’ve really tried to listen to what the needs of customers are and what their concerns are.”

According to Kinsinger, Otentic Global is now providing its line of disinfecting devices to schools, manufacturers, nonprofits, senior centers, restaurants, fast-food chains and banks.

He said they have been shipping products to businesses all over Kansas and service about 25 different school districts in the northeast part of the state. He added they have sold close to 500 contactless thermometer devices.

“A lot of them have gone to schools, but a lot have gone to other nonprofit organizations, offices that have a quantity of people coming in,” Kinsinger said.

Otentic Global also supplies an “intelligent disinfection door,” which resembles a full-body scanner one might encounter at a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at an airport. The disinfecting door, however, releases a non-toxic disinfectant and shines a disinfecting blue light when a person walks through the machine. Kinsinger said a factory in North Topeka purchased four of those devices to place at their entrances.

According to Aziz, Otentic Global kept a “very low” profit margin in an attempt to reach as many businesses as possible.

“It’s an additional cost for any company to be disinfecting,” she said. “So we want to make it as cheap and as effective as possible so it wouldn’t be such a big burden and so more and more companies would be open to disinfecting. ... That would actually create a better environment for anyone walking in.”

Once Otentic Global has supplied a business with a product, they continue to provide IT support locally.

“Because we are local, it’s not just about doing business. We are helping our community,” said Rehan, co-cowner and CEO. “Our products come fast because we aren’t focusing on other states. We’re focusing on the state of Kansas.”

Aziz said she recognizes disinfecting during a pandemic can be scary, unfamiliar territory.

“We try to be that person that says, ‘Hey, you know what? This is a situation, and we have this unit that really doesn’t cost an arm and a leg that you can install and be able to control the environment that you’re in,’” she said. “That is what we’re trying to work toward — providing safe spaces for people to work in, to live in, to go into.”