Little Tikes sees growth in custom rotomolding

Hudson, Ohio — LT Molding Solutions, the custom molding division of Little Tikes Co., is moving ahead in its second year — setting up a social media presence, joining a trade association and working on projects such as rotationally molded, small-engine fuel tanks and parts for the emerging “vertical farming” sector.

“Our big push right now is to establish customer base,” said Tom Fish, senior director of contract molding at LT Molding Solutions.

Working with the Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network (MAGNET) in Cleveland — which applied for an Ohio grant to help Little Tikes launch the custom molding business — officials of LT Molding Solutions have put together a list of prospective customers. Fish said the business also is contacting some former customers of a contract molding business Tikes set up about a decade ago, called HF Manufacturing.

HF Manufacturing was scaled back when toy-focused MGA Entertainment Inc. bought Little Tikes in 2006 from Newell Rubbermaid Inc.

Bill Cofield, Little Tikes' vice president of operations, and Fish, a veteran Little Tikes product designer, discussed progress on the custom molding side in an interview at company headquarters in Hudson. Fish was Tikes' senior director of product development before moving to the post at LT Molding Solutions.

In-house expertise in product design is a big selling point for LT Molding Solutions, they said. Distribution is another, since LT has access to Little Tikes' 650,000-square-foot distribution facility that can ship around the world, with 40 loading bays, a rail terminal, and 24-hour transportation scheduling. The company has its own truck fleet.

That differentiates LT Molding Solutions from other custom rotomolders, Fish said. LT calls the full-service approach D2D, or “design to distribution.”

The company also is offering services to other rotomolders, such as toll compounding and Teflon coating of molds.

In addition to rotomolding, Little Tikes runs extrusion blow molding and injection molding in Hudson. Cofield said total employment runs between 400 and 600 people.

LT Molding Solutions is run as a separate business from Little Tikes, and it has some dedicated equipment and employees.

Little Tikes' main toy business is cyclical. For example, Cofield said all the outdoor toys are in production now, as the company works on the spring selling season. Supplying Cozy Coupes, playhouses, wagons and other toys for Christmas is another busy time.

Fish said LT Molding Solutions will help even out the peaks and valleys.

“Custom is helping to fill up the factory,” he said.

One challenge a big proprietary molder has when getting into custom work is, what happens when the main internal business gets busy? Can it crowd out custom jobs?

Cofield said that Little Tikes has excess capacity on the rotomolding side, so there are no plans for now to buy more equipment for LT Molding Solutions. (The company does not disclose details on its capacity, but in its annual ranking of North American rotomolders, Plastics News estimates that the firm has 16 rotomolding machines.)

The contract molding business also benefits from some toy industry trends. Fish said Tikes has been emphasizing online sales of its larger toys, which are more difficult for retailers to showcase in retail stores. And the toymaker also has made some changes to its product mix over the years.

“In doing that, we're actually transitioning a lot of the toy business into more blow and injection, and then trying to back-fill some of that empty space that we have in the factory to keep the [rotomolding] machines up and running, people employed with the contract molding,” Fish said.

LT Molding Solutions joined the Association of Rotational Molders earlier this year. The company also set up Facebook and LinkedIn sites, and is working to improve its social media effectiveness and increase the number of hits, Fish said. Officials also are looking at listings on ThomasNet and other industrial platforms.

LT Molding Solutions is working with another company that has a secondary process that helps rotomolded fuel tanks for lawn mowers and other small engines meet government air emissions standards. Fish said standard rotomolded tanks are too porous.

Testing and certification firm SGS is checking the tanks.

Fish said company leaders attended the GIE+EXPO in Louisville, Ky., a major show for outdoor power equipment. Rotational molding would compete with multilayer blow molding for the small tank market.

“The idea for us is something that's lower volume, that the tooling would be a lot less for rotomolding,” he said. “It could open some new doors for us.”

Another promising area: Indoor farming, using a climate-controlled system that grows crops in vertically stacked layers. AeroFarms in Newark, N.J., is working to develop the farms, and a Cleveland-area consultant also is involved.

“That project's continuing,” Fish said. “We've got a design. We've done the engineering,” including finite element analysis. The vertical farming effort is in the proof of concept and prototyping stage, he said.

“The point of the project is, we came up with a modular design, that will allow you — no matter what size or shape of warehouse you pick — and you can set up in it fairly simply and quickly,” he said.

LT Molding Solutions also has molded a line of flower pots for a customer that is revitalizing its line. “Based on pricing we gave them, they think it can work, so we ran a couple of months of product for them. And I think it's going to be a yearly thing,” Fish said.

The company also molded special barrels for a municipal rainwater collection system to stop an erosion problem. LT helped another company redesign a spa for manufacturability. One potential customer sells rotomolded furniture for prisons — the one-piece institutional items can't be taken apart and used as a weapon.

The operation also is continuing a long-running contract job molding pool slides.

Fish said LT Molding Solutions has quoted on toll compounding accounts, where it can use its pulverizing, color and additives knowhow to supply other rotomolders.

“We will not re-sell virgin resin from the people we buy from, because they should be given the opportunity to sell that resin. But if we're grinding and compounding and adding pigment to it, that we feel we're allowed to resell.”

Little Tikes already is hiring, and growth from the custom work will result in more jobs. Fish called hiring “a constant process” made even more challenging because rotomolding is hard, physical work. He added that the company has plenty of employees with decades of experience in the factory.