Novelty Manufacturing sees spike in planter sales, adds blow molding machine

Novelty Manufacturing Co., a 98-year-old molder of planters and container gardening products, is expanding thanks to a booming business from people planting vegetable gardens.

"We're adding capacity. With the COVID experience, it's become a little bit of a wild market for us," majority owner and President Joe DiMeo said in a telephone interview.

Retailers and online sites that sell planters and watering cans had lots of orders, but overseas suppliers had trouble meeting demand, he said.

"There was a lot of imported stuff that never got delivered to customers. Everyone was looking for anything that they could buy. For us, our basic business is growing, and our contract business is growing. We saw a fit to better utilize a larger machine."

Novelty bought a new Mini Hercules accumulator head blow molder with an 8-pound shot size. The Lancaster, Pa.-based company received a $400,000 low-interest loan through the Pennsylvania Industrial Development Authority. The total cost of the expansion project, including auxiliary equipment, was $828,865, according to PIDA.

Novelty was founded in 1922, initially making metal trinkets and cookie cutters. "Things where it was appropriate to name the company 'Novelty Manufacturing,'" DiMeo said.

In the 1950s, Novelty started moving into the garden space, making metal cemetery vases and window flower boxes. It added injection molded products in the 1980s, but for several decades it used custom molders for all of its plastic items.

DiMeo joined the company in 2001. Novelty had gone through three generations of family owners, and the fourth generation wasn't interested in running the business. So DiMeo and a partner, Mark Bolt, bought the company, closing the deal in 2004. Bolt is vice president and responsible for sales.

"Close to 2004, several of our [injection molding] suppliers were having financial difficulty," DiMeo said. One suggested that Novelty had enough volume to bring molding in-house, so they bought that company's assets, which included three silos and a couple of injection presses. A few years later the company added a used blow molding machine to make watering cans.

"And that's how we got started. From there, we continued to grow through the difficult times," DiMeo said.

Until recently, the company bought only used equipment. Today it has five injection presses and five blow molders.

"We're not big. We have a pretty modest stable of equipment, but it serves us pretty well," DiMeo said.

The company moved into its current plant in 1995, and expanded it to 130,000 square feet in 1998. Novelty has about 60 employees and annual sales in excess of $10 million, he said.

The company also imports and distributes some products, including specialty flowerpots from a company in Malaysia.

Novelty has stayed open through the coronavirus pandemic, considered an essential business thanks to contract molding jobs including sign and beekeeping supplies.

On the proprietary side, when garden and big-box stores around the country temporarily closed this spring, Novelty saw sales spike through its websites.

"We were fortunate to be selling through our websites, earthbox.com and rootandvessel.com," DiMeo said. "We had wonderful containers for growing tomatoes, peppers, herbs. It was very successful. When people are home, what are you thinking about? Maybe this is the year you grow your own food. Maybe stores won't have fresh vegetables." Now Novelty is gearing up for a busy 2021 gardening season.

"We're seeing orders for the coming season. There is still some optimism on the retail side. If people are not going on vacation, they may invest in making their house more livable and beautiful, and that's probably good for the future," he said.

"We like to produce things that people are going to enjoy. If we wouldn't decorate our own homes with it, we wouldn't like to sell it," DiMeo said.