Miraculous drugs. Super-smart robots. Sophisticated missile guidance systems. Massachusetts’ innovation sectors are known for a wide range of high-priced, technological marvels.
You can now add at least one decidedly low-tech product to this mix: the plastic bucket.
Head up Route 2 to Leominster, home to a proud though fading plastics industry, and you can find Leaktite’s 140,000-square-foot factory. There, a crew of at least 100 workers churns out buckets and other painting supplies for Ace Hardware, Sherwin Williams, Home Depot and other retailers.
Aside from minor cosmetic variations – Home Depot’s trademark orange color on its plastic pails, for example – not much has changed in the bucket world for decades.
But now there’s the Big Gripper, a Leaktite bucket that hit the stores last year with an ergonomic handle and "easy grip" area that make it easier to use in daily life —from mopping the floor to working in the garden to washing the car.
Jay Brooks, a vice president at the locally owned manufacturer, says sales of the Big Gripper have been O.K. since it arrived in Home Depot stores 10 months ago. There’s been strong positive feedback, from consumers and retail workers, but no need to add new jobs just yet in Leominster as a result.
Brooks says the bucket was designed with Herbst Produkt, a San Francisco-based design agency, with Home Depot in mind as the primary distributor. Home Depot had contacted Herbst about developing new product concepts, and Leaktite was an obvious choice for a manufacturer, given its existing relationship with Home Depot.
What the bucket’s production says about the future of manufacturing here is what’s really important. The Big Gripper arrives at a time when there’s an increasing interest among consumers in buying American-made products, and among retailers in stocking these products on their shelves. A successful partnership like this one will help draw attention to the benefits of sourcing products here in the United States instead of overseas.
It might seem surprising that a company in high-cost Massachusetts is still thriving in the business of making something as prosaic as a 3.5-gallon bucket.
Brooks says there are a few reasons the business has remained here instead of going overseas. Buckets are bulky to ship long distances, and so the expense of moving a boatload of them from China is much higher on a per-unit basis than, say, dress shirts or iPads. With the extra lead time necessary to order products in an overseas plant, Brooks says it effectively becomes “cost-neutral” to make buckets here versus an Asian country that offers a much lower-paid work force.
Still, many potential clients weren't giving Leaktite a first look because they just assumed it would be more expensive to make the buckets in the U.S., Brooks says. Leaktite, he says, has always had to work a little harder to get in the door.
But that attitude has changed dramatically in the past two years. Cheap natural gas in the U.S. has kept electricity costs in check for manufacturers here, and there’s been a widening interest in finding ways to buy American-made items now. Brooks says Leaktite’s existing retail clients have put more focus on broadcasting the fact they are selling buckets made in the U.S., and potential customers that use overseas plants have started to make inquiries with Leaktite and other domestic manufacturers.
This hasn’t translated into a major surge in revenue just yet, but Brooks remains hopeful that it will. Revenue at Leaktite, by the way, continued to grow in 2013 and Brooks expects another growth year in 2014. (The private company, locally owned by Rodney Sparrow, doesn’t disclose precise sales figures.)
Brooks says he believes the sluggish economy is playing a role. Everyone knows someone who lost a job in the Great Recession. Unemployment has dropped since that time, but it’s nowhere near what economists would consider to be a healthy level, either in Massachusetts or nationwide. Brooks thinks some consumers are more inclined to buy American made products because it could help provide a job opportunity to someone who might be struggling to find one.
Bucket manufacturing isn’t rocket science. However, there’s no reason the same kind of ingenuity can’t be applied. Sure, there are still a number of hurdles facing blue-collar employers like Leaktite. But the evolution of the Big Gripper is just one example of how they still have an important role to play in Massachusetts’ innovative economy.
By Jon Chesto – Managing Editor, Print, Boston Business Journal
