Tin Box in Farmingdale shows sales mettle

In the world of giving kids the means to carry lunch and books, there are the Back Pack Guys, the Tee Shirt Guys and the Tin Guys. The latter are on Long Island, in the form of an obscure business, The Tin Box Co., in Farmingdale.

Little known maybe, but big in the dollars. Before the Great Recession, and during the mania for The Disney Co.'s Hannah Montana images, The Tin Box Co.'s sales exceeded $20 million. Sales are recovering, and are now about $15 million.

This small company, squeezed between a bunch of nondescript buildings in an industrial area, has its imprints - Spider-Man, Tinker Bell and those of Coca-Cola drawings and Star Wars figures - plastered in an array of colors and designs on a plethora of tin boxes in all sizes and shapes that kids ages 3 to 8 use to carry books, lunches and spare clothes to school every day.

"The beauty of the tins is that people don't throw them away," said Andrew Siegel, the company's director of sales and son of co-owner Stephen Siegel. "That's why companies like Coca-Cola like to work with us. We're a constant advertisement for them."

The tins are manufactured in Hong Kong. In Farmingdale the company employs about 20 people, including artists, who work with designs sent to them by Disney, Nickelodeon, Coke and others. Those companies want their individual creations, like Spider-Man, kept intact. But The Tin Box artists can place different images close to one another to create various designs. The company is licensed to work with the images. It makes about 5 million tin cans a year. Many are on store shelves at Walmart, Target and drugstore chains.

Stephen Siegel and Lloyd Roth are partner owners. Siegel vividly recalls the Montana craze. "We couldn't bring in enough of them," he said. Then came the recession a couple of years ago. "But we're building again," he noted.

Andrew Siegel and his brother, Michael, a vice president, run day-to-day operations. "We're the Tin Men," Andrew said.