There’s been a lot of fuss in the news lately about superstitious couples whom the wedding industry expects to turn out in record numbers to tie the knot on July 7, 2007. The date, you’ll note, has three lucky sevens.
And although numerologists, gamblers and realists out there might quibble over whether those numbers ensure happiness and longevity for the happy couples, one thing it clearly ensures is a windfall for companies that deal in wedding supplies.
That should be good news for Keystone Paper & Box Co. in East Windsor, a 40-person company that counts among its products a line of wedding gown preservation chests, which are sold around the world to brides looking to keep their gowns as heirlooms.
That’s not to mention the other ancillary boxes one is likely to find at a wedding, or among those preparing for it. Other items made and sold by Keystone include specialty shirt boxes — particularly handy for the men folk — film boxes for Fuji camera film, and even boxes for toothpaste, denture cream, bandages and other health and beauty products that inevitably hold goods needed before, during or after a wedding.
The company is located in a 60,000-square-foot warehouse on Main Street, in the Warehouse Point section of East Windsor. Main Street, which runs north and south along the Connecticut River, is home to a number of other interesting manufacturing firms.
Take for instance Mercury Excelum, another of the town’s long-established and largest manufacturers which sits in a factory on South Main Street.
In it, the 75-person manufacturer makes items like vinyl siding, wood windows and aluminum storm windows and doors.
Up the street, just off of South Main, sits Thompson Road, the main thoroughfare through the East Windsor Industrial Park. Along it, you’ll find other unusual manufacturers that build products you never knew you needed.
Dri-Air Industries is one. The 30-person company builds devices used in manufacturing and research and development laboratories, which dry, measure and sort plastic and other resins used to make injection molded materials.
Those lawn-lovers and gardeners out there might recognize the name Toro, for instance. Well, many of the parts used in Toro weed-whackers and other products were made in factories that use Dri-Air dryers.
Off of Thompson, on Revay Road, sits another of East Windsor’s unusual manufacturers: Al’s Beverage Co. The 20-person company manufactures its own line of sodas and fruit drinks, as well as serving as a bottler for a few national name brands such as 7-Up, Canada Dry and Sunkist.
Kenneth J. St. Onge is associate editor of the Hartford Business Journal.