Basketball and composters

Last year Lifetime nearly tripled its international business with storage sheds. Now the US manufacturer, which is headquartered in Clearfield, Utah, is offering this product group in ten different sizes, as well as storage boxes in two sizes. The company has been involved in the lawn and garden category only since 2005, but it possesses far greater experience in the leisure market. Founded in 1986, it grew up with the first basketball system that homeowners could raise and lower quickly. Another innovation appeared in 1995: a picnic table that folds flat and has a blow-moulded table top. Lifetime reports that it meanwhile operates the biggest blow-moulding facility in North America with an average daily output of more than 50 000 pieces. Apart from the production plant at headquarters the company, which employs a workforce of just on 2 100, also has its own manufacturing works in Xiamen. The new season will see Lifetime presenting a number of new products from the company’s lawn and garden programme. The manufacturer has for instance further developed the compost tumbler that was launched in 2009. The new model features two 50-gallon tumblers on a single frame, which allows one filled tumbler to mature while the other continues to be available for filling. Also new is an 8’x10’ shed. For this model Lifetime has evolved a look that is characterised by vertical siding. There are windows in the doors and it has a higher pitched roof to provide overhead storage space. A new wall connection design is intended to make it easier for home gardeners to put together the steel-reinforced construction. Besides the picnic tables, of which Lifetime has so far sold more than two million units, the range of products in the outdoor furniture group also includes such items as glider benches and, since 2010, Adirondack chairs. Only just launched is a three-piece bistro set made of heavy-duty simulated wood from high-density polystyrene plastic. Raised garden beds and playground equipment are some of the other products in the Lifetime range. Download: