Company History
Perfecto Products started out in 1948, in a small shop in Canoga Park, California. It was a one man operation, that man being Mr. Leon Thomas.
In 1957, Mr. Thomas sold the company to John Morgan. During World War II, John entered the Navy V-12 program and graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. But engineering never held John’s attention or affection. Almost immediately upon his release from active duty, he began looking for a way to be in business for himself. After only a few years at C.F. Braun and Company, an engineering firm in the Petrochemical industry, Perfecto Products became available. John jumped on the opportunity and never looked back.
Shortly after buying the company, John moved it to a facility in South El Monte, California, where it grew and prospered until he moved again to Fullerton, California, where it resides today.
At first the only “product” was the joint runner. This was used to seal off the bell and spigot joint in cast iron pipe so melted lead could be poured into the joint. For many years 10,000 joint runners went out the door every month including a specialty version which Mr. Thomas named after himself (the Thomas Joint Runner).
But it was not long before the adverse properties of lead became a health concern. So rather than go the same direction as the lead caulked joint, John began looking for other items. He decided to target the plumbing service and repair industry as his market and began producing specialty tools to make the plumber’s job easier, quicker, and therefore more lucrative. Many of the ideas came to him from the very plumbers he courted. He went to the plumbing jobbers and listened to the talk around the counter. Some of those early tools, like the and the Right Angle Wrench (sometimes called a “McMannus” wrench) are still very popular today.
In the mid sixties, John found a company that made diapers for concrete pipes. (Now, could we make something like that up?) The company, located in South Carolina, needed someone to cover the west coast states. And so it was that Industrial Specialty Company came to South El Monte, helping to supply much needed water pipelines to a thirsty Southern California.
Then again, around 1970, John’s brother-in-law sold C.W. Cox, Inc to John. Cox’s water flow measuring instruments are used in determining the efficiency of water pumping stations and are totally unrelated to plumbing; so this was a new direction for Perfecto Products which took on C.W. Cox as a product line. This line also provides flowmeters to commercial swimming pools.
John’s daughter Janet and his son Ken (another engineer) have taken the reins of the company, seeing to it that Perfecto Products continues to add new tools to the product line, still listening to the plumber who says “there’s just gotta be a better way!”