He and His Company Have Given Toilets a New and Water-Saving Image
It’s certainly not a glamorous business, Adolph Schoepe acknowledges, but his product has probably saved billions of gallons of water across America and perhaps revolutionized the way that people think about their, uh, toilets.
Fluidmaster Inc., a fixture in Anaheim for 29 years, makes toilet valves, the device that allows the tank to fill and then shuts off when the water has reached a set level.
Apparently, an ever-growing number of people are getting involved with the inner workings of their toilet tank because Fluidmaster sales have risen every year since the company’s inception in 1957. Growth is reflected in an 8,000-square-foot addition to its office and production facility that is nearing completion and will give the company a total of 38,000 square feet of space.
In 1985, the company posted sales of $22 million, up from $19 million the prior year. For 1986, Fluidmaster expects to sell about $24 million worth of its water control valves and flapper assemblies, the stopper-like rubber disk that allows the tank to drain into the toilet bowl.
On any given day, Schoepe, the 82-year-old founder and patriarch of this water-control empire, typically can be found on the production floor in work clothes, trouble-shooting the machinery, solving problems and talking with the 60 employees, all of whom he knows personally.
Came Here From Germany
Schoepe’s story begins with his arrival at New York’s Ellis Island in 1927, seasick after a stormy 12-day crossing from his native Germany. With $25 in his pocket, an eighth-grade education and a mastery of plumbing and metal fabrication in hand, he went to work building dirigibles for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and then moved to the Boeing Co., where he built airplanes. Several aircraft jobs in California followed, including a wartime job teaching metal work to thousands of “Rosie the Riveters.”
Shortly before World War II ended, Schoepe and a friend started Gateway Manufacturing Co., and the company created the Kwikset lock, later to become the nation’s leading maker of residential locks. The company moved to Anaheim from South Gate in 1948, but the fledgling concern was hit by the recession just before the Korean War, presenting Schoepe with a crisis: Should he cut the workforce until the economy improved or retain all the workers and build a stockpile of locks?
Schoepe arranged for a supply of scrap metal, kept producing and filled warehouses with locksets. “It was a big gamble, but I thought the market would turn,” Schoepe recalled.
It did, and when the war ended and demand returned, Kwikset was able to capture a third of the residential lockset market and has been the No. 1 lockset maker ever since.
In 1952, Schoepe’s partner sold his interests in the company and retired; Schoepe sold his interests in Kwikset in 1957 and turned to a new toilet tank valve idea that had been brought to him while he was still at Kwikset.
Schoepe developed the valve and began producing the device in Anaheim, but the initial response was less than overwhelming.
What Is It?
“The plumbing industry wanted to know if it was a beer dispenser or a martini mixer,” Schoepe recalled, showing pictures of the device, which in a test tank, looks like a blender.
Before committing to production of the tank valve that Schoepe developed, the company commissioned some extensive market research in 1955, which indicated conclusively that “the majority of Americans were vociferously dissatisfied with the present performance of toilet hardware.”
Schoepe charged ahead with production. Rising rates for professional plumbers gave a push to the do-it-yourself market and the product gradually caught on. “It took 10 years to break even,” he said. “We stuck with it.”
Employing advertising campaigns that featured cutaway drawings of a toilet tank and large doses of wit (“The Toilet Tuneup,” “One Weeping Toilet Can Cry Buckets” and “The Thomas Crapper Affair,” a reference to the inventor of the toilet), the company gradually carved an increasing market share and now produces the leading replacement toilet valve in the nation.
Like Kwikset, Fluidmaster found success in simplicity. Both products can be installed in minutes, using simple tools.
Although Fluidmaster has fought its way to the top of the toilet tank repair business, Schoepe and other company officials seem to regard their enterprise with a keen sense of amusement. For instance, a yearbook-style publication observing the company’s 25th anniversary conceded that “the average person finds the inner workings of a toilet either baffling, infuriating or disgusting.”
A New Relationship
But, the report continues, “Fluidmaster people have an entirely different relationship with toilets. A union bred in learnedness, expressed through innovation, sharpened by precision and basically unequaled in the annals of modern plumbing.”
Fluidmaster engages in a variety of hokey and practical management practices, all of which seem to work. For example:
- Schoepe hauls cartons of oranges and lemons each week from his Pauma Valley ranch and sets them out on tables for employees.
- Page after page of the company history is filled with pictures, frequently overexposed, of employees at Christmas and retirement parties and receiving service rings.
- No one is ever asked to retire, and five of the 60-person workforce are over 65 years old.
- Most employees are first hired on a temporary, part-time basis, so that they and the company can get to know each other before a permanent job is offered. Turnover is thus minimized, and many employees have spent their entire careers at Fluidmaster.
- Most of the 25,000 to 30,000 toilet tank valves produced on any given day are shipped that very day or, at most, a day later, thus reducing the need for warehouse space and shortening the gap between shipment and payment.
Fluidmaster recently took a high-tech leap forward.
Last year, the company introduced Pro-Temp, a computer-based energy management device that monitors hot water usage in hotels and apartments and adjusts the thermostats on hot water heaters according to demand. The systems typically can cut the energy required to generate hot water by 20 to 30%, the company says, and can pay for itself in as little as six months.
Because there are still “too many interesting things to do,” Schoepe says he has no plans to retire.
Apparently, some other elderly employees share that view. “He (Schoepe) doesn’t believe in retirement,” said Herman Ziemer, the 78-year-old head of special projects at the company. “It’s a fun place to work.”
