Meet the 2025 PVF Ring of Honor Inductee: Merit Brass Co.

For nearly nine decades, Merit Brass Co. has been defined not by a single milestone but by a rare, unbroken throughline — a culture where integrity anchors every relationship, family values shape every decision, and long-term stewardship guides every turn in the road. The company’s induction into the 2025 PVF Ring of Honor is, in many ways, the formal acknowledgment of what wholesalers, suppliers, and industry partners have known for generations: Merit Brass is not just a participant in the PVF landscape. It is one of the forces that shaped it.

Even now, when 3rd-generation leader and CEO, Alan Lipp reflects on the company’s origins, the memories are vivid. He recalls walking through the small Cleveland office as a child, “which felt enormous,” he laughs — greeted by smiles, pats on the head, and his first piece of hard candy. Then came “the crew,” the roar of machines, the smell of cutting oil, and the warm greetings from workers who never seemed too busy to acknowledge a young visitor. It was his first glimpse of the world his grandfather, Louis Schlessinger, created — a world built on heart, toughness, humility, and an unwavering commitment to people.

“I didn’t know it then,” Lipp says, “but I was witnessing an extraordinary culture that my grandfather built. The recipe was simple: lead with heart, care deeply, and help every person reach their full potential.”

That philosophy continues to guide Merit Brass today. And as the company enters the PVF Ring of Honor, it does so not just as a successful master distributor, but as a steward of one of the industry’s strongest, most enduring cultures.

A Legacy Shaped by People, Not Products

The story of Merit Brass begins with Louis Schlessinger, a man whose character became the backbone of the company long before global supply chains, stainless steel expansions, or nationwide distribution networks were in the picture.

Schlessinger led with a simplicity that bordered on radical: “People over profit — always.”

He steered the business through some of the most turbulent moments in American economic history. During the stagflation of the early 1980s, when high interest rates crushed demand and inventories piled up, Schlessinger refused to lay off a single employee. Production slowed to a crawl, but instead of pink slips, machine operators found themselves painting factory walls — still drawing full paychecks. “He would have gone into his own pocket before letting his extended family go without,” Lipp recalls.

When Schlessinger passed away in 1982 at age 77, the company shut down entirely for his funeral. Letters poured in from across the country — including from competitors — thanking him for kindnesses his own family hadn’t known about. That outpouring of respect and the shared grief of his extended Merit Brass family left a permanent imprint on the company’s identity.

“Louis was practicing servant leadership before anybody knew what that was,” Lipp says. “He taught a masterclass in character and how to care for people as if they were family.”

Master Distribution, Reinvented

For decades after its founding, Merit Brass was known primarily as a manufacturer of brass pipe nipples. But the company’s evolution into one of North America’s leading master distributors began with a single question asked by two large customers in the mid-1980s:

Can you provide stainless steel nipples?

The domestic manufacturers Merit had relied on for brass fittings weren’t interested. So, the company went global. Schlessinger and Lipp began developing relationships across Asia, building partnerships that would become the backbone of Merit’s stainless steel PVF business.

These were not casual transactions. Merit chose to be vitally important to a few suppliers, not merely “somewhat important” to many — a philosophy that still defines its sourcing strategy today. The approach paid off. Over the next several decades, the company forged exclusive or decades-long relationships with world-class manufacturers, including Kingdom Flow Control (Vietnam), Siam Fittings (Thailand), New England Union (U.S.), and partners introduced through Yih Kuang Metal in Taiwan.

Leaders such as Steve Evans and Tim Cornett (both retired at the end of 2023) played a pivotal role in building and sustaining those partnerships. As co-CEO Marc Schlessinger notes, “These relationships didn’t just give us product. They gave us trust — and trust is the most valuable currency in this industry.”

The move into stainless steel fundamentally changed Merit Brass. Today, stainless PVF is the company’s largest and fastest-growing segment, remaining one of its clearest differentiators in a highly consolidated market.

A Decade of Acceleration: The Modern Merit Brass

While family values are the core of the company, the past five to seven years have been marked by rapid modernization, increased investment, and strategic diversification.

One of the biggest shifts has been the demand for press technology. As labor shortages accelerated across North America, and as younger tradespeople gravitated toward faster, safer, more efficient connection methods, Merit Brass recognized that soldered and threaded solutions — though still essential — would face increasing cannibalization.

“We knew press fittings wouldn’t replace everything,” says Merit President Darren Hilliard, “but we also knew we couldn’t ignore the shift. To maintain share and relevance, we needed to offer a complete portfolio — copper, stainless, carbon — and we needed to do it with intention.”

The acquisition of press fittings and the addition of copper tubing expanded Merit Brass into new markets and positioned the company to support wholesalers navigating changing contractor preferences. It also provided a natural complement to Merit’s strong stainless portfolio.

This disciplined expansion — responsive, but never reactionary — reflects Merit’s philosophy of “diversify where it helps customers win.” And in a market increasingly shaped by speed, safety, and labor efficiency, the strategy has proven exactly right.

Professionalizing the Business — Without Losing the Heart

The company’s senior leadership team has seen significant renewal in recent years, with long-tenured leaders retiring and new leaders stepping in.

For Hilliard, the challenge was clear: maintain the heart of Merit’s culture while strengthening the business for the next generation. That meant bringing in leaders who not only had the technical capabilities to guide a growing master distributor, but who also embodied the company’s ethics, values, and integrity.

“Lots of people can do the technical part of the job,” Hilliard says. “What’s harder to find is the right personality, the right alignment, the right sense of who we are as a company. That’s what matters most.”

One of the strongest indicators that Merit has achieved that balance is the longevity of its people. Associates with 30-, 35-, and even 45-year tenures work alongside newly hired talent across operations, procurement, sales, and technology. Some are second- and third-generation employees themselves.

As Vice President of Sales, Don Russell notes, “People here take real pride in what they do. And when people take pride in their work, they do it exceptionally well.”

This balance of continuity with a fresh perspective is one of the company’s greatest strengths.

Technology, Lean Transformation, and Data-Driven Decision Making

Even with Merit Brass’ culture rooted in tradition, its operations today reflect a company aggressively preparing for the future.

Three years ago, the organization launched a sweeping, end-to-end transformation across manufacturing, distribution, order entry, and forecasting — a shift that has fundamentally elevated its performance. On-time shipping, once in the low 80% range, now consistently approaches 99%. Order entry, which was only about one-third electronic, is now more than 95% automated.

Manufacturing fill rates have climbed from the mid-60s to roughly 98%, and overall throughput has increased two-and-a-half to three times, thanks to lean scheduling and major CNC investments. Even receiving, which previously took weeks to process, now turns around in a matter of days.

“We’ve rebuilt every process using lean methodology — Toyota systems, five-S, standardized work. If you can’t maintain a clean environment, you can’t produce a quality part,” says Vice President of Operations Glenn Bruce. “We touched all 10,000 stocked parts and reorganized the entire warehouse to eliminate waste and improve speed.”

Order entry, once a persistent bottleneck, has become a strategic advantage. A new OCR-based system reads PDFs, maps customer part numbers to Merit numbers, and processes orders in under an hour, supported by rapidly expanding e-commerce capabilities, vendor-managed inventory programs, and emerging AI-enabled quoting tools. Behind the scenes, a dedicated demand planning team now uses formal forecasting technology and a robust sales-inventory-operations planning process to anticipate shifts in demand and align procurement accordingly.

And through it all, Hilliard emphasizes, the heart of the company remains unchanged. “We want to use technology to get faster behind the scenes,” he says, “but the customer experience still needs to feel like Merit Brass.”

A Strategic Partner in a Complex Global Market

As tariffs, freight volatility, and geopolitical uncertainty reshape global supply chains, distributors increasingly rely on master distributors for clarity, not just product.

According to Vice President of Procurement, James Maloney, this is where Merit Brass now shines most.

“Given how fast the global environment changes, customers look to us not only as a transactional partner but as a strategic one,” Maloney says. “Our job is to help them navigate complexity — tariffs, lead times, logistics, materials — and we’re better positioned to do that now than ever before.”

To stay ahead, Merit has invested heavily in global logistics expertise, hiring leaders with deep knowledge of tariff compliance, international freight, and customs classification.

“We believe the sectoral tariffs will be durable,” says Lipp, noting that Section 232 affects nearly every category Merit sells. That makes transparent communication with suppliers — about lead times, availability, and price movement — more critical than ever.

By maintaining strong relationships and clear visibility, Merit is helping customers prepare not just for 2025, but for 2026 and beyond.

Strong Roots, Stronger Partnerships

In an industry where consolidation has pushed many organizations toward transactional models, according to Merit Brass’ distributor partners, the company stands apart for its non-wavering relationship-driven approach.

“The induction of Merit Brass into the PVF Ring of Honor is a tribute not only to their decades of excellence, but to the leadership that has guided them there,” says Paul Andruszkiewicz, president of The Collins Companies. “Alan Lipp — CEO, partner, mentor, and longtime friend to so many in our industry — embodies the integrity and commitment that continue to elevate the PVF community.”

That sentiment is echoed across the supply chain.

“For decades, the Merit Brass family has been a valued partner to First Supply,” says Seth DePuy, chief strategy officer at First Supply.

“Their commitment to producing and providing quality products, sharing industry expertise, and supporting First Supply’s competitiveness in the marketplace has strengthened our mutual success.”

It is no coincidence that Merit has grown alongside many of the industry’s most respected multi-generational distributors — families like the Adams, Bazemore, Berghorst, Blaushild, Grothe, Miller, O’Brien, Poehling, Porter, Swager, Stratiner, Tuohey, and Zwicky families.

Merit Brass and Lipp consider fostering those generational relationships to be one of their greatest privileges.

What Merit Brass Is Most Proud Of

Ask any Merit leader what they are proudest of, and the answers vary — but the underlying theme never does. It is not a single product line, a facility, a transaction, or an expansion.It is the people.

“It’s the feeling you get when you’re at an industry event and you realize how much goodwill this company has built over decades,” Hilliard says. “You understand the impact Merit has had.”

Marc Schlessinger echoes that sentiment. “Very few family-owned, family-operated businesses remain in this space,” he says. “But our customers still choose us because of our history, our values, and the culture we protect every day.”

And Lipp, as always, ties it back to the man who started it all. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my grandfather,” he says. “His legacy, built on integrity, decency, and care for people, is still the core of who we are.”