Wolverine Brass Faucets Review & Rating Updated: 03/11/22
and
From Imported Components
Law Requirements
Warranty Footnotes
1. "[T]his product has a limited warranty against defects in materials or workmanship for a period of one year from the date of installation."2. "Faucet stem cartridges have a limited warranty for a period of 100 years from date of manufacture."3. "[F]inishes have a limited warranty for a period of 100 years from the date of installation excluding oil rubbed bronze and matte black finishes."4. By law, a warranty is transferrable to a subsequent owner of a procuct unless the warranty clearly ad specifically prohibits transfer.5. The warranty is missing qualifying language required by the U.S. Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2301). However, the missing language does not diminish the rights of the faucet buyer, and in may actually strengthen those rights in any court challenge.
Download/Print the Wolverine warranty.
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This Company In Brief
Wolverine Brass is a domestic faucet company that sells only to plumbers and Contractors. It is over years old as a manufacturer of heavy-duty commercial faucets. But, it is not nearly the company it once was.
It is now a division of Professional Plumbing Group, Inc. (PPG), and imports rather than manufactures most of the faucets it sells.
It still manufactures its commercial faucets in South Carolina. But, most of its faucets are now made in China.
Wolverine Brass was founded in 1896 by Louis A. Cornelius, a master plumber, who started the company to make plumbing components that plumbers could rely on. The company developed a reputation over the years for its heavy-duty products including its reliable faucets.
Plumbing and Mechanical Magazine, the well-respected plumbing industry trade journal, at one time, rated Wolverine Brass as the most reliable faucet made anywhere and, as late as 2009 a Wolverine vice president was able to state:
"All Wolverine Brass-manufactured products are made in the United States and to a standard not found in most home centers. This includes our lines of residential and commercial faucets, as well as brass valves, ball-cocks and tubular products."
This is no longer true and has not been true for several years. Wolverine still assembles some faucets in the U.S. using an increasing amount of imported parts and components. The overwhelming majority of its faucets, however, are manufactured in China and Taiwan. The Wolverine name is no longer a guarantee of a reliable American-made faucet.
Wolverine Brass, Inc. was a family-owned enterprise, manufacturing reliable, heavy-duty plumbing products in South Carolina, for over 100 years until it was acquired by Bradford Equities Management, LLC in 2001. Bradford created a holding company, Professional Plumbing Group Inc. (PPG), to own Wolverine.
PlumbMaster was added to PPG in 2004 after BradBradfordford purchased it from NCH Corp. of Dallas. It was originally established in 1924 through the merger of R & M Manufacturing and the Creed Company. By 2004 it had become one of America's top plumbing parts distributors.
PPG has continued adding companies. At present, according to Dun & Bradstreet, it owns 82 subsidiary companies all involved in some way in supplying plumbing products. Other than Wolverine and PlumMaster, its most well-known brand is .
The sale to BradBradfordford was not the end of Wolverine's migration through the rarified world of private equity acquisitions.
BradBradfordford sold PPG to Dunes Point Capital in 2013 in a debt-financed leveraged buyout. Dunes Point is a private equity firm and a wholly owned subsidiary of White Group Holdings which is funded by Nationwide Insurance.
Dunes Point, in turn, sold the company to Marcone, an appliance parts distributor in 2021. Marcone is owned by Genstar Capital, another private equity company. Marcone describes itself as the "world's leading appliance parts exporter and distributor with customers in North America and 117 additional countries across the globe."
s Wolverine has changed considerably under PPG stewardship. Instead of positioning the company as a separate and equal division along with Plumbmaster, Wolverine has been merged into Plumbmaster.
Wolverine lost its separate website in 2017. The old site now redirects to the Plumbmaster site. The Wolverine online catalog was still available at wolverinecatalog.com for a time, but that is now gone as well. The catalog has been merged into the Plumbmaster catalog in which Wolverine is just one one of the many faucet brands listed, including
Wolverine is now characterized by the PPG as a "PlumbMaster brand" distributed "exclusively" by PlumbMaster.
The brand has also undergone significant dillution similar to what happened to after their takeovers by investment groups using leveraged purchases.
A leveraged buyout almost always results in massive debt that has to be paid off. PPG has been leveraged three times, each sale generating more debt. The company needs substantial profits to service the debt. Its way of generating massive profits is to capitalize on the reputation for quality earned by Wolverine over generations by packing the brand with inexpensive faucets made in China.
Wolverine Warranty
Legal Issues
In 1975 Congress passed the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2301) which established the leegal minimum content and form of consumer product warranties. Evidently its passage escaped the attention of Wolverine's management because absolutely no attempt has been made to conform the Wolverine product warranty to the federal law that has been in force for over years. So, somebody at Wolverine should have noticed.
The Wolverine warranty is a consumer product warranty. Magnuson-Moss requires certain content in a consumer product warranty. The Wolverine warranty includes very little of this required content.
- Warranty Designation: The first and most serious problem is a defective designation of the warranty in its caption.
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To be a limited warranty, the warranty must contain clearly
designate
the warranty as a limited warranty with the magic words "limited" and "warranty" in its caption or title. The words can be arranged to make a variety of acceptable captions: "Limited Warranty", "Limited Product Warranty", "Limited Lifetime Warranty", "Wolverine Brass Limited Warranty", and so on. The caption must be conspicuous and "clearly separated from the text of the warranty." So long as the words "limited" and "warranty" are included, it gives a fair warning to the buyer that its protection is intended to provide only limited warranty protection. - The Wolverine Brass warranty is captioned just "Product Warranty". The word "limited" is nowhere to be found. And, although it is clear from the test of the warranty that Wolverine Brass intends to offer a limited warranty,, the missing "limited" in its caption automatically converts the warranty to a full warranty. (15 U.S.C. §2303(a), 16 CFR §700.6)
- A full warranty gives a buyer many more rights, voiding many of the restrictions and limitations written into the Wolverine Brass warranty.
- Warranty Claims: The Wolverine warranty does provide "A step-by-step explanation of the procedure which the consumer should follow" to make a claim under the warranty including the mailing address or telephone number to use. (16 CFR § 701.3(a)(5))
- Exclusion of Labor Charges: Wolverine's attempted disclaimer of labor charges, a incidental damage, is void and without effect due to its failure to its failure to include the following qualifying language in its warranty. (16 CFR § 701.3(8))
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"Some States do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitation or exclusion may not apply to you."
- Required Disclaimer All consumer product warranties muct include the following disclaimer:
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"This warranty gives you specific legal rights, and you may also have other rights which vary from State to State"
- The Wolverine Brass warranty does not include the disclaimer.
The warranty disregards so many legal requirements that in any legal challenge a court will probably disregard most of the warranty and apply state the law warranty of merchantability to any warranty claim.
Wolverine will also pay any plaintiff's costs and attorney fees — the statutory penalty for disregarding Magnuson-Moss requirements.
Wolverine has retained its focus on contractors and plumbers. As a family-owned company, it sold only to plumbers. Under PPG it has expanded its market to include other contractors. It sill will not sell Wolverine faucets to the general public, preserving the exclusive access by construction trades to Wolverine products.
But, limiting its sales to trade professionals shuts PPG out of the very large market comprised of do-it-yourselfers and homeowners.
Over the intervening years, the number of Chinese-made faucets in the Wolverine line has grown to the point that they now represent nine out of ten faucets sold under the Wolverine brand. They are certainly more stylish than Wolverine's commercial products but of a less certain quality.
Most are now made in China by Huayi Plumbing Fittings Industry, Co. Ltd. Our experience with Huayi-made faucets is good and the company has a generally good reputation as a manufacturer. But, we are not yet prepared to categorically state that the faucets are equal in quality to those made in South Carolina.
Huayi sells its own Huayi and SOKA brands in Asia and supplies faucets not just to Wolverine but to a who's who of faucet companies in North America, including
At present, Wolverine's commercial faucets are still assembled in South Carolina. Unlike the former glory days of the company when nearly every component that went into a faucet was made in the U.S., the faucets these days are composed mostly of imported parts and components. Under FTC country-of origin-rules, Most of these faucets are no longer "Made in the U.S.", they are "Assembled in the U.S." from mostly foreign parts and components.
The "Assembled in the U.S." faucets are all in the Eternity collection. But, this does not mean that everything in the Eternity collection is assembled in South Carolina. Only the faucets identified as "Heavy Duty Commercial Faucets" are likely to have been assembled in South Carolina, and not all of these. The single-handle faucets are almost certainly made in China. The collection includes various plumbing fittings like stop-valves, ball valves, and even toilets. These are all imported.
Several years ago Wolverine identified its U.S.-made product with a "WB" in its product catalog, indicating that the product was made by Wolverine in South Caroline. That practive went away with the separate Wolverine catalog. The current Plumbmaster/Wolverine catalog does not identify the county of origin of Wolverine products.
It is not possible for us to track imported components to a specific faucet. This would require access to PPG's internal records, which we do not have. But, we can track the increase in imports of parts and components from overseas manufacturers, mostly in China and Taiwan, and the increase since PPG's ownership began has been substantial.
Over the past 24 months, Wolverine has acquired fittings, parts, and components from
- Diehl Metall Stiftung & Co. KG (Germany)
- Fanski Group Inc (China)
- Favor Trading Co., Ltd. (Taiwan)
- PT. Lucky Top Metals (Indonesia)
- NCIP, Inc. (Taiwan, China)
- Princeton International Co. (Taiwan)
Wolverine collections other than the Eternity collection are made in China. These collections contain the vast majority of the faucets sold under the Wolverine Brand. The collections are:
If you want to be sure you are buying American, check with customer service to see where a particular faucet was manufactured before you buy.
Wolverine's imported faucets are for the most part stylish but of no particular design distinction. The styling is typical of Chinese-made faucets, pleasant but conservative.
China is developing more design finesse, and some Chinese domestic faucet designs are beginning to be recognized on the world stage for their originality. A few have even won awards in international design competitions. None of these are sold by Wolverine, however.
Most Chinese designs sold by Wolverine are mostly adapted from successful European and American styles. A faucet design that proves popular in the European or North American markets will ultimately be copied by Chinese factories with just enough variation to avoid infringing design patents. The lag time is normally three to five years behind the Western designs, by which time the design is usually no longer new nor original.
Wolverine uses a ceramic stem cartridge in its two-handle faucets that it first engineered in 1972.
The company was neck and neck with in the race to develop the first ceramic faucet cartridge for two-handle faucets, receiving a patent for its "ceramics disc shutter". a single-function ceramic cartridge for two-handle faucets in 1972. It was among the first faucet manufacturers to adopt ceramic cartridges and it has been perfecting its cartridge ever since. It's a good one, too, so good that Wolverine guarantees it for 100 years.
The dual-function cartridges for its single-handle faucets, however, are a different story. These cartridges are guaranteed for just one year – an indication that Wolverine has much less than full faith and confidence in their durability over the long run. Single handle faucets are available only in Wolverine's residential faucet collections all of which are made in China. Its American-made commercial faucets all have two handles.
Wolverine has offered a 100-year warranty on its faucets since the 1970s, the only company to ever do so. Originally it was an all-parts and all-components guarantee.
Under PPG ownership, however, the warranty has been eviscerated. Just stem cartridges for two-handle facets and some finishes are now guaranteed for 100 years. All other parts of a Wolverine faucet are warranted for just one year. So, the warranty, often described by Wolverine as a 100-year warranty, is more accurately a one-year warranty with some exceptions.
We term these types of warranties "Barnam Warranties" in honor of the famous 19th-century promoter and huckster, P. T. Barnam, who reportedly sold a boxcar-load of white salmon by guaranteeing that it would not turn pink in the can – something that white salmon cannot possibly do.
Like Barnam's guarantee, the widely acclaimed 100-year Wolverine warranty is today mostly marketing fluff. The headline still looks good — 100 Year Wolverine Warranty — and it impresses customers looking for a reliable faucet. But very little of a Wolverine faucet is actually guaranteed for 100 years.
The warranty does not comply with the minimum requirements of the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2308), the federal law that dictates the minimum content of and sets the rules for consumer product warranties in the United States. In any court challenge, most of the restrictions and limitations of the Wolverine warranty would be disregarded. (See the sidebar Wolverine Warranty Legal Issues on this page for more information.)
Faucets comparable to Wolverine's Asian-made residential faucets include
All of these companies offer a warranty on their faucets that is superior to the Wolverine warranty.
Wolverine's commercial faucets compete with
Chicago Faucet, Symmons, and T&S Brass faucets are made in the U.S. Elkay and Central Brass products are made in Asia.
If the skimpy one-year faucet warranty does not bother you, there may be a Wolverine faucet that fits your needs. We suggest sticking to the Etenity collection's two-handle faucets if you are looking for a faucet assembled in the U.S. All other collections are made in China. However, even the Chinese faucets we examined were well made by a respected manufacturer.
If you don't want to buy through your plumber, we suggest you look for the faucet as a Plumbmaster brand available at some, but not all, plumbing supply houses. Call yur supplier before you visit to find out if it carries Plumbmaster products. They are not widely available on line, but try Home Depot Pro (fomerly Interline Brands d/b/a/ Supply Works).
We are continuing to research the company. If you have experience with Wolverine Brass faucets, good, bad, or indifferent, we would like to hear about it, so please contact us or post a comment below.