MERCO TAPE

How it Began

The year is 1972. Marvin E. Rose (the M E R in Merco Tape) is working for one of the largest privately held copper tubing manufacturers in America. Copper tubing is sold to plumbing supply houses who also sell threaded steel piping. All threaded pipes need those threads sealed. As a new solution to an old problem, PTFE threadseal tape is starting to replace the messy sealant paste. But no one could find it.

Once sourced (from France), Merco had its first product and began to run fast and furious. Within 2 years Merco became the largest non-manufacturing sources of PTFE threadseal tape in the country. (At the time it was called Teflon® tape because Du Pont was supplying the PTFE to manufacturers of the film.)

By the mid-1970s Marvin figured he’d sold so much non-adhesive PTFE tape that he should probably sell something that sticks. (We take our hats off to his dry sense of humor). Over the next 50 years Merco has grown to offer one of the widest pressure-sensitive tape inventories of any master distributor, converter, importer and in many cases even mill-manufacturers in the United States.

Merco Today

Two generations later we are still a family-owned business. Our book of business now consists of America’s largest manufacturing and distribution companies. You probably come into contact with our products daily through a Fastenal, Grainger, or Ferguson; a Boeing, Lockheed-Martin or NASA; the Department of Defense, Newport News Shipbuilding or Panama Canal Authority. Yet we are still faithful to our roots and proud to work with literally thousands of independent distributors and corner retail establishments.