Three founders, a Long Island address and an online business.

Kraus is an American brand of kitchen and bathroom fixtures — sinks above all, together with faucets and the accessories that fit them. Its starting date is given in the announcement of its sale: a press release issued by Delta Faucet Company through PR Newswire on 22 December 2020 says that Kraus “was founded in 2007” and is headquartered in Port Washington, New York, on the north shore of Long Island. English Wikipedia’s article on Delta Faucet Company repeats the 2007 founding date, citing the same release.

A faucet review published by the builder Starcraft Custom Builders names the founders as three New York entrepreneurs, Russell Levi, Michael Rukhlin and Serge Magarik, and describes the company as having been bought from its founding partners. Levi was the public face of the business in its trade announcements. Two exhibitor releases that Kraus placed with KBIS, the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show, in October 2017 carry the dateline Port Washington, NY, and quote him as Kraus USA president and CEO.

By the time of its sale the business was defined by online selling. Delta’s 2020 release describes Kraus as “an online plumbing fixture company focused on delivering modern, high-quality sinks, faucets, and related products”, and Ken Roberts, then president of Delta Faucet Company, singled out its “robust online presence” alongside its products, “primarily kitchen and lavatory sinks, as well as accessories”. The Starcraft review lists internet plumbing-supply sites and big-box retailers such as The Home Depot and Lowe’s among the places Kraus sells.

On where its products are made, the company and its critics use different words. In its own releases Kraus calls itself an innovator and a maker of fixtures. The Starcraft review describes Kraus as an importer whose faucets are made in China by other companies and sourced from a variety of suppliers.

An agreement in December 2020 and a place under Delta.

The decisive event in the company’s history so far came at the end of 2020. In the PR Newswire release of 22 December, datelined Indianapolis, Delta Faucet Company — a division of Masco Corporation — announced “the signing of a definitive agreement for Masco Corporation to acquire the assets of Kraus”. The release said the transaction was expected to close no later than the first quarter of 2021, subject to the usual conditions and regulatory review, and that Kraus would operate as an affiliate of Delta Faucet Company. Pending closing, the Kraus leadership team was to report to Jill Ehnes, Delta’s vice president of eCommerce, who said in the release that the two businesses shared “a common desire to create great experiences for the consumer”. The Starcraft review gives 31 December 2020 as the date from which Kraus became part of Masco.

The new parent has a long history of its own. English Wikipedia says Masco was founded in Detroit in 1929 by the Armenian immigrant Alex Manoogian, and that Delta’s business grew from a single-handle, ball-valve faucet that Manoogian bought the rights to in the early 1950s and improved. Delta Faucet Company is headquartered in Indianapolis; the 2020 release says the company manufactures Delta, Brizo and Peerless branded products. Kraus therefore sits beside those names rather than inside them: Wikipedia’s Delta article lists Delta, Brizo, Newport Brass, Kraus and Peerless as the brand names under which Delta markets faucets, kitchen sinks and bath and shower fixtures, and Wikipedia’s Masco article lists Kraus, as a sink brand, under Delta.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group make the fixed and movable equipment of a home: kitchen sinks and taps, shelving, closet systems, drawers and plastic storage boxes. Sink, fixture and home-storage brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to divisions of much larger industrial or retail groups, and a single name can be specified by a builder, fitted by an installer or picked off a shelf by a shopper.

A brand of this kind is usually carried less by one object than by a system: a range name, a finish, a bracket or a box that has to fit with the pieces bought before and after it. The company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factories or grown far beyond the place where it began. That makes the plain questions worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself, and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A single word and a vocabulary of trademarked features.

A large part of the Kraus identity is a vocabulary. Its product announcements name individual features as if they were products in their own right, each with a trademark symbol. The release for the Dex kitchen sink series, posted on the KBIS site in October 2017, describes a “waterway” in the bowl under the name DrainAssure, two alternative drain covers called VersiDrain and FlipCap, a steel blend the company calls T304Plus and a “radiant pearl finish”. Its sign-off lists further coined names — All-Brite, NoiseDefend and Hands n Pans — and invites readers to “discover your kitchen & bath inspiration with Kraus”.

A second release from the same month, for the Pax topmount series, shows the other half of the formula: plain geometry stated as numbers. Kraus describes the Pax sinks as having zero-radius corners, 95° sidewalls and a 9-inch depth, made in 16-gauge stainless steel under the name TRU16, in single and double bowls with one to four pre-drilled holes. The release closes with a line that works as a tagline: “When you’re thinking sinks; think Kraus.” Both releases end with the same quote from Russell Levi: “Our focus is simple. Empowering our customers to design your perfect sink your way.”

The brand name itself is a single short word, used in the releases both as “Kraus” and as “Kraus USA”. After 2020 that word sits alongside Delta, Brizo, Newport Brass and Peerless in Masco’s plumbing portfolio while keeping its own product names and its own online storefront.

For a design guide, Kraus shows how a sink brand sold largely online can build recognition through a set of named features and numbered dimensions rather than through a showroom presence. Compare it with Franke, the Swiss kitchen-systems group known for its sinks, and Elkay, an American sink brand that also became part of a larger water-products group. For this guide we use slate, brushed steel and pearl with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Kraus’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.