About Us
The Perfect Pitch bucket holder was an idea that JP Mihlbauer, a roofing contractor on Maui, thought of over a decade ago. He was frustrated with 5 gallon buckets spilling waterproofing all over the roof and the hassle of having to build some type of temporary brace to hold buckets, metal clips and tools, water bottles, etc., so that they didn’t tumble off the roof, potentially hurting someone below. He also saw the time wasted every time someone had to climb down off the roof to retrieve whatever had fallen off. He envisioned a device that would hold a 5 gallon bucket steady, not only on flat roofs, where they are often kicked over, but also on different pitches of roofs, where they definitely were not safe to leave unattended. He thought, “Why am I paying this other guy $100-$150 a day to hold this bucket when it should just be able to stand on it’s own with the right non-slip base to keep it level and secure?”
Like many great ideas, it got shelved due to life being so busy and without the knowledge or confidence on how to move forward with an invention. JP knew everything there was to know about roofing but very little about how to bring a great idea like this to life.
Luckily his partner, Alyssa, kept on him about doing something with the idea. She knew the right people who could take his idea and make it a reality. One of her best friends had owned a factory in New York for over 20 years, and they made displays, shelving, etc for large companies like Chanel, Maybelline,and CVS. He loved the idea immediately and put the couple in touch with his head engineer there.
The idea started to take shape from drawings on napkins, to artist 3D renderings to a laser-cut prototype. Several designs were discussed & examined with James Bergdoll, the co-inventor and engineer in New York, and the Perfect Pitch design started to take shape. More input came from Jason Simms, who has worked in the waterproofing and coatings business for 30 years, to help refine the invention further. With his added ideas, we zeroed in on more improvements like the slip agent in the plastic to make the unit impervious to waterproofing messes, the type of rubber on the base that would grip the absolute best on all roofing surfaces, to the simple 1/4 turn rotation to change pitches while on the roof. Every single aspect was well-thought out to achieve the best possible result.
This process took about a year of back and forth to get to a finished product that could be tested in the field both on the east coast and in Hawaii on various job sites. Alyssa & JP borrowed money from his roofing company to fund the project. They insisted that Perfect Pitch be made in the US, even though it could be done cheaper elsewhere. The quality had to be top-notch so they decided on a small factory in New York, where James had connections and could oversee all of the production from start to finish. The new Hawaii-based company, Perfect Pitch, filed for a patent & trademark on the unit, which took another year and finally Perfect Pitch was ready for production! The first 500 units were made and sold to a distribution company that stocks most roofing supply stores in Hawaii. We are now up and running and ready to sell throughout the US & Canada!
Please feel free to use our contact form or email us info@perfectpitchsolutions.com if you have any questions about how the product works, where it is currently sold, or how you can become a dealer or distributor of this vital roofing and painting tool.