2015 marks vehicle safety lighting provider Peterson Manufacturing Co.’s 70th year of business. The family-owned business says that since its inception in 1945, it has grown into a quarter-billion-dollar multifaceted corporation now providing thousands of lighting-related products for customers worldwide.
Peterson’s headquarters is on a 44-acre corporate campus in Grandview, Mo., housing its vertically integrated operations in a 670,000-square-foot facility staffed and equipped for core manufacturing and marketing. That includes engineering and design, photometric and environmental testing, tool and die production, harness and wire manufacturing, plastic injection molding, final assembly, warehousing, sales and customer service.
Don Armacost Jr., Peterson president and chief executive officer, whose father bought the business in 1956, credits the company’s success to its long history of “square dealing” with customers, suppliers and employees. “That tradition has brought us a long ways,” Armacost says. “We’re not about to change it.”