ALL IN THE FAMILY

Two years ago, Mark Allenbaugh did an about-face.

He gave up what colleagues called a promising law career to sell reinforcements for door locks and fancy plungers to Home Depot.

Allenbaugh said he had no choice. Taking over Huntington Beach-based M.A.G. Engineering & Manufacturing Co. was a promise he made to his father on his deathbed two years ago.

His father, Howard Allenbaugh, turned a passion for inventing into a business that does about $20 million a year in sales.

“He was a great man,” Mark Allenbaugh said of his father. “And this is an ode to him and to get it where he saw it going.”

The younger Allen-baugh hopes to build on what his father left behind. He said his goal is take the company to $100 million in yearly sales in five to eight years with new products and more sales from abroad.

The move is quite a shift for Allenbaugh, a 34-year-old former law professor at George Washington University and staff attorney for the U.S. Sentencing Commission in Washington, D.C.

“He was a rising star,” said Paula Desio, deputy general counsel at the Sentencing Commission and Allenbaugh’s former boss.

In 2002, Mark Allenbaugh went into private practice, defending doctors in malpractice suits.

Now Allenbaugh’s world is one of shop floors and hardware store shelves. Things are going well so far, he said.

“I grew up with the company,” said Allenbaugh, who still does some legal work on the side.

M.A.G., started in 1968, is best known for making door guards, window locks and other security hardware. The company also makes child safety products and even a user-friendly dinghy for boats.

Allenbaugh, who colleagues say rarely sleeps, dove headfirst into the business. He’s hired managers, upgraded technology, pushed for more global sales and come up with products to diversify revenue.

“I certainly shook things up,” he said.

M.A.G. has about 50 workers at its Huntington Beach plant. Some stuff is made in China.

The company grew up in the 1970s after Howard Allenbaugh invented the metal plate that goes around a door handle and lock so intruders can’t kick open doors.

Howard Allenbaugh was the classic inventor-type, tinkering around the shop for hours on end to perfect a tool or gadget, his son said.

The elder Allenbaugh was a contemporary of other local inventors, including Adolf Schoepe, founder of San Clemente’s Fluidmaster Inc. and cofounder of Kwikset Lock Co., and Frederick W. Rohe, who started Irvine-based Shur-Lok Corp., a maker of aerospace fasteners.

“My father was a mad scientist,” Mark Allenbaugh said. “He invented things all the time. He didn’t have a high school education, but he had 36 patents.”

Mark Allenbaugh said he spent countless hours working with his father but later set out for a different life.

He loved philosophy and worked toward a doctorate so he could teach. He said he switched to law after realizing philosophy professors make a pittance.

In 2000, he became a staff attorney for the Sentencing Commission and later was assigned to the economic crimes policy team and the terrorism team after the 2001 attacks.

Mark Allenbaugh’s big push at M.A.G. is an invention his father nearly perfected by the time he died. The product is billed as a better toilet plunger, dubbed KleerDrain.

Using carbon dioxide cartridges, the plunger requires no pumping, just a squeeze on the handle to release a burst of air.

Home Depot Inc. bit. The home improvement chain sells KleerDrain at all its stores.

But at $30, KleerDrain is pricey compared to an ordinary plunger. So M.A.G. is working on a cheaper version for the Targets and Wal-Marts of the world, Allenbaugh said.

KleerDrain could make up a fifth of M.A.G.’s sales this year, according to Allenbaugh.

Door security and other products should make up about 60% of sales this year, down from around 95% in 2003, he said.

Allenbaugh said he’s even come up with his own line of products,sort of.

He converted M.A.G.’s group of kids safety products for pets. He said he got the idea about a year ago after driving by a pet store.

Phoenix-based PetSmart Inc. is set to sell M.A.G.’s “PetProTech” products in its stores across the country.

The other part of Allenbaugh’s plan is to grow global sales, which is the main focus for a newly formed marketing department.

Allenbaugh said he hopes global sales will make up more than half of the business in five years, up from less than 5% last year.

“We’re now selling into New Zealand and Australia,” he said. “We have inroads into Germany, Turkey and Great Britain as well as the big boy, China.”