Families Have Run Companies for 100-Plus Years
Families Have Run Companies for 100-Plus Years
Carl Heimerdinger says it isn’t uncommon for customers to bring scissors in for sharpening at his family’s retail cutlery shop that were purchased there decades ago, by a parent or grandparent.
“It’s heartening to know that quality has endured for 100 years or more,” said Heimerdinger, 58, the fifth-generation proprietor of Heimerdinger Cutlery in Louisville.
The store was founded in 1861 by his great-great-grandfather, August Heimerdinger, a cutler and sewing machine repairman. Today, the boutique sells high-end scissors, professional kitchen knives and, increasingly, men’s straight razors.
Heimderdinger’s is just one of more than 1,100 American businesses started more than a century ago that continue to operate in the hands of their founding families.
With more than 5 million family businesses operating in the U.S., that kind of longevity is rare, says Joseph Astrachan, a professor of management and entrepreneurship at Kennesaw (Ga.) State University who studies family businesses.
Astrachan said the chances that a family business makes it to a second generation are about one-in-three. But to reach a sixth generation? Those odds are 500-to-1. Most century-old family businesses are five generations deep, he said.
About 41% reaching their 100th birthday are in the manufacturing sector, followed by finance and insurance (18%) and retail (12%), says Vicki TenHaken, a professor of management at Hope College in Holland, Mich. She also found that a majority are privately owned (62%) and employ more than 500 people (56%)