To an outsider, the concept of the family business holds romantic appeal. Perhaps it’s because, to those of us looking in, any family that would willingly work together—particularly over many years and spanning multiple generations—must have a uniquely strong relationship, not to mention an unusually high tolerance for one another.

The Kansas City area, with its inviting Midwestern appeal to families and businesses alike, has long seemed an ideal location for young entrepreneurs to start up their own businesses and watch them thrive as they’re passed down from one generation to the next. Kansas City has successfully managed to transform the “flyover country” image indifferently perceived by the coasts to its favor in order to appeal to those out-side entrepreneurs seeking attractive environments made up of unified families and communities.

Perhaps all of this points to why you generally won’t encounter family business owners and operators in the area who are yearning to sell, quit or simply escape the business and move onto something else. Recent stories about the public conflicts among the Redstone family, who own CBS Corporation and Viacom Inc., in New York and Rupert Murdoch’s disputes with his son and potential successor Lachlan Murdoch serve to further set them apart from many KC-area businesses. Large family owned companies such as Hallmark Cards, Lockton Companies and a number of multi-generational construction companies have enjoyed a long history in Kansas City and show no signs of dissolution in the near future.

Sure, even family businesses around here are bound to have their conflicts. Christy Catenhauser of Missouri Sewing Machine Company says, “Sometimes we have to remind ourselves to keep an open mind and to remember that we all have the same goal. A special loyalty pulls you through the tough times, which is needed when it takes more than an 8 to 5 day to run the business successfully.”

Russell Sifers of Sifers VALOMILK Candy Co. in Mer-riam asserts more succinctly, “If you have a common goal, you can have your clashes.”

 

Tradition and Resurrection

Local “Candy Man” Russ Sifers describes himself as the steward of this 100-year-old company. “I inherited this company,” he says. “I feel I am the steward to take care of this corporation, to take care of the VALOMILK candy cups and pass that carefully down to the next generation.”

For Sifers, that sense of family tradition is a driving force in his efforts to continue in the footsteps of three past generations to produce and distribute VALOMILK to people all over the Midwest and as far north as Canada, as his family has been doing since 1903. He single-handedly resurrected the company in the late 1980s after it had been sold to an absentee owner in L.A., with the factory shut down for more than five years.

Sifers’ “crusade to resurrect the candy company” began when he was cleaning the factory basement and came across his grandfather’s original copper kettles, gas-fired cookers and other equipment unused since the ‘40s. “After taking inventory I thought, ‘Hmmm, I might be able to put this machinery back to working condition and make VALOMILKs the way my grandfather did.’” Over the next two years, he worked the night shift at General Motors and spent his days rebuilding equipment.

This desire to resurrect not only the candy company but also the spirit of his grandfather, Harry Sifers, and great-grandfather, company founder Samuel Mitchell Sifers, says a lot about his commitment to tradition, a commitment that started early, when Sifer’s father, Clarence Russell Sifers, operated the company. “I grew up with the candy, never thought it was special, I thought every dad owned a candy company,” says Sifers. “Everybody’s dad has to do something, right? Well, my dad went to the factory, and he took me on Saturdays, so I grew up in the business.”

Even before that, Sifers remembers his mother telling him about being taken down to the candy factory one Easter. “My grandfather took me upstairs to the factory and showed me to all the employees. He said, ‘This is Russell Sifers, my first grandson and heir apparent.’ So, I can claim I’ve been in the candy business since Easter 1948.”

The influence of the three preceding generations is manifested in the memorabilia Sifers keeps in his office. An array of VALOMILK wrappers dating back to the early 1900s covers one wall, black and white photographs of his great-grandfather, various relatives and assembly line workers takes up another, and in a corner by the door, Sifers even keeps one of the original copper kettles used in the old factory.

“You’ve got the personality of the person who started it, the first generation,” Russ says, “and then you’ve got a slightly different personality from the second generation, and then again from the third generation. Most businesses don’t get past the third generation.”

Today, Sifers runs the company with his stepson Dave Swiercinsky, who represents VALOMILK’s fifth generation. From the sound of it, a sixth generation of owners is already waiting to take over. “My granddaughters told me, ‘We’re 13—three more years and you can retire,’” he says.