Company Stories
Learn by example! Below are stories of real business owners across the country who were able to achieve their business and personal goals through effective exit strategies.
Ward Lumber had been family-owned for four generations. Their founder wanted to preserve jobs and his company’s legacy. His dream came true when he sold his company to those who know it best, his employees.
When the founder of RLMG, a design firm based in Watertown, MA, offered to sell his business to his staff, nearly all of the firm’s 40 employees voted to join the cooperative and buy out the business. The cooperative brings together the ideas and unique skill sets of different ages and backgrounds.
A Yard and a Half Landscaping, based in Waltham, MA, was founded in 1994 and became an employee-owned cooperative in 2014. The team always had a can-do culture, so when the time came to learn how to run the business together, they were ready for the challenge. Today, the worker-owners feel confident about speaking up and making decisions about the business.
The team at Real Pickles, founded in Greenfield, Massachusetts in 2001, didn’t want to go the way of many other food producers, where you grow and grow and then you sell out. They considered how they could protect the mission of the business for the long-term. Becoming an employee-owned cooperative became their solution.
When the owner of Green Mountain Graphics, based in Queens, NY, started thinking about retirement, selling the business to his longtime employees made sense. The process of transitioning to an employee-owned cooperative was challenging but personally and financially rewarding, the employees said.
The Home Beautiful, a large family-owned decorating center in Central New Hampshire, made an intentional transition to employee ownership, giving their workers control of their own futures and their customers the same level of service that they had come to expect.
Alternative Technologies began in 1989 with a visionary founder who wanted to help non-profits meet their tech needs. When he wanted to retire, he also wanted to maintain the founding vision by transitioning the business to his employees.
Cal Solar was able to weather the pandemic and continues to thrive and support workers because of a successful transition to employee-ownership. “We have a reason to continue to improve the bottom line, not just clock in and clock out,” one worker-owner said.
Learn how the Colorado-based filmmakers of Truce Media won a state-wide grant for employee ownership conversion and are now a media cooperative. You can also read their story here.
The historic Belvadere Restaurant, on the Saranac Lake in New York, was family-owned for nearly 90 years before they transitioned the business to new owners. Their story is an example of how successful succession planning is an investment in the community too.
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