NEW YORK—The Mondavis. The Fords. The Marriotts. Warner Brothers. All examples of famous family businesses that prospered and thrived through several generations. While there are countless success stories about clan-run enterprises, family ties do not always bind and some companies struggle due to infighting, mismanagement and rivalries. According to the Family Business Institute, “only 30 percent of family businesses last into the second generation while 12 percent are viable into the third.”

Peter Englisch of Ernst & Young’s Global Family Business Center of Excellence may have summed it up best when he said, “The challenge is to combine the most rational world of business with the most emotional world of family.”

The picture for family-run companies is not always bleak. An article in the Harvard Business Review titled Leadership Lessons from Great Family Businesses revealed that “family-controlled businesses play a key role in the global economy. They account for an estimated 80 percent of companies worldwide and are the largest source of long-term employment in most countries. In the United States, they employ 60 percent of workers and create 78 percent of new jobs.”

We here at VMail Weekend wondered how family businesses were faring in optical land and more importantly, what was it like growing up and into a family-run company. Here’s what our respondents had to say about keeping it all in the family.


Daniel Brunson, Owner and Optician
Hicks Brunson Eyewear
Tulsa, Okla.

I am a fourth-generation optician so my memories of getting started in the business go way back. I have a picture of my five-year-old self playing around with a lens on an old Coburn Optical hand edger. I used to hang out at my father’s store when I was a boy in the mid 1980s and when his customers would ask me if I was going to be an optician when I grew up I would answer, “I am an optician.” That phrase would later become the title of a YouTube video  I made last year in which I explain my passion for the craft of opticianry. The title must have come from my subconscious mind, because I was certainly not thinking about that memory when I named the video.

I also have memories from the mid 1980’s of watching my Aunt Betty while she engraved people’s initials into their new lenses. She has long since retired, but she was an optician and an artist, and she had a talent for engraving custom designs in lenses too.

A year or two into my optical career, I remember one day our lab rep stopped in and offered us some new frame collections on consignment. One of them was Donald Trump eyewear. This was in the early 2000s and I was not yet the official frame buyer, but I had just enough authority at that time to bring in some inventory on consignment, so I did.

This was an early learning experience in the pros and cons of carrying product that is attached to a celebrity name, especially a figure who was liked by some and detested by others for his public persona. Over time, I used experiences like this one to develop my philosophy for frame buying


Dawn Friedkin, President
Classic Optical
Youngstown, Ohio

The best part about growing up in the business is the fact that I have known so many of our Classic team members most of my life. They are an extended part of my family.

My favorite story relates to when I learned that you don't get paid for lunch even if you stay and work and don't clock out. I had been working at Classic during the summer for a few weeks. It was after work one night and my family was sitting down for dinner at home. I was about 10. My mom asked me what I did for lunch while at work. And I quickly responded, "I worked." Mom and dad looked at each other and dad said, "Honey, you don't get paid for lunch; the system automatically clocks you out."

Let's just say that from that day forward at lunchtime, my dad came to retrieve me from the stock room for lunch, whether it was a quick personal pan at Pizza Hut or lunch with the local bank president, I never went hungry again (but I still didn't get paid either).

Happily, I have carried on the family tradition. At the age of about three my son, Jacob, was enlisted to make boxes at Classic when he accompanied me to work (see photo). And now that he is 10, he is a key member of the stock room for a few days each summer. Here’s a photo of him when he was about one year-old sitting on the mail room scale.



Peter Lothes, CEO and president
Satisloh North America
Germantown, Wis.

I got my first exposure to the lab business when I was six years old. At the time, my mother was so tired of me being at home bugging her that she needed a well-deserved break. So my father, Del Lothes, who was a great teacher and mentor for me and my brothers, would take me into the lab on Saturday mornings.

While Dad would check on the building and read his mail, I sat on a tall stool in front of the drop ball machine and tested the glass lenses that just came out of the chem process for glass hardening. I thought this was so cool to try to break a glass lens and not get in trouble for actually "breaking" something! If I ran out of glass lenses to test, I would drop the ball on my knuckles to see how much that hurt or not. That may sound crazy, but at six this was very amusing. All very fond memories, for sure.



Harvey and Zack Moscot
Moscot
New York City

Moscot’s history in optical was first planted in America when family patriarch, Hyman Moscot arrived here at Ellis Island from Eastern Europe in 1899. By 1915, Hyman opened the family’s first retail shop, Moscot’s at 94 Rivington Street.

Over 100 years later, the Moscot family’s rich history in optical still has a strong impact on how Harvey and Zack Moscot run their family business.

4th Generation, Harvey Moscot offered this perspective: “My Grandpa Sol (2nd generation) said to me when I worked in the shop selling glasses during the summer between 11th and 12th grade—for beer money—that ‘If you treat your customers fairly they will always return.’ It was so simple and never left me or Moscot until this day.”

5th Generation, Zack Moscot reflected on his relative’s expertise: “My Grandpa (Joel 3rd generation) always emphasized the need for proper fitting eyewear and the expert opticians hand touch. Centering the eye in the frame front is key, but a fit is not complete until a proper adjustment is made."
Jamie Shyer, Co-CEO and Chief Operating Officer
Zyloware Eyewear
Port Chester, N.Y.

“Zyloware had a factory in Long Island City, and I remember being four years old, sitting on my grandfather’s lap and him showing me how to put frames together. He showed me how to put a temple to a front and taught me what frames are all about and I’d sit with him and play with different glasses. I remember running around the factory and ‘firing’ people when I was four or five years old because that was my job.

“When I got to high school, I spent some of the breaks working in the shipping department, worked in the factory assembling and learned the different parts of the business from the ground up. I really got to understand that hands-on part of the business that is very different now. Being so young and doing it then provided a lot of memories with my grandfather, who started the company back in 1923.”
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Mike Hundert, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Creative Officer
REM Eyewear
Sun Valley, Calif.

In 1981, while a sports marketing executive (Director of World Pro Skiing) and sports journalist, my dad (Gerry Hundert, who still comes to the office at 91) sold me on joining him, my mom, and my sister (and their one employee) to help build REM. The pitch included this: “If you join our family business, you can still have the flexibility to do some broadcasting along the way."

Little did he think that would happen once I moved from Aspen to L.A. to dive into the making, marketing, sales and distribution of frames. He was wrong (rarely). For the first 10 years in the eyewear business I double-dipped, co-producing the annual John Denver Celebrity Ski Tournament, and covering ski races each winter, notably as the host of skiing coverage at ESPN for several years in the 1980s.

Appearing regularly on national television was a key point of differentiation from other people schlepping a sample bag into the offices of optical retailers, which helped me build the vital relationships for success. My family was always supportive of my broadcasting sideline, and the difference it made for REM.

Some 36 years later, after a thrilling entrepreneurial ride, REM is now part of $600 million De Rigo REM, the world’s fourth largest eyewear distributor. All that hard work grew our company into a wonderful place to work, and a fabulous organization with which to do business.

But the most important thing about the journey has been the people. That very first employee, Joan Struck, has been our face and voice on customer service calls for more than 43 years. Joan will finally hand over her headset next week, retiring after serving eyecare professionals with extraordinary motherly care, setting examples for how to treat people that are woven into the family values fabric that has been the foundation of REM's success, and is now driving the growth of our new combined company, De Rigo REM.


We know there are MANY more families in the optical/vision care field. Have a memory of Growing Up in Optical that you want to share?

Please send them to us at VMailWeekend@VisionMonday.com.