Family Owned Companies: Graebel Companies

For this issue’s Family-Owned Companies feature – an annual ColoradoBiz staple we’re focusing on family businesses that are at least 50 years old, a fact that, by itself, makes them exceptional: According to a study by the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, the average lifespan of a family-owned business is 24 years.

The five companies profiled below stand out for another reason: They’ve all survived beyond the original founder to ownership by subsequent generations. In fact, two of them – O’Meara Motor Co. and Warneke Paper Box – are now in their fourth generation. How rare is that? According to the Small Business Administration, only 30 percent of family businesses in the U.S. survive into the second generation, only 12 percent to the third generation, and only 3 percent into the fourth and beyond.

If these Colorado businesses have one trait in common, besides their longevity, it’s their adaptation to changing times, and the ability of new generations of ownership to see the business through fresh eyes and new possibilities, while paying heed to what has worked for previous generations.

Graebel Companies

Founded: 1950

Third generation

Aurora, CO

Website: www.graebel.com

Late founder David Graebel started the company that bears his name in Wausau, Wisconsin, before shifting the headquarters to Colorado in 1984 as it launched a national van line. The criteria? Strong workforce, good climate and the intersection of two major interstates.

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The company expanded into relocation management in 2000, then divested of the moving operations and van line in 2015. The pivot has paid off. “We’ve become the largest independent global relocation management company in the U.S.,” says CEO Bill Graebel, David’s son. “In 2023, we helped manage about 96,000 annual initiations to, from, or within about 165 countries.”

The company helps employees (and their families and their pets) not only move, but buy and sell houses, secure visas and work permits, and otherwise relocate their lives and lifestyles to a new setting.

About 300 of the company’s 1,000 employees are based in Colorado, and 400 are based overseas. Bill says the company’s success starts with them. “A long time ago, my dad shared this insight with me: If you want to be a world-class service organization, you first have to begin with being a world-class employer, because your customers’ experience is going to be directly proportionate to the degree of engagement and discretionary e ort your employees are going to be willing to provide on behalf of somebody else.”

Same goes for suppliers, adds Bill. “Most of our competition treat the underlying supply chain and suppliers as interchangeable commodities and don’t really engage with them to help ensure they understand the requirements and feel empowered and respected.

“It’s not anything radical, it’s pretty basic. It’s a tradition and a philosophy and an approach that exists to this day and it continues to serve us well today.”

Bill says he got his first paycheck from the family business at the tender age of 7, then started working on moving crews when he was 12. “Two days after I turned 16 and had my commercial driver’s license. I was a crew chief as a 16-year-old.”

Bill says he first “put a tie on” while working for the company after graduating from Colorado College in the early 1980s and never looked back. He took over as CEO in 2007 and became chairman in 2018. Now his children are getting involved: “We’re moving into an era where four out of ve members of the third generation are actively involved in their careers in the company,” he says.

“We’re a people-centric organization,” Bill says. “It’s a less civil world today, and if you as a brand represent civility and kindness and positivity, oh my gosh, it stands out.”