Family Owned Companies: Warneke Paper Box

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.

Warneke Paper Box

Founded: 1907

Fourth generation

Denver, CO

Website: www.warnekepaperbox.com

Vacationing in Colorado in the early 20th century, brothers Maynard and George Warneke saw there were exactly zero box manufacturers in Denver. They were working in the considerably more crowded box industry in Cincinnati at the time, so they headed west and started Denver’s first box manufacturer, Inland Paper Box, in 1907.

Rebranded as Warneke Paper Box in 1937, the company has seen the industry and the local landscape change markedly during its 117-year existence. Now in its fourth facility, a 110,000-square foot building in northeastern Denver, the 70-employee Warneke Paper Box is in the hands of the fourth generation.

President and CEO Stacy Warneke credits her late father, Steve Warneke. “He really took our company from good to great,” Stacy says. “He could run every single piece of equipment that we had out on our floor. Because of that, we were able to build some pretty amazing relationships with some of the top suppliers and machinery in the world.”

Stacy started working for the company in sales in 2003 and spent an “amazing 11 years” working with her father before he passed away in 2014. “He was just an amazing mentor,” she says. “He taught me so much on how to be successful.”

One such lesson: Treat employees like family.

“I’m not just some person running the company that they don’t know. We actually have a relationship with everybody and they have relationships with each other and it’s just created this amazing dynamic between everybody here,” Stacy says.

Her father’s push for cutting-edge technology is another guiding tenet.

“I think that in a world where all these large companies, especially in our industry now, are buying up all the small independent companies, how do we stay relevant? How do we stay current? By having the best equipment, we’re able to compete with them and stay independent. We don’t want to sell out, so we’re still one of the little guys competing with the big guys. We do that by having the best equipment in the world here.”