Frank Witsil
Detroit Free Press
Joe and Michael Schodowski run a metro Detroit shelving and storage company along with a third brother, John, and their brother-in-law, Jim Aiello. The brothers believe in making money.
They also believe in giving it away.
“Being Catholics, tithing is giving away 10 percent of your income back to the church or donations to the poor,” said Mike Schodowski, 55, the company’s vice president of sales. “We took the same philosophy we’d take personally and related it to our business.”
For the past eight years, the brothers said, they donated 10 percent of the annual profits earned by their company, Shelving Inc., to the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, a Detroit group that tries to help people, especially those who are hungry.
“We believe in the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, and the good work they provide to Detroit,” Schodowski said.
They also organize an annual event, Benefit on the Bay, which, since 1993, has raised more than $1.25 million for the soup kitchen.
A family business, the company was founded in 1960 by their father, Jack. He earned a degree in mathematics, worked in industrial engineering, then became a salesman, selling storage products, and then — as he had more children — started to wonder whether he could run his own business.
“He thought: I might be able to do this on my own,” Joe Schodowski, 52, said.
And he did.
He bought a working van for the business, and — the family story goes — that very day his pregnant wife was ready to give birth. He took her to the hospital in the van, and Michael, the middle of seven children, came into the world. After that, he joked that Michael was his company’s first delivery.
Since then, the company has grown.
In 2000, John, Michael, Joe and Jim bought the company.
It now has 25 employees and annual revenues of more than $10 million.
In an edited conversation, Joe and Michael offer advice on business — and shelving:
Q: Why did you decide to follow in your father’s footsteps and go into the family business?
Michael: Looking to my father as a role model: He taught us hard work, dedication, and the harder you work, the better you will be rewarded. He provided for seven children. That was probably one of my motivational factors.
Q: How is it working in a family business?
Michael: I don’t think I’d make it in the corporate world. I really enjoy the family aspect. The culture, that starts from the top down. That we pass along to our employees, as opposed to running a business where everything is right to the dime, it’s a family atmosphere working here. Flexibility. They have hardships, we try to help them, as opposed to just being employer and employee.
Joe: When you recognize that for the most part, you spend more waking hours with your work family than you do your home family. We recognize we have a working family here. So when somebody has any setbacks and challenges, we’re there to help them as much as we can.
Q: How important is your Catholic faith to you in running the business?
Joe: We don’t wear it on our sleeve. We try to take the best tenets from it: Treating others with respect. Fairness. Having open and honest communication. Meet and exceed expectations. Follow through on your commitments.
Everyone knows we donate 10 percent of our profits. When they go to the Benefit on the Bay they can see part of where that money goes and how it affects people.
Q: What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs?
Mike: Over deliver and under promise.
Joe: Stay humble. You are not going to make it by yourself. You are going to need people on your team. Put them in the right seats on the bus so they can share the strategic vision of the company, and they will all have a stake in the outcome and treat them as you would your family, because you are not going to get it done without them.
Q: How about some free shelving advice?
Joe: Our slogan is: “We rack your world.” That’s our tag line. So our advice is always look for the optimization of your cubic space, which means: Look up. And are you using your vertical space? Look down. Do you have a lot of floor space that’s not being used? Then compress your shelves together, close as you can, so you can add more shelves.
Then, within shelves, compartmentalize. Use ID tags to identify what’s on the shelf, how important it is.
It’s a ubiquitous product. Everybody needs a shelf.
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