Family extends beyond relatives at Dordan

At Dordan Manufacturing Co. Inc., family means more than just flesh and blood.

That's one of the reasons why CEO Daniel Slavin has absolutely no interest in selling his company despite the repeated inquiries he gets from people looking to make a deal.

“I get two or three calls a week from M&A people looking to buy, looking to invest and I don't have any desire to sell. I'm not the retiring type. I don't have any hobbies. I don't play golf. My hours are pretty much whatever I want. I'm not sure what I would do,” Slavin said.

“I have people who have been with me a long time. And selling also has an impact on them. And it's not something, after the years they put in, at the age they are at, that I would feel comfortable doing,” he said about many employees.

Dordan Manufacturing was started by Edwin and Vivian Slavin in 1961 as a contract packaging company that also made skin packaging. By the late 1960s, the company had evolved into a thermoforming company, and Daniel came on board in 1970. Just four years later, with his father retiring, he was in charge.

These days, two of his four children, Aric Slavin and Chandler Slavin, are involved in the business as well as his son-in-law, Daniel Haavig.

But when he considers his entire workforce, the CEO sees many longtime workers he considers family as well. These are folks who have been with Dordan Manufacturing year-after-year, decade-after-decade, devoting their working life to the success of the company.

Slavin does not take that commitment lightly.

“I have people who have been working with me in excess of 30 years, so when you talk family, there's family and then there's family. I have employees who have been with me so long, that have been so integral in my growth, that they are also part of the family in a sense and they are treated as family,” Slavin said.

Selling the company, he said, would cast doubt on not only the employment prospects of his own family but of his extended work family. And that, he said, just can't happen.

Plus the business affords him the opportunity to stay close to his children.

“It's not easy, but I wouldn't want any other alternatives. They all live around me. I get to see my grandkids all the time. Done well, it keeps the family close. Done poorly, it splits the family,” he said.

The things that make families great also can make life difficult in a family-run business.

Emotions can run high at times, everybody can have an opinion and heads can bump. But it's still worth it, he said.

“My dad even said when he was then working, ‘I'd rather make a dollar working for myself than $10 for somebody else.' So you just have that kind of mentality.”

Even after all these years, and the recent economic problems that have gripped the nation, Slavin still enjoys coming in to work, helping the next generation prepare to succeed him eventually.

“There's a sense of accomplishment. There's a certain sense that you have,” he said.

For Chandler Slavin, coming to work for the family business after college did take some adjustment.

“I did have a difficult time reconciling my perceived loss of independence by working for my dad with the need to make a living. It took several years to learn how to work for my dad and with my brother in a way that is professional and efficient,” she recalled. “But I am grateful for those early years as they provided the foundation.”

Chandler Slavin did have the opportunity to leave the family business for other work after about two years, but ultimately decided to stick with the family business.

And she's glad she did.

“I had been romanced by the idea of the millennial corporate America — where work breaks were spent playing foosball in the ‘game room' and free beer was provided on Fridays. Oh the fun,” she said.

“Now at 28, I no longer swoon over the idea of talent-attracting corporate perks, but instead truly value the vibe of my family business. We work hard and take real pride in what we do and how do we do it. We are small but we are mighty and we are here because there is nowhere else we would rather be,” she said.

Dordan Manufacturing, which moved from Chicago to Woodstock, Ill., in the early 1990s, strives to make sure family values are part of the way the company does business, the CEO said.

“We have a sense of honesty, fairness, integrity, ethics. Treating people the way you want to be treated,” he said. “It's important that my children see me as that and respect me for that and those ideals are really the most important ones to teach them.

“It's a family environment. It's not a corporate environment,” he said.

Slavin, at 63, has no plans of slowing down at this point, joking that his children think more about a succession plan than he does. “It is not something that is at the forefront of my mind at this point because there is a ways to go in this economy before I feel that the world is settled and substantial enough for growth that they can move forward,” he said.

Read an overview of family-owned businesses and find links to other profiles.