This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mark Hirschberg, president of Multipet. It has been edited for length and clarity.
My grandparents started a company from scraps — quite literally.
In the 1950s, they were immigrants from Germany, living in the basement of a man who made belts. They repurposed the scraps from those leather belts to make dog toys. They called it Vo Toys, after their last name, Vogel. They only spoke broken English and thought the name was very catchy.
My grandfather died when I was 10, and my father took over the business. That’s when our living room became his office, and his office sometimes felt like our living room. There were no boundaries between work and home. He talked about business 24/7. It was a point of frustration.
As I got older, I rebelled against joining the family business. My dad and brother were running the company, and they were very close. I didn’t feel like there was room for me. I attended New York University to study finance and then began working for a real estate company.
I joined the family business, then created my own company
Sometimes I think working for the family business was a self-fulfilling prophecy. By the time I had a wife and child, I returned to Vo Toys. It felt like my birthright, to a degree. It also gave me the opportunity for more financial security.
I worked at the family company for about nine years. At the time, most major pet toy manufacturers were buying from the same trade companies in China. To stand out in the US market, you had to offer the lowest price.
I wanted to try another approach: creating uniquely designed toys that were unlike anything else. That way, we could avoid the price war. In 1993, I left Vo Toys to found Multipet.
My dad and I met on Fridays to talk business
For a while, my dad and brother were waiting for me to come running back. I was driven by the desire to prove myself. I’m 66, and even today, that drives me.
I was really good about putting Multipet in a niche that meant we weren’t competing directly with Vo Toys. After I left the family business, my dad and I would meet each Friday for breakfast and talk transparently about the companies.
My dad and I get along fine, but my biggest fear is that I’m turning into him. So, I vowed to keep business and my personal life separate. I didn’t want my three kids to experience what I had growing up. I wanted them to follow their own hearts and not feel obligated to join the family business.
I would love to see my grandkids join the business, too
I wanted my children to experience the world, so I created a rule: if they wanted to join the family business, they had to work for someone else for three years first. It’s not healthy for anyone to have the same job forever, and I wanted them to have exposure.
They each did that, and now my two sons and daughter all work with me. We see each other frequently at work, but when we’re around the dinner table, we’re not talking business. I have five grandkids now, so that makes it hard to have too much conversation anyway.
In a lot of ways, things haven’t changed since my grandparents. My grandmother had the ability to look at a spool of thread, or a scrap of leather, and see a toy. I inherited that ability to look at an item and see its potential.
I would love it if my grandkids become the fifth generation in the pet toy business — if not, what are we doing it for?
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