History of family ownership: My parents, Vrest & Mildred Orton, started the company in 1946 with a small catalog mailed to their Christmas card list and a store in the picture-postcard hill village of Weston, Vt. My father’s inspiration came from growing up in my grandfather Gardner Lyman Orton’s store in North Calais, Vt., in the early 1900s. We are still a family business with two stores, but the vast majority of the business derives from catalog and web. I became president in 1975 and built the business with help of our first non-family CEO, Bob Allen. Today my three sons, Cabot, Gardner and Eliot Orton, are taking the ownership lead and work with our second non-family CEO, Bill Shouldice.
Company revenue for 2010: $100 million.
Number of employees: 450 year-round, 750 in the fall/holiday season.
First job at this company: Stamping endorsements on back of mail-order checks when I was six. After college, [I worked in] inventory management.
Most memorable thing I learned from my father: Figure out the core selling point of each product and explain it clearly.
Most memorable thing I learned from my mother: Discipline around accounting, money and standards. Keep the checkbook in balance, always pay your vendors on time and take advantage of early-pay -discounts.
One of our greatest successes: Building an enduring company. Our family owns it for the long term, not to hype up growth then sell. To justify the risk of ownership we must develop products that customers can’t resist. We call ourselves the Purveyors of the Practical and Hard-to-Find, and our motto is, “We sell products that don’t come back to customers who do.”
Artwork on my office wall: Art from the ’20s through the ’50s depicting the people, landscape and life of Vermont.
Best thing about working in a family business: Not having outside shareholders driving us to short-term thinking and decisions.
On a day off I… On a what? Ah, that. Cycling and cross-country skiing and making time even in the dark to get that exercise on workdays, too.
Philanthropic causes our family supports: We support organizations in towns where our employees live, and employee action teams run those programs. They actually look for good organizations to support rather than just waiting to be asked.
I started the Orton Family Foundation; we work with small cities and towns to help citizens articulate those things that truly matter to the character of the community and quality of life. We call that the heart and soul of a community.
We have been longtime supporters of the Weston Playhouse Theater in Weston, Vt., the oldest summer theater in Vermont. We also support the Vermont Land Trust. My youngest son, Eliot, recently became chairman of their board.
Philanthropy is important to our family, and we practice it seriously. One of my passions is “the right to dry”—getting the right for all Americans to dry clothes in their yard and making that a badge of common sense and energy conservation. We passed a law like that in Vermont in 2009. Most homeowners’ associations in America prohibit clotheslines, and I think it’s wrong-headed, forces home-owners to consume energy with a dryer instead of doing it free under the sun, and smacks of elitism.
The other is getting rid of billboards. We did that in 1969 in Vermont. I have served on the board of Scenic America for many years.
I realized I had emerged from my parents’ shadow when … I saw those shadows in front of me instead of over me, and they made me smile.
Words I live by: Vermont’s motto: Freedom and Unity.