On its first day of business in the fall of 1905, the F.M. Light & Sons store in Steamboat Springs sold $11.50 worth of merchandise.
Traffic wasn’t so brisk the second day, with only 10 cents’ worth of goods sold.
Frank M. Light stuck out the tough early years, and this weekend the store that bears his name will celebrate its centennial. Still housed in its original downtown Steamboat location, F.M. Light & Sons is now headed by brothers Ty and Del Lockhart, the fourth generation of the family to run the business.
The business is a rarity.
While 30 percent of family-owned businesses survive into the second generation, only 12 percent are still viable by the third generation and only 3 percent make it to the fourth generation, according to the Boston-based Family Firm Institute.
“It’s extraordinary for a business to make it 100 years in one family,” said David Bork of Basalt, who founded the Aspen Family Business Group and has counseled more than 400 family-owned companies.
“There is always a reason for that happening. In this case, they served their customers well, and they figured out how to handle transferring control from generation to generation.”
F.M. Light & Sons is one of several well-known Colorado examples of companies that have survived for generations:
Denver’s Rockmount Ranch Wear was founded in 1946 and is run by three generations of Weils.
Coors Brewing Co. of Golden started brewing beer in 1873 and still has members of the Coors family on its board of directors. In February, the company merged with one of Canada’s oldest family-owned breweries, Molson Inc., to form Molson Coors Brewing Co.
F.M. Light & Sons is best known for its yellow-and-black Burma Shave-style road signs, which were first posted along local horse and walking trails in 1911. By 1928, the store had 300 signs within a 150-mile radius of Steamboat. Roughly 100 of the original signs – now registered state historic landmarks – still stand.
“We call them ’60-mph signs,”‘ said Ty Lockhart, great-grandson of F.M. Light, who bought control of the store from his father, Lloyd, in 1973. “They look pretty good at 60 mph, but if you get up close, they look a little rough around the edges. People have shot at them. Cows have broken them down. But they’re still very effective.”
Ty Lockhart declined to discuss revenues but said the store is profitable and is growing despite increased competition from big- box chains such as Wal-Mart.
The Lockharts credit the store’s survival to its ability to change over the decades. Wool men’s suits and dress shoes composed its initial $2,000 cache of merchandise. To survive the Great Depression, the store moved into ranch wear and tack, taking to the road to sell directly to ranchers and ranch hands from the back of paneled trucks.
Today, F.M. Light & Sons employs 18 people and carries no real ranch supplies. Instead, it caters to tourists and residents by stocking outdoor wear such as hiking boots and fleece jackets.
“You have to be innovative. We wouldn’t be around if we didn’t keep on changing our merchandise and our focus,” said Del Lockhart, who joined the family business in 1979. “We have a saying around here that we’re always polishing the brass, because the minute you stop polishing the brass it begins to tarnish.”
F.M. Light & Sons became the first Stetson dealer west of the Mississippi River in 1907, and cowboy boots and hats are still its top sellers.
“The cowboy still has a real mystique in the average American’s psyche,” Ty Lockhart said. “What we sell is the true Western experience – the look and the nostalgia.”
And while several members of the fifth generation have expressed interest in taking over the store, no definitive plans have been made, Ty Lockhart said.
“We’re going to do our best to keep it in the family for another 100 years,” he said.
Staff writer Julie Dunn can be reached at 303-820-1592 or jdunn@denverpost.com.
