Household companies that develop into big companies but keep family-owned are rarities as of late. Some of the enduring and profitable is the Kohler Co., the facility and plumbing fixtures agency based mostly in its namesake Wisconsin village, due to the efforts and imaginative and prescient of former CEO Herbert Kohler Jr., who died Saturday at age 83.
The Kohler firm was based in 1873 by Herb Kohler’s grandfather, Austrian immigrant John Michael Kohler. Herb Kohler took over in 1972 when the corporate had some $160 million in annual income and expanded it into a world enterprise with almost $6 billion in income when he stepped down as CEO in 2015.