Business as a family tradition.
Services Plus was founded in 1984 by Marvin Schumacher after he decided to come out of retirement after a successful career at Warehouse Specialists, Inc. where he was the president and one of the company’s founding members. Marvin’s sons, Mike and Tom Schumacher, purchased his majority share in the mid 1990’s. Growing up with Marvin presented Mike and Tom several opportunities to learn from an entrepreneur.
When Mike and Tom were growing up, business was part of daily life. When they were in grade school, where there should have been a two-car attached garage, there was instead their father’s beer and liquor store. As high schoolers, their father bought a sweeping compound company and gave it to them to run at minimum wage. It was a simple product, basically sawdust mixed with oil or wax to keep dust down when sweeping floors. Instead of buying sawdust by the bag, Marvin bought it by the railcar. But the business wasn’t close to a railway so Mike and Tom had to manually unload each boxcar. It usually took them a week to unload one car. The business was all theirs. Their father never showed up or worried about it. Mike and Tom had to figure out how to do everything. They took the orders, made the product, wrote the shipping papers, dealt with the truckers, did all the accounting…everything. Marvin, Mike, and Tom brought that entrepreneurship experience to Services Plus and is part of our culture today.