Business Spotlight: The Elder Statesmen

Anyone who has grown up within about 500 miles of Branson in the past 50 years would have to have been living in a cave not to have visited Silver Dollar City at least once.

It was a cave that started the whole thing back in the 1950s. Silver Dollar City originally opened in 1960 as a side attraction, a place to spend time while waiting for a tour of Marvel Cave.

The Herschend family purchased a 99-year lease on Marvel Cave in the 1950s, and in 1960, brothers Peter and Jack Herschend opened Silver Dollar City.  

Today, Herschend Family Entertainment Corp. – adopted in 2003, replacing Silver Dollar City Corp. – owns 24 parks and attractions in nine states, including Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., Stone Mountain Park in Atlanta, Adventure Aquarium in Camden, N.J., and Classic Cable Car Sightseeing in San Francisco. The parent company, whose sites attract 14 million visitors a year, shares its headquarters in Branson and Atlanta.

Grand plans have been under way for Silver Dollar City’s 50th anniversary, even during the height of the recession last year, which company officials say hasn’t affected the Branson park as badly as some other tourist destinations.

“We anticipated attendance would be down about 4 percent to 5 percent last year,” says Brad Thomas, senior vice president of Silver Dollar City Attractions in Branson. “It was down 3 percent.”

In anticipation of that larger downturn, Thomas says the company froze wages, and several members of management took pay cuts, but they never laid off any of the 300 full-time employees or cut from their 1,400 head count at the peak of the season.  

Silver Dollar City also is riding high after a March 28 CBS episode of “Undercover Boss” featured HFE CEO Joel Manby. The episode was the highest rated among all programs on the Sunday night it aired, according to Nielson ratings.

The show seemed to spur an uptick of hits to the company’s Web site, but Lisa Rau, director of publicity and public relations for Silver Dollar City Attractions, says it would be speculation to guess what, if any, economic impact the show has on attendance.

Still, the company expects 1.9 million visitors this year, which represents a return to the company’s annual expected growth of 3 percent to 5 percent.

Peter Herschend says he and his family didn’t know what kind of a fire they would light when they opened Silver Dollar City on May 1, 1960, with 17 employees that included a few craft demonstrators, a stagecoach ride and Slantin’ Sam’s Miners Shack.

“It wasn’t our goal to have a legacy,” says Herschend, now 75. “It’s really not worth a legacy, if there’s no emotional connection.”

The company’s consistent mission: to provide quality family entertainment, a place Herschend describes as one “you would never be embarrassed to bring your whole family.”

The ride has been, for them, much like one of the park’s roller coasters. A series of ups included park additions and national recognition, and lows involved previous recessions, oil embargos that threatened travel, and even a fire that burned a whole section of the park days before the Fall Crafts Festival.

About 15 years ago, the brothers, then in their 60s, began discussions about passing the business legacy to their own families. Two years later, they hired the first CEO for HFE outside of the Herschend family and stepped back from daily operations. The brothers, who have eight children between them, wanted to teach their children a different way than the management path they took.

“They had dads that got up and ran the business operationally each day,” says Peter Herschend. “We had to change how we dealt with the company so our kids could see how to run it strategically.”

He says it has been a process to fully complete the transition, and current CEO Manby – of “Undercover Boss” fame – is the third person to hold the position.

“It is harder to get out of a business than it is to build, but we have an outstanding leadership team, and I love our role now,” says the 77-year-old Jack Herschend.

Those roles for the brothers, Peter Herschend adds, is more of “elder statesmen,” not only guiding the direction of the company by relaying suggestions from the board, but also guiding their children in taking the helm. Currently, only Peter Herschend’s son, Chris, is employed by HFE – as president of Ride the Ducks in Philadelphia – but the entire family acts as stockholders.

The company is privately held and the Herschends declined to disclose annual revenues. Thomas says that 80 percent of Silver Dollar City’s guests still come from within 300 miles of Branson.[[In-content Ad]]