Wow, this is such a strange feeling. We sold 82% of our family business in 1999 to Fremont Partners due to estate tax (death tax) reasons after my grandfather died in 1998. I worked there for more than nine years (not including summers during high school) and there were probably not more than five people previous to ‘99 who knew how much profit we made.

Yesterday, the whole company (including our stake) was sold to Headwaters Incorporated out of Utah. Headwaters is a public company (HDWR) and therefore are required to publish there financials. It is really strange to see all of Tapco’s financial information on the Internet(!) for everyone to see.

It’s also the end of an era for my family, which makes me kind of sad. My grandfather founded Tapco in 1961 while he was working for my great grandfather at Tappan Bros. – a wholesale building products distributor we sold to Norandex in 1988 – but even after we sold the majority stake of Tapco in ‘99, we still owned 18%. Now we own none. Strange indeed.