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Klafter’s:
Adapting toThrive
Founded in 1897, Klafter’s is still going strong, thanks
to next-generation leadership committed to building
on a family-business foundation.
BY JENNIFER GELFAND
S
Statistically speaking, Klafter’s Inc. is an extraordinary
success story by any yardstick. At a time when just 13
percent of family businesses survive through two gener-
ations, the New Castle, Pennsylvania-based company is
on its fourth generation of family management. What’s
more, it is not only persevering but thriving in one of the
most challenging channels of an inherently risky busi-
ness sector: tobacco retail.
Asked how Klafter’s has managed to thrive for so long,
Randy Silverman, president of the company, points to
a history of carefully managed evolution. “I think we
have survived because we have tried to adapt to the chal-
lenges and opportunities that we have been faced with
throughout the years,” he notes. “We’ve taken risks but
have tried to make sure that those risks wouldn’t destroy
the company if they failed.”
Growing up, Silverman was involved in the business
from an early age, making cigarettes with injector ma-
chines and selling them at the front of the store, filling
orders and stamping cigarettes. “I was probably around
seven years old when I started doing that—can you
imagine a kid working at a tobacco company now?” he
says. Back then, Klafter’s owned a retail store, but was
primarily a wholesale company that sold cigarettes to
mom-and-pop corner shops.
When large chains began to drive those corner shops
out of business, Randy’s father, Lee Silverman, started
looking for a new focus. Lee Silverman, with the help
of his wife, Judy, had been running the company since
his father-in-law, Morris Storch, passed away in 1963.
(Storch, for his part, had taken the reins from his un-
cle, Sam Klafters, the founder.) While chatting with an
Randy and Renee Silverman
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