Employees are Family

story by Kari Williams | photography by Molly Kuplen

To step onto the 30 acres that make up Schier Products is to be welcomed by an in-house trail system, a basketball hoop, and off-duty employees enjoying a beer while playing ping pong.

“We have fun, we play together,” says Charlie Ismert, president and sales director of Schier Products. “On purpose, we didn’t want to be locked into an industrial park.”

Schier Products, located at 6455 Woodland Drive, has a 20-year history in Shawnee under the its current leaders and a reputation for focusing on its employees. Cousins Luke and Charlie Ismert currently head up the grease-interceptor manufacturing company. Charlie says his uncle—Luke’s father—purchased Schier in 2002.

A grease interceptor is a device installed in a business’ plumbing to collect and trap fats, oil, and grease carried along as water moves through the system.

“He was always my role model, a guy I looked up to since I was in grade school, middle school,” Charlie says.

The family, according to Luke, has been involved in various aspects of the plumbing industry in south Kansas City “for eons.”

“Just being in a manufacturing environment where you can see something go from concept to reality … there’s something super satisfying about that,” says Luke, Schier’s CEO.

The significance of remaining a family business is the ability to have an independent approach.

“I think it’s just basically the freedom to call the shots and decide what kind of company we wanted to be,” Charlie says. “I can’t speak for other business owners or companies but ours has been fantastic.”

The company, Luke says, had largely been used as a “little test lab for business ideas.”

“We try ideas and see how they work,” Luke says. “One of the ideas we were really interested in trying was just an ultra-focus and doing fewer things. A ‘less is more’ type of thing.”

For Charlie’s part, he says they consider themselves “business scientists.”

“Focus’ sounds maybe boring or cliché, but it’s truly our No. 1 competitive advantage,” Charlie says. “We’re always talking about how, even still, we can focus the company tighter and tighter.”

Charlie says that when you find a niche worth going after “then you kind of dig in and hunker down.”

“Most people, I don’t think, don’t think that way … When you’re a focus company you can kind of run laps around other people who are kind of treating your category like a side hustle,” Charlie says.

That’s how they came to focus purely on grease-trap interceptors, and that concept has “dramatically changed the company,” according to Luke.

“We have a purpose, a higher purpose that we adopted, to improve the lives of our employees,” Luke says. “Everything we do is in service of that. So we’re looking at increasing something, some kind of benefit each and every year.”

Those changes could be pay, health-care benefits, or anything in between.

“The [thought] behind that is that like a lot of us, we want to do something to make the world better. And we don’t really have a lot of control to do that … [but we] feel like maybe a ripple can be created,” Luke says.

However, Luke says it’s not necessarily about making people happy, rather it’s about treating them like family.

“That’s kind of the thing, period. You’re not always making your family happy, but you always try to do right by them,” he says. Company culture, according to Luke, is “pretty unique,” but nothing “super cheesy” or over the top.

“It’s just feels like a family,” Luke says. “I love coming to work every day … All through the [COVID-19] pandemic, we had no problem keeping people in person and getting people back after the pandemic. People wanted to come back.”

Because of their association with the restaurant industry—which Luke says “has taken a direct missile strike from the pandemic”—Schier Products also dealt with supply-chain shortages.

“The fact that we are built to be resilient, because of our purpose, because we want to maintain good paying jobs through all the ups and downs, we were able to just ride the wave,” Luke says. “The wave up and the wave down.”

Schier Products also has a focus on lean manufacturing, which minimizes waste while maximizing productivity.

“Lean manufacturing is intrinsic to our purpose statement,” Charlie says.

One of the company’s key performance indicators is tenure, as they regularly celebrate 5-, 10-, 15- and 20-year anniversaries.

“There’s a lot to be said about hanging up your coat and staying a while … and I’m a big believer in that. You get better at things if you let time pass, you get your black belt essentially,” Charlie says. “I think the work becomes more meaningful, too.”

Luke says Schier Products wants to be a fixture in the Shawnee community.

“We’re stoked about being in Shawnee. It’s a perfect match for our culture,” Luke says. “It feels like home. It’s got a little bit of country, a little bit of city.”

SCHIER PRODUCTS

6455 Woodland Drive

Shawnee, KS 66218

913-951-3300

Email: support@SchierProducts.com

www.SchierProducts.com