Our History

Necessity is the Mother of many things

Marinus van Dam grew up in his native Holland during World War II. Our Grandfather Johannes van Dam, a wood worker and tinkerer by trade, was a member of the Dutch underground. Unfortunately, his association with the underground resulted in his capture and he spent his last days in a German work camp.

With that, it became necessary for the boys to find work to support their family. At the age of 15, Marinus found a job at a local candy factory. His job was to take a sheet of metal and scrape up the candy that had become stuck on the factory floor. He tirelessly worked the 4 floors of the building every day.

His endless curiosity and work ethic caught the attention of management and he was selected to attend Candy Technology School paid for by the company (very progressive for 1945!) This pattern repeated until he learned every aspect of candy making from the finest hand-made chocolates to jellies, caramel, taffy, nougat, gum, mints, licorice and more. He knew how to make them by hand as well as large scale manufacturing and he understood the very science behind the sweets.

The journey to live the American Dream

In 1957, Marinus left Holland to come to America where he heard the streets were paved with gold. He arrived in Ohio with $50.00 in his pocket and the words, “Yes”, “No”, and “beefsteak” in his English vocabulary. He used to joke that $50.00 was not going to get him very far if he ate steak. He learned English by reading menus in the diners, pointing to an item and seeing what he got. The rest came from newspapers and television whenever he could find one and conversations with people at work.

After working for a small confectionery company in Ohio, he heard of a larger company in California that was hiring so off he went to join the Wild West. To his great fortune he landed the job and spent the better part of his career at that company helping to build it into one of the finest companies in the US.

After a lifetime of working for others, he felt it was time to venture out on his own. In 1983 Marinus and several partners founded Marich Confectionery Company. Like most early stages of a business, money was extremely tight and we could not afford to hire additional employees. Our dad needed some cheap labor…meaning free…meaning his kids……and that’s where we came in.

Brad (pictured upper left/middle) was working and going to school to finish an engineering degree and decided to put it on hold to help out at the business. At the time, Troy (upper left/bottom) was still in high school. After school, instead of playing football or running around with his friends, he would go down to the factory to work. Each day we would show up for work and do whatever had to be done. In true family business fashion, we have all done just about everything in this place that can and should be done and still do. Our dad was old fashion Dutch and believed that hard work builds character (we did not buy that then but we believe it today).

We started sweeping floors and cleaning before being granted the right to learn the craft. Our dad’s philosophy was, “You cannot be a leader if you do not understand the job from the ground up. Once you learn how to keep a plant clean, you can learn how to make candy.” Being old school Dutch, our Dad put us to the tasks of cleaning toilets, sweeping, making boxes and whatever had to be done. Over the years we both learned the art of fine candy making along side our Dad. We also learned to weld stainless, sweat copper, install equipment, electrical work and all the types of things that you have to do to keep a business running. Anyone in a family business reading this is smiling……you know what we’re talking about!

We spent years late into the night all days of the week working together as a family (and still do). Yes, it was hard but we all look on it very fondly as some of the best times we have spent together.

Neither one of us came here with the intent to stay and make a career. We were simply helping our Dad get a business off the ground and fell in love with it.

The business is in our blood and is our last thought before falling asleep and our first thought when we wake up. Just ask Brad’s wife Kim who has to listen to him talk in his sleep all night or Michelle who gets woken up by Troy for a midnight problem solving session.

When we are not here, we are spending time with our friends and children enjoying sports, travel, cooking, wine and of course great chocolate!

After over 26 years we continue to enjoy building our business together and yes, we still eat chocolate. Honestly, rarely a day goes by that we don’t eat at least a little. If you are a candy maker, you have to love candy and you have to be a perpetual kid. Work should be fun; if it’s not, it a miserable way to spend the better part of your day.

We are literally, “kids in a candy store”…a big candy store.

Thank you for spending time getting to know us. If you have any questions or if we can help, please let us know. We would love to hear from you and we actually answer our email.