Marinus van Dam and several partners founded Marich in 1983. 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 left) 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 (right) 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. Michelle (obviously in the center) joined the company in 1989 in the office and has since worked in the factory, sales, customer service, accounting and like a true family business member just about everywhere else in the company. Troy got sweet on Michelle and asked her to marry him. 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.

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

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 Troy who gets woken up by Michelle 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 20 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. As you can see, we like to have fun at work.

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

Thank you for spending time getting to know us. If you have questions or if we can help, please email us. We actually answer our email.

the van Dam Family