FORT PIERCE – Natalie’s Orchid Island Juice Company was featured in a New York Times article, Lifting the Second-Generation Curse, last week. Founder Marygrace Sexton and daughter Natalie (for whom the company was named when she was just an infant in 1990) are profiled among other family businesses striving to survive the statistical odds that “only 30 percent of family-owned businesses make it through the second generation.”

Their success story, growing from Marygrace borrowing a butcher’s truck to make overnight deliveries to a company with 100 employees and distribution in 32 states and 34 countries with Natalie as a successor willing and ready to take over, is depicted as atypical in family businesses. Many are rife with family conflict as the second generation approaches takeover age but may not be ready or willing to take on the business.

Photo courtesy Natalie’s Orchid Island Juice Company.

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