SHARON, Pa. – Mike Lisac had been an employee at Warehouse Sales in Sharon for 11 years under its previous owners, the Greenburg family, before buying it in 2000.

This year, the hardware store marks its 25th year under the ownership of Lisac, who operates it with members of his family.

“It’s been good,” Lisac says of business over the years. “It’s sometimes tough but it’s been very, very good.”

After first buying the business, Lisac recalls he and his wife, Sonja, worked together. “We were the only ones that would work on Sundays,” Lisac recalls.

In the years since, both his parents came to work there – his father still does – and he also hired his sister, Michele Canon, the company’s officer manager. His wife, Sonja, also still is with the business and primarily handles tax accounting for the operation. His late brother, a retired police officer, also worked there for a while before his death.

“I’ve known very little but working for family,” having worked as a kid for his father when he owned his own businesses, Lisac says. He jokes that he can’t yell at his dad “because he’s [his] dad” and his father can’t yell at him “because I’m his boss.”

Having a family business presents occasional challenges, he concedes. If there is an event such as a death in the family, for example, someone still needs to remain at the store to run it, Lisac says.

The siblings say they always have worked well together.

One reason is that their social circles don’t overlap much, and therefore, they don’t see each other much outside work. They simply have different interests, Canon says.

“It’s usually pretty easy,” Sonja Lisac says of working with family members.

One of the big advantages of working with family is having “someone you can trust” working with you, though “we try to treat the whole place like a family,” Lisac says. He also notes his wife, Sonja, works at Gilbert’s Insurance as well so she isn’t at Warehouse Sales every day

“I think it would be very difficult if you worked every day, all day together,” he acknowledges.

Pictured at top: Sonja Lisac, Mike Lisac and Michele Canon make a good team.