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www.PowersportsBusiness.com AFTERMARKET Powersports Business • June 13, 2016 • 47 Alex Josefson is third generation president of oil business BY LIZ KEENER MANAGING EDITOR Spectro Performance Oils has been part of Alex Josefson's life since he was born. It seems there's a chance some oil might even flow through his blood. Josefson was the first grandchild of Spectro founder Robert Wehman, and by the time he was born, Spectro had become a real family business. In addition to his grandfather, Josef- son's grandmother Barbara Wehman, father Thomas Josefson and uncle David Miller were all full-time employees, and his mother Barbara Wehman Josefson worked at Spectro full-time until a week before he was born. Now the third generation has taken over, as Alex Josefson was named president of Spectro's parent company, Intercontinental Lubricants Corp. (ILC) in July 2014. His brothers Chris and Mike joined the management team shortly after. GROWING UP WITH SPECTRO Being that Spectro is a full-fledged family business, Alex Josefson spent a considerable amount of his childhood at the company's Brookfield, Conn., headquarters. "I've been around it quite literally my entire life because it's always what I've done. Even as a kid, I was helping out around the offices, clean- ing up," he said. "I was sweeping floors at 14 during the summer, and I always got to do all the 'fun' jobs that nobody else wanted to do." One summer he was asked by his father to come for a few weeks to help dump old bottles of blend samples to make room for the new ones. Pouring out 4- to 6-ounce bottles one at a time, so the oil could be properly disposed of, Josefson filled two or three 55-gallon drums in those few weeks. "That was a crazy summer," he recalled. Another time, Josefson was charged with putting braille warning stickers on bottles after a regulation requiring them was passed in Sweden. Now Spectro's bottles have the braille imprints in the mold, but that wasn't the case right after the law was enacted. "I have done it from the ground up," he said. Josefson also recalls many visits with his grandmother Barbara Wehman, who served as president for nearly a decade from the mid- 1990s to 2003. He appreciated his time with his grandmother so much that when given a choice of office after his promotion, he chose her for- mer office as his. "I remember that whenever I went to visit, that was my first stop. My grandmother and I were really close, so I just remember her sitting in that chair while she was doing her work," he told Powersports Business. THIRD GENERATION STEPS IN Though Josefson had been around Spectro his entire life, he wasn't automatically hired after college. His uncle David Miller was president when Josefson left Western Connecticut State University, where he studied small business administration and management. Miller and Josefson's father, Thomas Josefson, vice presi- dent of Spectro, told Josefson he shouldn't expect to work for them right away. "They said, 'What you need to do is go out and learn how to work.' So that's exactly what I did. I went out, and I worked retail jobs; I worked all sorts of different jobs that really taught me the base foundation for who I am now," Josefson said. He gained experience in retail at NAPA and served as an assistant store manager at RadioShack, learning from his co-workers and superiors along the way. "There's one former boss that I had, Matt, who really exemplified one of the biggest traits that I try to go for, and that is he would never ask anybody to do something that he himself was not willing to do," Josefson said. "I try to carry that in every day when I go into work because I cannot ask somebody to do some- thing that I'm not willing to do. It sets an unfair precedent, if you ask me. There's been days, where, if we're a man down on the production line, I'll put on a dirty shirt and go back. It's just there's a job that needs to get done, and we're a small family business. It's all hands on deck. We do what we need to do to get Spectro a family affair at the top See Spectro, Page 48 From left, Mike, Chirs and Alex Josefson have taken over as the third generation to lead Spectro parent Intercontinental Lubricants Corp. Mike heads plant operations; Chris leads quality control and the warehouse, and Alex serves as president.