WINDSOR — Simon Pearce has entered into a “strategic partnership” with a California private equity firm, a move the renowned glassware designer said will provide it with a financial foundation to expand its business while avoiding the pitfalls that family companies often face past their founder’s generation.

SBJ Capital, a Walnut Creek, Calif., investment firm that acquires stakes in small to mid-size family businesses, has made an undisclosed investment in Simon Pearce, the glassware designer founded 53 years ago by artisan Simon Pearce, the partners announced in a news release on Tuesday.

The news confirmed reports in recent weeks that the Windsor-based company with an open-to-the-public glassware studio, store and namesake gourmet restaurant in a refurbished historic mill in Quechee — a popular tourist and dining destination in the Upper Valley — was changing hands.

“SBJ shares our passion for high-quality, handmade products and truly values the people and legacy that make Simon Pearce unique,” Jay Benson, chief executive officer of Simon Pearce, said in the news release. “This partnership is a pivotal step in expanding our reach, allowing more customers to experience our artisanal designs while preserving the spirit of our brand.”

Founded in 1971, Simon Pearce today has about 300 full and part-time employees. In addition to the studio and restaurant in Quechee, it has a corporate office, warehouse facility and glass-blowing production studio in Windsor and a production facility in Oakland, Md.

Founder Simon Pearce said he is confident he has placed his company in the proper hands.

“They appreciate our brand, our people, and the potential we have together. We are thrilled to be part of the SBJ Family,” Pearce said in the news release.

SBJ says its founders have invested more than $750 million in over 50 companies with a portfolio that includes the Swensons Drive-In restaurant chain and New England’s largest owner of Planet Fitness franchises. specializes in making investments of $10 million to $50 million in companies with revenues of up to $100 million, according to its website.

That hardly makes SBJ a giant in private equity, but the firm says its strategy is to focus on making investments in “lower middle-market consumer, business services and healthcare services” for which it “can draw on our extensive operating and domain expertise” and “a network of industry experts, to support the strategic goals of our partner companies.”

“As more consumers look to elevate their home barware, decor, and gifts with differentiated products, we anticipate the Simon Pearce brand will continue to grow,” said Patrick Muller, principal at SBJ.

SBJ’s current portfolio of companies includes Armor Express, a make of body armor for police; Precision Garage Door Service, a franchiser of residential garage door installers; Moxie, one of the largest franchisees of Supercuts salons with more than 2,700 locations; and Resolvion, which describes itself as one of the top vehicle repossession companies in the country.

Benson said one of the factors that tilted Simon Pearce to favor a partnership with SBJ — the glassware designer had been weighing a variety of options in recent years to transition the company beyond the founding generation — was the firm’s reputation of investing in family-owned businesses.

“We sought out a strategic partner that knew how to deal with family businesses,” Benson told the Valley News in an interview, adding that Simon Pearce will benefit from “the rigor SBJ provides in making sure the business has legs going forward.”

Another factor motivating the transaction, Benson said, is a desire by Simon and Pia Pearce to avoid the fate of so many family-run companies in the second and third generations.

“They’ve seen too many family companies that over time passing it on to the next generation creates animosity in the family. And they didn’t want to do that,” Benson said.

He noted that one of the rationales for having brought on non-family members as CEO was to “diffuse things like that going forward.”

Benson said the expertise of SBJ’s team will help to turbo-charge Simon Pearce’s goals to grow.

“A large part of this partnership is to help us find more customers like the ones we have,” Benson said, and to elevate the glassware maker beyond “being New England’s best kept secret.”

Benson would not disclose financial details of the transaction but said that he will continue as CEO. He and Simon Pearce also will remain on the board.

“I don’t intend to go anywhere else,” said Benson, a graduate of both Dartmouth College and the Tuck School of Business who has lived and worked in the Upper Valley ever since his student days in the 1980s. He joined Simon Pearce in 2016 and was named CEO in 2018, succeeding Clay Adams, who is now chief executive of Mascoma Bank.

Despite the travails affecting traditional brick-and-mortar retail stores as a result of the shift to online commerce, Simon Pearce has opened five new retail locations over the past five years, the most recent one in Manchester, Vt., bringing the total to 13 stores.

“We try to open a store every year or so if we can. We plan to keep doing that,” Benson said. The company also wholesales its glassware — which now includes a pottery line as well — to some 500 retail locations, including Neiman Marcus and Perigold.

“It’s been a good year, up from last year,” Benson said. “We wouldn’t be opening stores if it wasn’t.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, Benson said, “direct to consumer” — online — sales “are now our biggest channel.”

Benson said fears that SBJ will come in and radically alter Simon Peace’s business and workplace — a far too familiar scenario when private equity firms acquire long-time family-run businesses — are unfounded.

“The existing team that has been running this business for years will continue to be here running this business. We have no intention not being the Upper Valley institution we’ve always been,” Benson said.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.