Creating A Legacy

It’s amazing what can happen when powerhouses align. Such is the case for Greg Flores and Harald Heimbach, who met at a castle in Tuscany while vacationing with their wives in 2005. The couples became fast friends, and spent the next several years vacationing together, but it wasn’t until 2012 that Flores and Heimbach began discussing a possible business partnership.

 
The Stuttgart, Germany-based Heimbach, currently training for a marathon while pursuing a PhD in economics, is the managing director of Pro Heraldica, a European company entrusted with the largest private genealogy and heraldry library in the world. With over 50 employees and an auxiliary group of 300 researchers, Pro Heraldica has been researching family histories as well as tracing and creating coats of arms for decades. Noted clients include three former German presidents, as well as Porsche, Bosch, and Daimler.

 
Enter Flores, an entrepreneur and business development executive with over 25 years of experience in a range of industries. Flores is best known for catapulting the revolution of the recording industry as co-founder of MP3.com. Also a philanthropist, Flores and his wife Heather Finlay have been actively involved with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation for over 15 years. In 2009, they co-chaired the Promise Ball Gala that raised over $700,000 for diabetes research.

 
With Flores now CEO of Fine Legacy, the United States division of Pro Heraldica, the company is offering its unparalleled work to American families. “There is no one else in the world that can deliver the high level of service, accuracy of results, and artistic quality of our end products,” says Flores.

 
Projects take on the highest level of timeliness and professionalism, delivering results beyond any other group of genealogy and heraldry experts worldwide. The process begins when individuals become curious about their family history. From there, each family chooses the depth and breadth of work from family trees, pedigree charts, family chronicles, coats of arm, and fine arts.

 
Fine Legacy provides the professional research required to truly delve into and capture all of the necessary elements that create a family history. While ancestry Web sites are on the rise, Flores and Heimbach point out that less than five percent of all documents needed to do family research are digitized, so such sites therefore only scratch the surface. With Fine Legacy, research is conducted by a team of family history detectives located throughout Europe and North America, who can find and interpret the actual historical documents onsite where the families lived and worked. “Each family research project is unique and has to be accurately documented and validated before it can be incorporated into a family history,” explains Flores.

 
With a “pay for success” model, there is little risk for families wanting to embark upon the Fine Legacy journey. After an initial honorarium, clients only pay as ancestors and results are discovered.

 
Upon completion of a family history project, families receive a two-volume leather-bound family chronicle with volume 1 detailing the family history as if it where a novel written exclusively for the family, along with volume 2, which contains copies, translations, and transcriptions of all of the family’s historical documents — a true fine legacy to be passed down to future generations. (844.692.7378, www.finelegacy.com)   Mia S. Park

Photo by Bob Stefanko