THE GREAT SURVIVORS
companies which are at least 100 years old and have survived world wars, multiple recessions and, in some cases, the South Sea bubble and the Great Plague. They must be doing something right. They include C. Hoare & Co. (est. 1672), the private bank which is older than the Bank of England, and RJ Balson & Son, a Dorset butcher which dates back to 1515. It is the oldest family business in Britain and currently run by the 26th generation of the same family. There is Wilkin & Sons (1885), the Tiptree jam maker, which has created an Employee Ownership Trust that now owns more than half the shares. And Timpson (1865), the shoe repairer, which practises what it describes as “upside-down management”, where as much authority as possible is given to its store managers, because they are closer to the customers. There is also Barbour, which has had the same CEO for 25 years and the same family chairwoman for more than 50. That continuity has enabled the business to transform itself from a maker of waxed jackets for the country set to an international fashion brand which is, arguably, more successful now than it has ever been.
Possibly as result of their reticence, family businesses are under-reported in the media, under-researched by academia and business schools, and their contribution to the nation’s wealth and health is, therefore, largely undervalued and unrecognised.
Nigel Cope Author
When I was working as a business journalist on a national newspaper, most of my time was spent focusing on larger companies, the big beasts of the corporate jungle. Typically these businesses had a stock market listing. The rationale was that, because listed companies have external shareholders, which could include members of the public, their performance was worthier of media scrutiny than others. Family businesses cropped up relatively rarely. They were not ignored, as such, just overshadowed by the big PLCs who tended to have large PR and investor relations teams behind them. Family firms, it seemed, preferred to keep their heads down, running their companies, employing people, paying their taxes and doing their bit in the local community. A force for good, perhaps, but hiding in plain sight.
When I started to research my book, The Great Survivors , about longstanding family businesses, I was struck by some of the statistics about the sector. There are over five million family businesses in Britain, employing more than 15 million people. Together, their combined annual sales are £2.8 trillion. Those close to the sector will know these figures. But the general public would be surprised by them. Family businesses are the backbone of Britain’s economy – its engine. But you’d be forgiven for missing this. I set about challenging various narratives about family businesses, for example, that they are a sleepy backwater. I was particularly interested in the values and principles which inform the decision making of family firms. In the main, these are companies run by people who care about the long term and whose definition of success may be slightly broader than simply making money. Given sections of the public have probably grown weary of certain aspects of corporate behaviour, family companies offer an interesting alternative. Could they provide a new way forward for business in this country? The approach I’ve taken in The Great Survivors is to look at a dozen of Britain’s oldest family businesses and examine the reasons for their longstanding success. These are
So, what are the common denominators that have enabled these family firms to last 100, 200 or 300 years? Think long term. This is the most notable common feature in the way these historic businesses are run. They think ahead in decades – often intergenerationally. Nigel Lock Macdonald, of the hat company Lock & Co. (350 years old this year), describes his priorities quite simply:
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