Running my family operated business has always been my goal. I grew up between pianos, guitars, and tons of music books sitting on the many shelves of our shop in the city’s suburb. My granddad was a piano tuner. He had been a piano player on a big cruise ship during the fifties and later specialized in piano maintenance, a stable source of income for someone who had a wife and three kids.
I opened up a small outlet, then, investing all my savings, decided that the time was right to try and open my very own piano shop. In 1960, you could still dream big, and it’s exactly what I did. During the years, my vision became a reality, which eventually grew to the point that now, after sixty years, my family is still keeping my dream alive.
Today, we own three music shops, and the business is still flourishing. We want people to feel welcome when they come into the shop so playing updated music as well as muzak, gives us a range. Almost every key element of the company belongs to the family. I think that, in a way, this is why we have made it through the periodical crises of the sector. In this article, I’ll share what has inspired us to create the perfect soil to grow a sustainable and healthy business.
Company Values
When people are hired by a company, it is important to adhere to their mission and values. Sometimes, it’s easier said than done. It’s not about agreeing or not on simple core values and policies, such as being kind to customers or keeping up good teamwork. I’m sure everybody understands that. The point is that we only know part of the story, as we have just “entered” the company and do not really know the reason behind the status quo or decisions being made. On the contrary, isn’t it true that after working for the same company for a long time, we often feel as if it’s our own? This is because we have worked together to achieve the same goal by adhering to the company’s core values. In case, you want to learn more about the core values you may go through this guide for it.
In a family operated business, it’s easy to share company values. It comes from experience, from the constant sharing of ideas, from living together and struggling every single day to improve and to make the business grow. I’ve learned how to treat customers just by watching my mother and how to deal with providers and accountancy work out of my dad’s example. It wasn’t always a picnic; we had our ups and downs.
For example, when decisions were to be made together with my uncles (who managed the other shops), it’s wasn’t always easy to agree on everything. But, at the end of the day, we were family; there was still this strong bond that kept us together, no matter what. This is probably the key: if greed and interest take over, then a family business becomes just like any other business. In a way, even worse, because we don’t get to choose our associates, and it may be very complicated (and expensive) to fire or liquidate them.
From Father to Son: How To Keep Up to Date with the Market
At one point, I studied to become a violin maker: I wanted to keep the family tradition alive in my own way and become a skilled craftsman, on top of being a business owner. My sister, instead, preferred to get a degree in marketing. Today, I reckon that we are the perfect team to take our business to the next level.
New technologies bring up new challenges, that’s why we’ve decided to create an online shop, which sells our brand all over the country. We are trying to improve our shop by integrating other IT solutions like e-commerce cloud data management. Once our business gains popularity, we don’t want our customers to suffer due to increased traffic on the website. We could probably look for services like SAP commerce, but before going forward, we will do thorough research on the features and benefits of SAP Commerce and make a mutual decision. As for my part in this business, I took advantage of my skills, and designed and developed a range of instrument accessories. And we both share the responsibilities of accounts and orders.
Besides these, we are also trying to sort out our finances. . We know that as our family business grows, we would have to separate our personal finances from our business finances and keep an eye on both to avoid potential fraud. That is why we seem to be looking for the best banks for small business in florida and nearby locations. We no more want to use our personal bank account for dealing with business. So, we are preparing ourselves ahead of time!
That said, honestly, there are not many problems with having a family business. Everything works smoothly if the business operations are taken care of properly. However, I think that there is one major downside of a family business –on special occasions such as Christmas or celebrations, when we all sit around a table, sooner or later we end up talking about the shops. So, our gatherings end up being somewhere in between an intimate party and a management board meeting!
One last thing. My little brother began helping out in the shop, but soon we realized that this was not the life he had dreamed of. He wanted to become a scriptwriter for radio and TV, and we had to let him go and pursue his dreams. When that happened, the businessman in me had to take a step back. Not an easy one, for sure. But, despite anything else, I wanted him to be happy. And that’s exactly what a (loving) family is about.