Mind Your Own (Family) Business

"Family business". A term loathed by those who are bound by it and envied by those who aren't in it.

My dad set up shop in 1981, and named it after me. He used all the contacts he got at his former workplace, an English textile company, after the company decided to wind up. After a lot of hard work, my dad managed to get several steady clients. The business was very successful - it was a niche market with few players and relatively good yields. It was the textile business - my dad would purchase the "raw materials" needed to make a good suit/tuxedo or shirt, sell it to tailors, and voila - a B2B arrangement was born.

With the advent of the PC in the 90s, my dad bought a computer, at the insistence of my then teenager elder brother. The deal was this - if my dad bought him a PC for his own use (which was bloody expensive those days for a 286 Mhz model), the PC would give economies of scale by also being useful for the computerisation of the the business! Great work, thought my brother. The PC was bought, and then the business changed.

From www.freedomministries.com

My dad's operations became more automated, and more professional, so to speak. Invoices were typed by my brother on the "Sherry" computer (Wordstar! Wordperfect!), and printed on a dot matrix printer. So the administrative work was largely handled by my brother, while my father remained blissfully IT unsavvy.

Then my brother had to go to NS and University... and slowly the mantle was passed to me. I did all the invoicing for a good number of years, mainly in my NS and Uni days. I resented it and really did not fancy working for the family business - I especially did not buy the idea that I should rightfully be doing the work because the company was named after me. Like I asked for it. I was more interested in my free time and academic pursuits. In retrospect, I could've managed it fine. But the sudden nature of the work (there was no fixed time - it was all ad-hoc) gave me much grief. Further, the boss was my father. So the conflicts that arose often blurred the lines and gave everyone at home much to grieve about as well.

When I graduated and got a full-time job, I told my dad that this was it - that I was resigning from the family business. Of course, it did not go down too well, but it was a reality everyone had to face up to, as I was really up to my neck with my own work. So my younger sister stepped into the role, reluctantly, and did all the work (as she studied at NIE) right up to Dad's passing.

~~~

The company's breath and soul was my dad. After he left, the company was breathless and struggled. There were accounts to settle, and transactions in transition, and stocks to clear. I remember the week after the funeral, I had to make a few urgent deliveries to some customers - I had to go down to the warehouse, hunt down what the clients asked, transport them to their swanky offices in the CBD area, and issue invoices. After the tiring three days, I sat down and cried for a good 15 minutes. I just couldn't believe that a 62-year old man had subjected himself to such physically strenuous work, plus dealing with a drafting invoices and accounts for each of the 15 or so clients he served, for the last few years.

I realise now that he would have never rested, if not for the perpetual rest he is now in. In fact, he had made some deliveries on the morning he passed away.

As the days went by, there was more and more work that we were unearthing. Banks loans, outstanding amounts, uncleared stocks and a whole lack of inertia to work on these things. We've been acting on these things the last two days (mostly my brother and sister, as I was occupied with work). Ironically, the thing we loathed to do all these years is something that has been the core of our conversations for the past 3 months. Wallahu a'lam.

Slowly, we're trying to give the family business a closure it deserves. Many criticised us for not wanting to take over the running of the business - they said it was what fed me and my siblings all these years.

The family business did not feed us. Allah is sufficient for everything. The business was a means through which we were fed. Now the means has changed. We have our own careers and that is the way things were meant to play out.

The other truth is that the nature of the industry is such that many businesses do not require agents to do their work for them. My dad provided several niche products, and combined with a winning personality, he was able to get a fair amount of custom. I don't believe any of us children would be able to match up to his flair for handling clients and being their "friend".

I hope that in the next few weeks, we would be able to settle all the outstanding financial and legal issues, and in this, dad would be happy that at least we finished what he started, in a good way, Insha Allah.