Enterprise UK Blog

This weekend I went back to where I grew up to join the family business in celebrating their latest achievement. My parents and brother run a garden centre and this weekend they opened their new retail shop, an impressive 1200 square metres of barn-style building complete with underfloor heating and impressive ranges of giftware, clothing and garden furniture.

My Dad took the business over from his parents 26 years ago and it was heartening to see many customers at the opening who have been patronising the business for years. The staff were on a real high and you could see how proud they were to be part of an independent family business, one that employs 70 people from the local area. I can’t believe that a larger corporation would ever be able to get that kind of engagement from their employees. All weekend my parents had nothing but compliments thrown at them and I felt very proud.

Now time for a dose of reality. My parents and brother have been working very hard to make this latest development happen. They’ve worked long hours and it’s been hard to stick to their ambitious vision and make it happen. The site build had problems and shutting part of the site for 6 months has caused all kinds of issues. Some customers even thought they were shutting down when they saw the old shop being demolished. Added to this is the fact that my parents live in a house next to the business – there is no getting away from it! Even round the dinner table the conversation inevitably turns to the business.

So, would they change things for a second? No! Would they be happy working for someone else? Absolutely not! Do they earn a good living and have a pretty flexible lifestyle? Yes!

With the build out of the way hopefully things this year will be a little easier and they’ll be able to take more time off. First though they have their fingers crossed for better weather, which they are relying on for a busy Spring season. I for one am crossing my fingers with them.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 2:58 pm and is filed under East of England, Entrepreneurship, Inspired by parents, Passions into profit, retail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.