By some estimates, 80 to 90 percent of all businesses in the United States are family-owned.
It makes sense. Families are the building blocks of society. They establish the patterns of our lives – how we learn, how we relate to one another, how we take risks.
And in their own way, small businesses form the building blocks of our economy. Many of the best new ideas start in someone’s basement or garage. Sometimes it takes a small business to see a gap between the Wal-Marts, Home Depots and McDonalds of the world and to fill it with just the right combination of product and service.
Throughout the nation’s history, family-owned, small businesses have provided the pathway to economic survival and, for many, assimilation.
As the country expanded and the economy grew, so too did the family-owned businesses that provided the services and filled the niches.
Generation after generation of immigrants came to these shores and found their way through small business. The proprietors of these new family-owned concerns seldom have the luxury of hiding behind a desk in a back room or upstairs. They are on the floor 10, 12, 14 hours a day, day in and day out, talking to customers.
For some it means perfecting the language skills and learning the culture so that the business can grow and prosper. For others it is about serving the needs of neighbors and friends they have grown up with, sometimes deepening relationships that are generations old.
This special edition of Providence Business News celebrates family-owned businesses in all their forms. They are the backbone of our state.
It is impossible, for example, to imagine Federal Hill without the family-owned restaurants and stores that dominate Atwells Avenue. They give the neighborhood its character, and make it a magnet for anyone seeking a good meal, a good buy and a good time with friends.
But behind the scenes of most small family businesses is often a back-breaking level of hard work, and nagging questions about what will happen as time marches on and one generation replaces another.
In this section, we address the issues that confront small businesses – matters of succession, non-family managers and financing. We offer advice on how to avoid the inevitable land mines, as well as first-hand experience detailing how some families dealt with the problems.
We talk to brothers and sisters who have kept the family name alive (even when it is no longer their name), and how they use the name as a tool to pass on a vibrant enterprise.
We examine how husbands and wives function in the crucible of constant togetherness with the added stresses of economics and power relations.
Our articles are packed with useful information, designed to enlighten and inform. Just as importantly, they pulsate with the drama of real people carving out their own version of the American dream with hard work, perseverance, and creativity – relying not on the kindness of strangers, but on the toil and sweat of their cousins, aunts, uncles, sons, daughters, mothers and fathers. Theirs are the stories of America.
