All in the family

Family businesses outnumber public companies and earn more than all the companies on the Australian stock exchange put together, but they’re not without their own challenges. Linda Peatling reports.

From the Murdochs to the Packers and thousands of other names in between, family business is big business in Australia. According to a national member-based organisation known as Family Business Australia (FBA), 75 per cent of Australia’s businesses are family owned and controlled, and 50 per cent of them generate sales in the five to 20 million dollar region. They have a combined estimated wealth of $3.6 trillion, contribute to more than 50 per cent of Australia’s gross domestic product and employ half the country’s workforce.

However, family businesses do encounter specific challenges. “Family businesses often face issues that are not experienced by other private or public companies, and that’s what we want to help them overcome,” says Philippa Taylor, chief executive officer of FBA. These issues, she says, can include anything from formalising ownership and employment between family members, to carrying out performance appraisals and even being able to communicate on a professional level. Add to this the very real dilemma of deciding who is going to take over when the founder or most senior member retires, and the potential for family business failure is very real. “Then there’s the underlying problem of how to separate business and personal lives, especially if the family members live and work together,” Philippa says.

We meet three entrepreneurial families, who discuss what it’s really like to share a working and personal life.

Charlotte Devereux and Colyn Devereux-Kay – EGG

Five years ago, when 36-year-old Charlotte Devereux discovered she was pregnant,  she looked forward to the lifestyle changes motherhood would bring. The year before, she had sold her Auckland boutique hotel and was ready to dedicate time to her baby. “I planned to start another business at some stage but I didn’t know what and I wasn’t in any hurry,” she recalls. Likewise, Charlotte’s mother Colyn was looking forward to becoming a grandmother for the first time and had recently handed the management of her own successful toiletry company, Les Floralies, over to her son. “I was still very much involved with the company but I wanted to spend time with Charlotte and the baby,” she says.

What the pair didn’t know was the very thing they thought was going to encourage them to take a step back from the business world was about to propel them into it like never before. “We went looking for maternity wear and there was very little around that had any style about it,” explains Charlotte. “So we searched what was available throughout New Zealand and Australia and found a huge gap in the market.”

Instinctively, both mother and daughter sensed a business opportunity and almost immediately decided to create their own line of modern maternity wear. “They say necessity is the mother of all invention and that definitely applies to us,” says Colyn.

“If I wanted to look fashionable during my pregnancy I imagined most other women would as well, and I knew I could do better than pouch pants that made me look like a dumpy kangaroo,” adds Charlotte, who studied fine arts and apparel in her early twenties. 

 The very next week, Charlotte got out her old drawing board and began sketching ideas while Colyn researched  the maternity-wear market. “There were over 50,000 births per year in New Zealand and around 250,000 in Australia so I knew the numbers were there,” explains Colyn. “I also found women were marrying and having children later, working through most of their pregnancies and generally had more disposable income than previous generations. So there was a very real need for clothes they could wear throughout their pregnancies to work or dinner or just out in public without feeling frumpy.”

By the time Charlotte was five months pregnant, they had employed a pattern maker and seamstress, had a trial range of garments ready and had dubbed their new company EGG (Essentials for Growing Girls). “Mum ran the business side of things and I ran the design end and we trusted each other completely,” says Charlotte. “We put in the same amount of money, and as neither of us ever do things by halves there was no procrastinating – we were both full steam ahead.”

The biggest challenge was how to launch the range without spending thousands of dollars on a shop or advertising. “We decided to try network marketing so I contacted the media to spread the word, and we were lucky enough to have the story snapped up by a national women’s magazine,” says Colyn.The pair also invested a few thousand dollars in advertorials on a national morning television show and were soon on their way to a national network of women selling EGG clothing from their homes. “We were inundated with calls from women wanting to be part of the network but we required them to set up a dedicated space in their homes and only allowed one salesperson per city or area to give them a chance to make a success of it,” says Colyn, who knew what it took to succeed in business, having been the first woman appointed to the Board of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, which she then chaired for four years.

During the next nine months, Charlotte gave birth to her daughter, Jasmin, and EGG turned over $300,000. It was time for a tangible shopfront to grow the brand. “We wanted to keep the momentum going, but I also had a new baby, so we had to find a way to expand without taking up all of our own time,” explains Charlotte. After more research, the pair agreed on launching a franchise system. “We started by offering our top network sellers a franchise store and they jumped at the chance,” says Colyn, who worked out the logistics, legalities and financial nuts and bolts while Charlotte came up with the look and feel for the store fitouts.

Once again, their instincts were spot on, and by the end of its second year, EGG’s turnover had doubled. When it doubled again in its third year, the company ranked seventh in the annual ‘Deloitte Unlimited Fast 50’, an index of the fastest growing companies in New Zealand.

Five years after their first disappointing shopping spree, Charlotte and Colyn have nine stores in New Zealand, six in Australia and two in Asia. Charlotte now has two children and, like Colyn, loves running this very intimate family business. “We love talking about the business even when we’re at home and it often doesn’t feel like work at all because Mum and I have always been close and we enjoy each other,” she says. “I also know that I couldn’t have done this without her, and I suppose she wouldn’t have even thought about it if it wasn’t for me and my growing tummy, so we both know how lucky we are to have each other.”

Growing girls

To learn more about EGG maternity, visit www.eggmaternity.com.au.

 

Words: Linda Peatling. Photography: Fiona Tomlinson. Hair & make-up: Claudia Rodrigues.