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.”

123   |  Single page