To many, working with family can be very intimidating. The balance between work and home is already difficult to strike. At American Wear, we love being a family owned business and believe it has made us a successful business and a stronger family. There are some unique characteristics of a family business such as the following:
- Exponential Collaboration
In order to grow any business, collaboration is necessary to achieve greatness. The ideas of many are so much better than the ideas of one. When working with family, there is no end to collaboration! Not only are we always collaborating at work, we’re collaborating at home too. Being a part of a family business makes us closer as a family, and so we find ways both inside and outside the office to collaborate.
- Unique Innovation
As a growing business, innovation is important when it comes to growing and expanding a product or service line. With family in the office, there are ideas constantly flowing. At American Wear, when we get together as a family to brainstorm new ideas, a snowball effect happens. One of us comes up with an idea, and the next thing we know, we have the next new thing to make our business even better, just from everyone adding little ideas and comments to the first idea put forth. Each and every one of our family members brings something to the table, whether it’s creativity or expertise in one area or another, and our business benefits greatly from this family innovation.
- Fortified Business Structures
The organization of most businesses exists as a hierarchy. You’ve got the CEO, Shareholders, Managers, Supervisors, and so on, in order to keep the flow of decision-making effective. In a family business, the hierarchy of the business can get a little complicated, especially when older generations pass on the business to younger generations. The upside to this potentially fatal problem is that when you’re working with family, there is usually one common denominator to keep the business going: support the family. So that means, no matter who is technically in charge of whom, the family agrees on moving the business forward and working hard to keep it successful. As a family business, we are united in keeping the business profitable, and working as hard as we can to make it the best business it can be. Therefore, reaping the benefits of a solid business structure without the headache of corporate guidelines.
- Incredible Business Culture
Working with your family can get a little hairy at times–hey, we don’t all get along all the time–but we certainly enjoy a wonderful working environment. Not to mention, we retain more of our employees because we’re a tight-knit group and we treat our non-family employees like they are family. Because of this closeness, the office is more fun. There’s the occasional practical joke played on someone, and we try to go all-out to celebrate everyone’s birthday. In a family-owned business, we care about all of our employees, like they are family.
The atmosphere, collaboration, innovation and culture at American Wear can be directly contributed to the fact that we’re a family-owned company. We treat our employees like family. It’s important to us that you, as a customer feel like you’re a part of the family too.
