Britain’s got its fair share of exclusive clubs, but there’s one in
particular that unquestionably takes the cake. It’s perhaps the hardest
to get into, has a miniscule number of members, and being a member is a
giant source of pride.
It’s the Tercentenarian Club, and
if you know your prefixes then we’ll bet you know what it means already:
the Three-Hundred-Year-Old Club. Not for people, of course, but for
businesses. There are only a dozen or so members of the club, and though
they have all been around for a long time, that’s about all they have
in common.
There is a wine merchant, a hat maker, a
butcher, a ribbon manufacturer, a builder, a candlestick seller, and a
wide array of other businesses that have managed to stay relevant and
successful through the years. Together they have been through nearly
fifty recessions, the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, the fall of
Napoleon, the rise of automobiles, the domination of the Internet, and
several banking and stock market crashes.
Most have advice
to businesspeople today, but can’t necessarily put a pin on why they’ve
managed to survive so long. One other requirement for membership: the
same family that started them must still own the business.
“If
I knew how we’d survived, we’d bottle it and sell it,” said one
businessman, Alan Hughes. Hughes owns the Whitechapel Bell Foundry,
which was founded in 1570 and is now 443 years old.
But
getting through three hundred plus years isn’t necessarily insurance for
the future. The economy is still struggling and some of the club’s
businesses have seen a steady decline over the years.
“Reputation
and quality,” says Hughes, pointing out two of the things that have
gotten Whitechapel through its many years. “You have to leave really
satisfied customers. Of course, you always need to cut costs, but you
just can’t take short cuts in the same way other businesses might, the
quality of your products is everything.” Whitechapel has a strong
customer service policy: their bells are supposed to last for several
hundred years, so if it gets out of tune or a crack develops, the
great-grandchild of the original purchaser can still file a formal
complaint. Talk about customer service!
Because businesses
are passed down through the family, “[t]here is enormous pressure on
the children at these companies,” says Lynn Durtnell, who married into
her husband John’s family business. “They don’t want to be the
generation that mucks it up.”
No comments:
Post a Comment