National Family Business Day falls on the third Thursday in September every year, which happens to be today.
It’s a day that was first created in the United Kingdom by Family Business United to celebrate the significant contribution family firms were making to the local economy, and has since grown to be celebrated all across the world.
SmartCompany puts the spotlight on six small businesses that were born and bred right here in Australian backyards — sometimes quite literally.
“My grandad was in the room when GJ Coles came back from America and said ‘we’re going after the food,’” Tony Ingpen, the owner of Mt Evelyn Supermarket says.
That ‘room’ wasn’t a boardroom with old men wearing suits, it was a classroom full of teenagers. GJ was just a kid with a dream: his last name was not yet known to Australians as the place to go for all of their grocery needs.
Ingpen acknowledges Coles is indeed a conglomerate and, therefore, a big competitor to his own supermarket, but like his grandfather—who went to school with The Mr Coles himself, Ingpen doesn’t harbour any negative feelings towards the Coles Group.
Perhaps this came because Ingpen didn’t think he would take over the family business. He had always helped mum and dad out when he could, but he also pursued a career of his own.
“In ’99 dad said to me, ‘I either need you in the business or out, which way do you want to go?’” Ingpen says.
At that point, Ingpen had been a tennis coach for about 15 years, and had already been considering hanging up the rackets to do something else. So he said ‘yep, sub me in, Coach’, to his dad, and that was that.
For Ingpen’s two kids, it’ll work the same. If they want to take over the business they currently work in alongside their education, Ingpen won’t stop them. But he encourages them to go off and explore the world that lies outside of the family business first.
Mount Evelyn supermarket is an IGA franchise that Inpeng took over from his father, who had inherited it from his Dad.
Established by a father-and-son duo in 2018 this Gold Coast distillery has a story that goes well beyond the past eight years.
That’s because of David Goulding, also known as Granddad Jack, who lived a wonderful life to the age of 93.
Now, thanks to David Goulding’s grandson, David Ridden, and his great grandson, Luke Ridden, the story of Granddad Jack lives on around the world.
The small brewery that was once on the back streets and started with the duo’s respective partners helping out on weekends, now has 18 staff across two locations and is exporting its whiskey to 10 countries all around the globe — with an 11th already scheduled for October, David Ridden explains.
“We are so lucky to be working with our family and now being able to tell the story of my grandfather’s life all over the world,” he says.
“It’s not easy, but it’s worth all the hard work.”
Having your period has been made to feel like some big secret all menstruating individuals need to be ashamed about, when it’s a completely natural thing that people who menstruate have no control over — and all experience in vastly different ways.
This concept is a big reason why sisters Zoe Fehlberg and Mika Koelm went into business together, creating a femtech brand that would “give menstruators the confidence to have periods on their terms”, however that may look.
Some people have to hike while on their periods, some have to stay home in their bed, some people are off travelling the world while they menstruate without a second thought, and some are “working long hours at work in a high-demand job [and] chasing after the kids!”.
Menstruation cycles aside, the concept of sibling rivalry is a well known phenomenon for anyone who isn’t an only child. And while Zoe and Mika both agree they couldn’t have founded this business together ten years ago, they are so happy to be running it together now.
“We really are just ying and yang to one another! We balance each other out,” Fehlberg says.
Inherited businesses from grandads and dads clearly have a big place in Australia, but for Paul Atkins, the third generation to be running Atkins Photo Lab since 1936, it isn’t actually about the men at all.
“The outsiders did the hard stuff,” Atkins jokes, with those outsiders being his wife Kate, his mother, and his grandmother, who married into the family business rather than inheriting it.
“It wouldn’t be a business without them,” Atkins says.
“My grandmother used to colour the images herself, and then she wanted my father to look into coloured printing back when he was a kid and coloured photographs were the best new thing,” he explains.
His mum then made her own stamp on the business after marrying his father, and his wife is too.
After all, Kate is holding down the fort at the HQ in South Australia while Atkins is “enjoying the warm weather in Cairns visiting Mum!”.
What happens when you put two sisters together and throw in a bunch of spicy margaritas?
For Natalie and Charlotte Evans, it wasn’t a recipe for disaster, although it can get “a bit crazy” running a hospitality business with your sibling by your side.
What started as a humble restaurant in Coolangatta, New South Wales, grew to become three restaurants franchises across south-east Queensland, two in the United States, and another company on the side.
Eventually, the sisters decided to bring it all back down to their roots.
The business now operates as a standalone one-stop-shop on a three-acre property in Tallebudgera, Queensland, just a few suburbs over from where the sisters spent their childhood.
Their mum is, and always has been, working in the kitchen alongside them.
“I first had the idea on September 16, 2012,” Claire Lane, founder and CEO of Save Our Supplies says.
She was working in a hospital, and was confused about the mass amount of wastage happening to important medical supplies.
When Lane raised her concerns in the hospital, she was ultimately told to ‘stay in her lane’ and get on with her job as working as a nurse.
Despite the sow being seeded for the idea of Save Our Supplies, it didn’t become the business it is today for quite a while.
There were other things that needed nurturing, such as the literal human that Lane was growing inside of her.
“When I started [the business as it is now] I was living in a granny flat in my parent’s backyard with a two-year-old,” Lane says.
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Sophie Venz is a freelance writer and editor working remotely from wherever she can get an internet connection. You can find her bylines in Forbes, SmartCompany, Mamamia, Punkee and many more.
