When you operate a business, you need every competitive advantage you can find. Quality products, good service, wordof-mouth – all play a part in ensuring sustained success. For firms, especially family firms, history can be a distinctive source of competitive advantage, one that is hard for competitors to imitate, and one that can be manipulated. The history of the family business can be more than a straightforward representation of reality, rather it can be crafted and carefully scripted. Family firms build an identity by creating a history suitable for both present and future, for driving or shaping organisational goals. Scripted histories have an important and enduring role in positively influencing external audiences, particularly customers. They can link entrepreneurial initiatives undertaken across generations and businesses, and can create competitive advantages even in a newly-founded business. Generational entrepreneurs can write stories to celebrate and honour the collective achievement of the whole family. Family life stories, such as those told in autobiographies, provide unusually vivid descriptions, often going beyond the business. Stories across generations can legitimise new ventures and build customer trust. A TALE OF SWEET SUCCESS Our focus was on Sweet Mandarin, a Chinese restaurant established by members of a family with a threegeneration entrepreneurial history. You may well have heard of Sweet Mandarin. The skills of founders Lisa and Helen have been recognised by then-UK Prime Minister David Cameron, the Queen, the President of China, and expert chefs like Ken Hom and Gordon Ramsay. Sweet Mandarin was established in 2004, yet it reflects the culmination of a family’s successful history of entrepreneurship, and is well presented as a business with a rich family history. Sweet Mandarin was set up and managed by the third generation, but the family have strategically scripted the previous two generations’ history into their own, emphasising their important role in the business, even if they are not physically present. The family’s life stories began in 1950, when Lily left Hong Kong for the UK as a housemaid. She later opened a restaurant and several take-aways, and her daughter, Mabel, started her own take-away with her husband in the same town. Sweet Mandarin was started by Mabel's daughters, Lisa and Helen. Sweet Mandarin’s competitive advantage is not built purely on the use of their family history, but our studies show how it contributed to increasing the value of the good food and service in the eyes of customers, and it was instrumental in creating customer loyalty in a crowded, dynamic market. When Sweet Mandarin was named Best Local Chinese Restaurant on Gordon Ramsay’s The F-Word TV show in 2009, judge Jean Baptiste, said “I think this is really what will bring this place altogether, the fact it is a family-run business, the fact we can see the passion behind and all the drive, to provide such a good experience for the customers.” It is clear the entrepreneurial family history played a key role in the decision. A FAMILY TALE Sweet Mandarin’s family history has been narrated and disseminated through various media – books, TV shows, the news, even a play. We found that Sweet Mandarin’s publications are highly strategic. Lisa and Helen experienced initial difficulties after founding the restaurant, before Helen published Sweet Mandarin: The Courageous True Story of Three Generations of ChineseWomen and Their Journey fromEast toWest – a Times bestseller. It is a combination of Helen’s narrated historical accounts of her grandmother and mother, and a short autobiography of her own generation. Shortly after publication, the business started to gain a reputation. Subsequent cookbook publications include narrations of their life stories. Publishing these books help customers understand and appreciate the business in different ways. Helen and Lisa’s stories always connect family life 18 |
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTI5NzM=