Member Article

Reaping it in the Family

If you’ve not heard it at dinner parties yet, get ready to add the new business buzzword ‘FAMPRENEUR’ to your vocabulary for 2015, as by the end of the year there will be thousands of them populating the UK’s blossoming independent business landscape.

But what is a fampreneur? And why should a fampreneur be any more successful than any other entrepreneur, or group of entrepreneurs starting up an enterprise this year? The BusinessesForSale.com report, The Dawn of the Fampreneur, describes one as “A family member who sets up a new business or multiple new businesses with one or more family members who together take on the financial risks in the hope of profit.”

Fampreneurs are not to be confused with new recruits to bloodline businesses where the younger generations take on the established family firm, even though many will inject new ideas and strategies as they do so to drive the business forward.

On the surface one can see the appeal of becoming a fampreneur: trust will be strong from the outset in this business setting and honest communication is more likely than in other forms of association. If you are starting an enterprise with spouses, siblings, parents and/or in-laws you will have already seen them at their worst and doing business with the ‘devils you know’ is a safer bet than with those you don’t.

Even going into business with a roommate from university or business associate you’ve worked with for another employer means you’re more likely to have a restricted experience of that person. This naturally makes for higher risk as far as trust, commitment and compatibility are concerned.

But what’s particularly interesting about our report is that, even though all the above is true, the vast majority of fampreneurs who took part in our survey factored skills and experience for the start-up in question as more valuable than these obvious assets. So, while they are strategically harnessing the clear benefits of going into business with relatives, they are also keen to make the most of specific sector skills, qualifications and experience – up to ten years’ in some cases.

In addition, our results found that each fampreneur had a clear idea of the geographic region they’d like to locate to, the sector they plan to establish themselves in and the budget for set-up costs. These fampreneurs have really done their homework and you can picture them now planning their businesses at dining room tables up and down the country.

However, if you put this all in the context of a long awaited upturn in the economy, a few issues arise. Prior to the slow but certain fiscal lift here in the UK, a lack of fulfilment and sense of security in employment was reported by many sources. The rationale for leaving a job that was not safe with an income that was not impressive in favour of more time with loved ones made absolute sense – a calculated risk, if you will.

As economic recovery and growth are now on the horizon, we can expect that wages and working conditions might improve and that will make third-party paid work a more appealing prospect again.

The flipside of this, of course, is that disposable income will rise countrywide and new businesses that market themselves well, disrupt established practises and simply operate with fresh zeal will have a better chance of success than those starting up in the less buoyant years that preceded this one.

Here at Businessesforsale.com we’re pretty confident that fampreneurs are going to have their year in 2015, thanks to the planning and preparation they’ve undertaken and the economic climes in which they’ll take their businesses to market.

If you’re interested in reading the report you can download it in full here, and if you’re a fampreneur in the making we’d love to hear from you.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by BusinessesForSale .