Ryland took on all our employees except, understandably, me. They rented our existing premises until a new, smaller dealership was built on Tachbrook Park Drive, later tagged ‘Leamington’s Motor Trade Alley’. As they wished to retain the goodwill of the name, they traded as Ryland Soans until in turn selling the business on to Allen Ford who are now the Ford dealers in Leamington. As Ryland wanted the Soans name, our company, with its sole employee, me, had to change its name, so we became CHS Developments Ltd. (CHS being the initials of Grandad, the founder of the business). CHS Developments owned the Sydenham garage, plus a bit of adjacent land, and has gradually acquired some more buildings on the Estate, some of which have been rented out to local companies or to local charities.
The business changed from a garage company to an Industrial property company. I was supposed to retire but somehow I have never quite got round to that, as my children have both established successful careers outside the motor trade and therefore outside the old family business. Recent Government pressures on meeting the Country’s housing needs with the regeneration of surplus brownfield land has seen Soans old site being re-zoned for housing use. This generated a planning application (currently under consideration) jointly with Orbit Properties, to redevelop the whole site for social housing.
Throughout this history of the business the emphasis has been on material items such as land and buildings. Such things do not in themselves make any business successful, far less a family business. The motor trade is primarily a service business, which by definition primarily depends on the people providing that service. This is where a family business often differs from other businesses: – the people who work in it.
The picture (Right) is from 1972 when we opened the new showroom and canopy sales area. A number of those in the photo were still at Sydenham when the business was sold 24 years later. With a family company the owner’s name is “over the door” – there is someone there who has invested their time, their money, often their whole life in building that business. They need it to succeed. There is someone there to be responsible for almost everything that happens in that business, rather than some distant Board of Directors who have simply employed a manager to run things for the benefit of the Shareholders. In a family firm, where the employees are directly involved in the business itself, there tends to be a different relationship to that business – they know the owner has been in it for the long haul and is not likely to be moved on to manage another branch in perhaps six months’ time. There is a greater continuity of employment. A greater understanding of long term relationships develops, both with customers and employees.
Soans had many long serving staff, some with over 50 years’ service, and quite a number who were with us for considerably more than 25 years. Some who had joined dad in the very early days in Leamington stayed right through to their retirement.
Many of our staff were highly competent and in turn drove the growth of the business. Equally we had very many customers who had known us for many years. I cannot stress too highly that it was the staff who made our company a success, not the land & buildings that we worked in.
So there we have it: 120 years of a Family Business – from a shed in a garden mending bikes in Bromley, to a proposed development of some 140 new dwellings in Leamington Spa.
Richard Soans. October 2014
Images from my private collection, edited by Allan Jennings.
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Read the Other Chapters:- The Early Years (1); The Move to Leamington (2);
The Move to Sydenham (3)
Oct 2014 (M McGreevy)
