Family matters

For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack

It’s that time of year when a not-so-young merchant and supplier’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of friendship, loyalty, camaraderie, networking.

What I sometimes refer in my head to as the Going Out-Out Season, begins with the BMF Members Day in mid-September through the various Autumn and Winter events – our BMJ Industry Awards, the NMBS Dinner Dance, the Worshipful Company’s Installation Dinner, the Merchant Awards, the CPA Autumn Lunch, the NBG Conference, and all those others that I can’t recall, mainly because I’m not invited.

It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it, all those pre-do glasses of fizz and post-do G&Ts aren’t going to drink themselves. It’s hard to fit it all in with the day job as well. So hard that sometimes you wonder if it is worth it when the work still piles up back at the ranch.

Then I remember that yes, it is very definitely worth it. This industry is one of the most sociable I’ve ever worked in, but it’s not just about the fun. It’s at those events that real, solid business relationships are forged. It’s at those events that real solid business friendships are forged. And it’s at those events that real, solid proper friendships are formed.

I was once again vividly reminded of this last week. Once a year, a gang of people who all met through this industry get together. We eat, we drink, we laugh – both at and with each other, and remember just why we stayed in this industry so long.

Few of us are in the same positions or companies we were in when we first met. Each time we are together there’s another one who has hung up their industry boots, so to speak, and taken the retirement shilling. Yet we still make the effort to get out there and catch up. It’s not just about the beer, it really isn’t.

At the Institute of Builders Merchants Conference last week, we were talking about the number of people who, when asked, will say that they fell into this industry, without really ever intending to stay. I’m as guilty of this as the next person. I thought I’d stay on BMJ for a few years, before heading off to something more glamourous. Yet somehow, it’s 31 years later, and something about this sector got to me, and I stayed. For the most part, it’s not the something, but the someone, the several someones, (and you all know who many of them are) who got under my skin, and here I still am.

The BMF’s Sector Awareness Programme is aiming to switch that up, so that instead, the next generation of industry Chiefs and Indians when asked, won’t say they fell into the industry, instead they took a step that they chose, to join a vibrant, diverse sector with a huge range of career options.

The building materials sector is excellent at bringing together like-minded people in a sprit of conviviality, but it’s also brilliant at fostering that sense of support, of, yes, I’m going to use the F word, family.

Whether that’s because the sector has been built up on the back of family owned, family run businesses or we’re just lucky enough to have found our tribe here I don’t know. But when I think of the support that, over the years, we’ve all either given or received – often both – it makes me very glad I did stumble into it.

#merchanttribe #merchantfamily