09/ 20/ 2006
by Rex Hammock, Editor and Publisher
What does it take for a business to survive a century? In this issue of MyBusiness, we went looking for the answer by talking with owners of several companies that have been around 100 years or more. What we discovered didn't surprise us: It takes the same principles for a business to survive a century that it takes for a business to survive a year, five years or 10.
If you think about it, the factors we face today are not that different from the challenges faced a century ago. As the Gulf Coast is still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, in 1906, San Francisco laid in ruins following the earthquake and subsequent fires. Theodore Roosevelt was president, and issues related to the environment, corporate governance and government regulation of industries were front and center on the minds of the American people, lawmakers and business leaders. Exactly one century ago, President Roosevelt made the first international trip by a sitting president: a voyage to Panama to inspect the construction of the Panama Canal--an engineering, political and geopolitical endeavor that would change the world as much as anything we may attempt today.
New technology as revolutionary as today's iPod, or even the Internet, was being introduced into the marketplace 100 years ago. In 1906, the Victrola phonograph was marketed as a consumer product for the first time. Also that year, the first experimental broadcast on AM radio was conducted—although the word “radio” was not coined until the following year.
A century is in many ways an eyeblink, in others an eternity. Looking back, one recognizes how some things never change, and how others will never be the same. Hearing the stories of century-old small businesses that, from all indications, will still be thriving decades from now illustrates a new twist on an old adage: Those who remember and learn from the past may be wise enough to repeat it.
