My great grandfather, Harry Resnick, started Resnick's Hardware in 1912. My grandfather grew up working in the store and ran it til he was 93 with my father, now 73, managing it for the past 40 years. The store has been an integral and valued business within our community over the past 100 + years. Everyone in town knows Resnick's. The role it played in my own immediate and extended family was defining. It's what was talked about at family gatherings. My grandfather would share stories of what it was like growing up in the store as a kid or my dad and uncles would talk about some crazy thing a customer did that week. It defined myself and my siblings growing up in that environment. Whether it was working weekends to make extra cash or just a go getter-hustle work ethic that was modeled.
It's been years since I've worked there and now with some distance, I can take a more unique outside perspective. It's this perspective that's led me to want to explore and tell my own family's story, but is that story unique?
How have family businesses affected our society and our communities and more acutely how do family businesses affect individual families. What are their struggles and how have those morphed over their lifetimes? Most businesses that last over multiple generations have survived because they've learned how to adapt. If that's the case, why have they been slowly disappearing? Is it globalization, is it market behavior, or is it just that there's noone left to continue the tradition.
