325 not out – director reveals secrets to family business’s long innings
Family owned and run businesses play a hugely important role in the UK economy. It is estimated that there are at least three million privately-held family firms in the country with the top 20 alone turning over almost £50bn in 2014.
But hardly any of them have a history stretching back as far as the Sussex-based funeral directors CPJ Field which this year celebrated its 325th anniversary.
Charlie Field is one of five members of the family who still sit on the company’s board and help to manage the 30-plus funeral service businesses its operates across East and West Sussex, Surrey, Kent, Dorset, Buckinghamshire and South West London.
So he was the perfect speaker for the latest in our series of Entrepreneurs’ Evenings that we run in conjunction with Close Brothers Asset Management.
Nik Askaroff, our CEO who co-hosted the evening at Pub du Vin, Brighton, with James Mallison of Close Brothers, said: “We had a terrific turnout to listen to Charlie’s tales and experiences of running a centuries-old family business.
“In a world where so many companies come and go in fairly quick order, it’s a remarkable feat of longevity for one family to hold the reins of a business for 325 years – and to do it so successfully.
“CPJ Field is one of the leading funeral directors in the country and has arranged the funerals of monarchs and national heroes as well as tens of thousands of ordinary folk. Charlie’s talk was both enlightening and uplifting and will have provided all who heard it with some very useful food for thought.”
Pictured (from left): James Mallison (Close Brothers), Charlie Field, Paul Andrews (Family Business Unit), and EMC Director Michael Pay