Have you ever considered sharing the story of how your store was founded? Most businesses tend to have a pretty interesting story behind why they were created, but many fail to see how sharing their origin or founder’s story can attract and retain loyal customers. For example, on a family trip to Berlin a few years ago we heard the story about the iconic Currywurst sausage which is a famous fast-food dish in Germany. The story goes that in 1949, care packages were distributed by British so
soldiers to the people of Germany. One woman received a care package that contained, amongst other things, curry powder and tomato sauce. Not having seen these ingredients before, she mixed them together and served them with a sausage.
Typically, the dish is made from steamed then fried pork sausage, cut into bite-sized pieces and served with fries, mayonnaise, tomato sauce and sprinkled with curry powder. I must admit it didn’t sound that appealing but upon hearing this story, we felt compelled to give them a try. So, we went to the original store that started selling them in 1960.
Unfortunately, the store was not opening for another 30 minutes so we waited. It tasted surprisingly better than it looked and sounded, but we would never have bothered even trying the dish, let alone waiting 30 minutes, if it was not for the story!
This is what a good founder’s story can do… it can attract customers to you. A founder’s story should ideally show the fundamental values of the company, not a timeline of events. It could be about the origins of the company or even the origins of a product.
For example, when the gin distillery Archie Rose were forced to close their bar during Covid-19 lockdowns, they made the immediate decision to switch production from spirits to hand sanitiser to meet market demands.
Within three days they had sourced bottles, reconfigured their production line, created and printed labels, and produced 7500 bottles of hand sanitiser … in just three days.
This story not only demonstrates the values of the company but by default becomes the founding story of the product… how and why it all started.
This story had an instant connection with the public and immediately received local and world-wide attention. Within four months of the story spreading, Archie Rose had doubled its database and its social media platform grew by 30 per cent. They believe that brand awareness was accelerated by at least 12 to 18 months.
Besides attracting customers, I would also suggest they have generated some pretty strong employee engagement and loyalty along the way.
Even the biggest companies in the world all started somewhere. Relatively young companies such as Google, Virgin, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple all have their founders’ stories playing a major role in the brand of the company. Even after Steve Jobs’ death he is still a major part of Apple’s brand.
As companies grow, they tend to stop sharing their founders’ stories believing that the company is bigger than the founder. David Laity is the founder and CEO of Goodwill Wine, a company he started after he lost most of what he owned in the Black Saturday bushfires. As a result of donations, he was able to start again, with a powerful desire to ‘pay it forward’. Consequently. he started a wine business where he gave back 50 per cent of everything he earned to charities.
As the company grew David wanted to stop sharing his story as he felt a tremendous amount of guilt in surviving the bushfires when many didn’t. But he realised that this story was what customers really connected to, so he chose to embrace it.
So, it could be worth exploring if your company has a founder’s story to share. Consider how you could demonstrate the values of the company by sharing how and why the business came to be.