[HN Gopher] Japan's business owners can't find successors - one ... ___________________________________________________________________ Japan's business owners can't find successors - one man is giving his away Author : krn Score : 37 points Date : 2023-01-03 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com) | Barrin92 wrote: | Here in Germany I heard this a lot too as our economy is highly | reliant on small family business and there's a lot of succession | questions coming up as a huge chunk of the workforce ages into | retirement. | | Despite lots of political kerfuffle a few years ago immigration | has been a huge boon. I can't tell you how often I've personally | heard how people were ready to close down long existing family | businesses because they had nobody to take over until they got | immigrants into vocational programs who now look like they may | continue the business in the future. | | It's not just numbers either. A lot of domestic younger people | were so set on going to uni and going to work for large firms | that they just didn't want to take over their parents | agricultural, trades or crafts business. In particular talking to | Syrians this always stood out to me. A lot of them just seemed | thankful for the stability and security that comes from our | _Mittelstand_ that we tend to take for granted. | rr888 wrote: | Interesting that you mention Syrians. I know Nassim Taleb talks | a lot about people from the Levant really prize running your | own business. People who work in a regular office job get | little respect even if they earn more money. Skin in the game. | thriftwy wrote: | If businesses close down, eventually the remaining ones become | profitable enough that new people (genuine middle class with | ambitions) flock in. | andix wrote: | Im working in IT (kind of obvious on HN) and I'm playing with | the thought of buying some kind of business from someone who | is retiring. Something completely different (like plumbing or | electrician), where my knowledge is close to zero. It would | be quite a risk, but in IT we are used to learning a lot of | new things quickly. And I would need to have employees who | are experts in that field anyway. | | A lot of those professions became way more complicated in the | last years (smart homes, computerized appliances, ...), and | many people who stepped up their career from being craftsmen | have trouble running those businesses nowadays. | mshake2 wrote: | Isn't this the natural progression of a shrinking population? If | you don't want this to happen, have lots of children. | jakzurr wrote: | Interesting article. Of course, the business comes with half a | million dollars debt, as well. So he's sort of selling it for | about $500,000. | | I didn't see details, but I would guess the new owner probably is | required to wait a certain period (of years?) before liquidating | the business? | debacle wrote: | A friend of mine (not in Japan) took over the family business. | Previous to this, he was a "second chef" (is that a thing?) at a | relatively well known restaurant regionally. | | He took a ~25% paycut, he works harder and longer than he did | before (as a chef, mind you, regularly known for 100+ hour | weeks), spends close to half of that time driving, and often | sleeps in the office. He went from probably being a few years | away from running his own three star restaurant to running an | unsalable, shrinking business, owns 400k worth of similarly | unsalable equipment, in a slowly dwindling industry (dry | cleaning). | | His marriage has fallen apart (did I mention he moved 3 hours | away from his wife + children to run the business), his mental | health seems atrocious, and the only thing the future seems to | hold for him is a piece of a slowly shrinking pie. | | His father built a burgeoning postwar business that gave his | family a good life, but markets change, and businesses that once | made sense no longer do. | Waterluvian wrote: | A second chef is probably a sous-chef. A fairly typical role, | they're basically the Will Riker of the kitchen. | | FWIW: "...running his own three star restaurant..." often has | just as fraught a story attached to it. | ghaff wrote: | Dry cleaning business? Shudder. | | I spent some time over the holidays clearing out stuff and, | even though I don't still own a lot of suits and jackets these | days, I still have a lot of "business casual" I bought because | I would "always use it some point." I'll probably donate a lot | of it even the stuff that's never been opened. | | This isn't true everywhere of course but a long time ago I | worked at a company that had dry cleaning collection of | premises. This was a computer company. That would be laughable | today. | yamtaddle wrote: | A bunch of the wool stuff that's so trendy among HN-reader | sorts the last few years is supposed to be dry-clean only. | Though I think some folks just rarely wash it, and hand-wash | in a sink or something on the rare occasions that they do. | yial wrote: | I don't know... I feel like slightly pivoting - tablecloth | rental, rag rental, napkin rental to restaurants / labs / etc | might still be profitable. Know of two businesses that use | those services. (One a restaurant, one a lab ). | Kaibeezy wrote: | https://archive.ph/q4SyZ | | Question: Could this be a path to a visa for someone who wants to | immigrate? | RestlessMind wrote: | Eventually, developed and aging countries like Japan or South | Korea have to import immigrants or simply die away gradually. | Either way, their cultures are going to cease the way they are | today. | onepointsixC wrote: | So what happens when the whole world becomes developed? | Immigration as a solution to population decline seems like a | temporary fix. | dropit_sphere wrote: | https://twitter.com/extradeadjcb/status/1609972258725892097 | MonkeyMalarky wrote: | Scrolling down a bit, I see this reply: | | >If say, blue deep state dysfunction keeps getting worse, | and it ends up couped by reds who purge & reform the | federal government along the lines of less handouts, more | guns, and set up the system so that political power of | unproductive classes is minimized, woke may just die out. | | Wow. | MrBuddyCasino wrote: | How is ,,replacing the native population with immigrants" | materially different from ,,dying away gradually"? | sharkjacobs wrote: | It's the difference between Miami, a city whose population | is more than fifty percent immigrants, and Detroit, a city | whose population has declined more than fifty percent. | jdhn wrote: | To argue that Detroits issues are because of the lack of | immigrants is a joke. | renewiltord wrote: | In the former universe, you lose genetic continuity but may | retain cultural continuity. Up to you whether that matters. | To the Japanese, who adopt adults into the family to | preserve the family business notion, one can speculate that | they care about the cultural continuity more than the | genetic continuity, but it's hard to tell. | | Most online descriptions of Japanese people appear as | caricatures, but from the few who I know who live in Japan, | they are like any other human group: if some form of | continuity or success is the only form accessible they will | accept it. | thriftwy wrote: | Most countries who import a lot of labor tend to | specialize on a narrow profile of immigrants (Turks in | Germany, Latinos in the US, Central Asians in Russia), | hence they are not getting cultural continuity. The | imported labor clings together and forms a distinct | culture. | | In this regard it would make sense to eat it up and | accept population decline. Japan of 50 million Japanese | is still Japan. Japan of 40 million Japanese and 40 | million Filipino is no longer Japan. May still be | passable country, though. | Armisael16 wrote: | Turks make up less than 15% of immigrants in Germany. | | The US currently gets more Asian immigrants than Latinos. | CobaltFire wrote: | My FiL shut down his multigenerational business in Japan for | exactly this reason. | | I was not in a position to take it over and no-one else in the | family wanted it. It was a very successful shop with a built in | client base and hugely recognizable name in that community. | | Culturally the lack of children means there are fewer chances for | someone to want to take over a family business, so the likelihood | of someone taking it over drops every generation. | abledon wrote: | Elon's twitter feed is 5% about this issue lol | nequo wrote: | He does have nine[1] living children though. | | [1] https://archive.ph/20220707002423/https://www.thetimes.co | .uk... | BitwiseFool wrote: | Japan has a very service oriented business culture and from | what I can tell a lot of the loyalty is based on knowing the | owner and their family. Is it possible so many Japanese are | unwilling to take over a business because they predict that the | longtime customers will feel alienated and underwhelmed by the | relationship with the new owner? In other words, do potential | buyers purposefully avoid taking over business because they | know they cannot live up to expectations in the same way a | family member can? | hotpotamus wrote: | They've actually got a trick for this. | | > "In Japan, 98% of adoptions are actually adult men, aged | between 20-30 years old -- not children." | | > "In Japan, there is a several-hundred-year-old tradition in | which businesses adopt their executives so companies or | institutions are "family-run" groups. In other words, bosses | adopt their employees." | | https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/japanese- | adoption-r... | CobaltFire wrote: | This is accurate; no one outside the family would have been | able to use the client base. | luckylion wrote: | Are the children shying away from it because whatever business | it is just isn't something they like (i.e. vegans not wanting | to take over a butcher's shop), are they finding better offers | outside of the family business (i.e. the businesses aren't | making money), do they just not need to work because the | business have made the family wealth (which is what I see a lot | in Germany), or is it something else entirely? | jakzurr wrote: | My impression is, most of them want better pay. (And probably | better hours, as some of these business owners wear many | hats, and work very long days.) | Ekaros wrote: | And if they are in the Japanese career system, likely more | stability and less uncertainty. Owning even a self- | sustaining small business isn't always that great style of | living. | CobaltFire wrote: | I'm this case no one had the interest in it. | | The family is very well off by Japanese standards but they | all work. | mistrial9 wrote: | typical business press doublespeak -- "can't means won't". | thriftwy wrote: | In post-soviet countries and especially Russia, there are | virtually no businesses older than 30 years (communism means no | business to speak of), and most of them are quite new still, | since there were a few different epochs already and every one had | its own mass extinction event at the end. | | The upside is that almost everything is run by people who are not | old, hence not stuck in the past. Also, gravitate towards hiring | instead of famity ties, and towards horizontal growth instead of | forever keeping a single store or eatery. | andix wrote: | The same thing is happening all over Western Europe too. There | are increasingly fewer young people and a lot of them are first | or second generation immigrants, that are lacking the needed | skills/knowledge to run a business. | bsder wrote: | From article: | | > But their own children have now mostly moved to cities in | search of higher-paying, less onerous work. | | Perhaps they have plenty of skills, look at the rewards, and | "Nope" right out. | | Running a small business is _ferociously_ hard, and you are | almost always better off taking a nice, cushy, well-paying | salary somewhere if you have the option--in spite of the | general HN zeitgeist, advice, and bias towards startups. | [deleted] | andix wrote: | But with most of those cushy desk jobs it's really hard to | make a living nowadays. 95% will probably never be able to | buy a house, and also owning a car got too expensive for many | of them (although that may be a thing). As a small business | owner you can easily make two or three times what a white | collar worker with a master degree makes. | ccity88 wrote: | In my experience, it's the exact opposite. It's the first and | second generation immigrants who tend to have more kids and who | tend to bring in fresh labour pools, and therefore more | business making and running opportunities. This is a | longstanding problem for any country that has an aging | population, but the going solution (at least in Europe) has | been to import labour by turning the needle on immigration. | Japan hasn't done this, and they're notoriously anti- | immigration. Think about the businesses that get created - | local cultural food shops, cultural clothing shops, even in | some cases entire submarkets to service immigrant communities. | As time goes on, like or not, but countries that failed to | adapt to the global era will fall behind to those willing to | take a chance on immigration. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | That's interesting that that's a quality of immigrants. I feel | like that's actually just everyone who doesn't own a business. | andix wrote: | A lot of the immigrants don't speak the language at all (and | no other European language), or not very well, which is kind | of a show stopper. | Taniwha wrote: | You have to remember that immigrants tend to be self-selected | - they're the people with the get up and go to leave their | lives and travel to another country and make another new life | - of course there are more entrepreneurs in immigrant | communities | dragonwriter wrote: | > You have to remember that immigrants tend to be self- | selected - they're the people with the get up and go to | leave their lives and travel to another country and make | another new life - of course there are more entrepreneurs | in immigrant communities | | On top og self-selection, they are also selected by the | immigration system, which is... not a neutral force. | neonate wrote: | https://archive.ph/5gIu2 | rr888 wrote: | I heard in the West its similar, lots of baby boomers want to | retire with small businesses that no one wants to take over. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-03 23:00 UTC)