Given that the Amish reject self-advancement, what explains their success as entrepreneurs?
Enterprise
The Amish renounce wealth, spurn technology, and reject self-advancement. And that only begins to explain their success as entrepreneurs
To Sam and Michael Stoltzfus, helping a direct competitor set up his business didn't seem the least bit misguided. The father and son were more than happy to show Jacob Kauffman how to construct gazebos just the way they had been doing at their Irishtown Shop. "We held the nail in one of his hands and the hammer in the other, and showed him one step at a time," says Sam. The tutoring worked well--so well that the start-up quickly eclipsed the Stoltzfuses' business, pulling in customers they might otherwise have claimed as their own.
Another entrepreneur would surely look back on the act with regret, pinning the blame on one uncontrollable urge or another: a sudden burst of altruism, a fleeting infatuation with a new management theory. But here in the Amish settlement of Lancaster County, Pa., the tale is emblematic of the unique brand of entrepreneurship that's transforming this famously unchanging 200-year-old community.
In a sparsely furnished shed at the edge of a cornfield, 53-year-old Sam Stoltzfus sits behind his office desk in a coarse blue work shirt and black trousers with suspenders. "It's just the way we were brought up," he says above the hiss of a gas lamp. "We were all farmers together, and when one of us needed help, we all pitched in."
Such homespun wisdom is not usually the stuff of competitive strategy. But like so much in Amish business, what at first looks like a completely unbusinesslike approach ends up yielding unexpected commercial benefits. Sam Stoltzfus and his competitors buy shingles and lumber together, saving money by getting bulk rates. They swap customer information, passing along orders that they can't fill themselves. In different circles, that kind of behavior has inspired fancy buzzwords like co-opetition. The Amish call it--are you ready for this?-- cooperation. "We get an inside edge because of our close-knit society," says Sam Stoltzfus.
Twenty years ago, 5% of Lancaster's Amish population worked in nonfarm businesses. Today that figure is more like 50%. More than 1,000 Amish-owned businesses--quilt shops, furniture manufacturers, construction crews, hydraulic-equipment factories--now dot Lancaster County's gently swelling plains. Donald B. Kraybill, a sociology professor at Messiah College, in Grantham, Pa., calls the proliferation of Amish enterprises "the most consequential shift for the Amish in the 20th century."
It would hardly seem the ideal environment for fostering entrepreneurship. First of all, it doesn't take an anthropologist to figure out that the values typically associated with company building--innovation, rugged individualism, a lust for BMWs--aren't high on the Amish list of virtues. And then imagine, for a moment, running a business without computers, motor vehicles, or high-power electricity. Rules of the Amish church prohibit entrepreneurs from filing lawsuits, using showy advertising, or growing their businesses much larger than a dozen employees. Never mind that everyone lacks an M.B.A.; no one continues school beyond eighth grade.
Yet precisely because of the elaborate cultural constraints they face, Amish entrepreneurs have become expert at twisting limitations into distinct competitive advantages. Collectively, their businesses boast a failure rate far lower than the national norm. But beyond the enterprises themselves, Amish entrepreneurs offer a quiet lesson about what matters most in running a business.
Michael Stoltzfus wasn't looking for trouble when he decided he needed to buy a telephone for his wheelbarrow shop, Scenic Road Manufacturing. He was just tired of walking half a mile to the nearest phone every time he needed to call a customer or a supplier. But when Michael requested permission from the leaders of his local church district--the arbiters in the constant clashes between competitive pressures and tradition--it unleashed a furious debate. Would a telephone harm the community? Would it intrude on Stoltzfus's relationship with his family? Eventually, his bishop ruled that he could put a telephone in a shed outside. "Provided I couldn't hear it ring from the shop," Michael hastens to add. "The Amish feel if they can hear a phone, it will govern their lives."
Michael betrays no frustration as he describes that compromise from the porch of his simple home, his dark hair spilling out from under his straw hat. Having helped his father start his gazebo business as a teenager, the 27-year-old now lives a short buggy ride away from his father's house and right beside the wheelbarrow-manufacturing shop he has been running for five years. Two-year-old Aaron and three-year-old Samuel, clad in black bonnets, jabber with their father in Pennsylvania Dutch until their mother, Linda, silently whisks them inside. They reemerge wearing new straw hats; the early-morning sun is getting stronger.
Scenic Road Manufacturing rolls out nearly 1,000 high-quality wooden wheelbarrows a year. Most go for $95 a pop--though Michael declines to proffer a gross-revenue figure, insisting that "a lot of Amish would consider that bragging." He exports to Canada and England and estimates that only 2% of his clientele are Amish. Still, the operation hasn't strayed far from the community's agricultural roots: the hum of hydraulic-powered tools mixes with barnyard noises, duly provided by two small goats, a rooster, and a neighbor's herd of cows. "It's just the kind of entrepreneurship there was in the 1880s and 1890s," says his father, Sam, an amateur historian.
Well, there are some concessions to this century, though they are all at least as hard-won as the phone. Consider Sam's forklift: he's allowed to have it, so long as its wheels are metal. Driving it in icy weather, he reports, "is like writing with a feather quill pen." But he's lucky to have one at all. "Anything an Amishman doesn't understand has to be evil," says Michael. "If a piece of machinery does two things simultaneously, he'll say, 'Whoa, now that must be a computer." One way to skirt the rules is to bring in a non-Amish partner to take ownership of all verboten items, Sam adds, but "that's the last resort before you break away from the faith."
Just as any seasoned English--as those who embrace minivans, hi-fi sound, and the Clapper are labeled here--can sense how far to push the government before a regulatory crackdown is triggered, Amish entrepreneurs develop a refined sense of boundaries, even though there are few written rules to mark them. "It's a little like that horse over there," says Michael, gesturing toward a neighbor's yard. "As long as you're inside the fence and don't hit the wires, you won't get shocked. If a guy starts crowding the fence harder, he'll start getting watched harder--and then he'll start getting accused of things he didn't even do."
