This article is taken from the book "Royo. A Family, a Company, a Legacy," written to mark our 50th anniversary in business.
Every month, from Invext Corporation, we share a snippet of our history, full of multiple learnings and values that help to understand where we come from, how far we have come, and what we want our next steps to be. We hope that sharing our vision can help or inspire other family businesses to believe that the best way to honour a legacy is to create a new future for it.
Royo Group: The Origins
The story of our parents is one of young people hardened by post-war Spain, who fought relentlessly to get by. But it is also the story of a special character, forged by the cold winds of Teruel, and accompanied by my mother's infinite dose of patience.
Our father never settled for what life threw at him, which is why he left Cella (Teruel) and sought a trade in Valencia that could offer him a better life. Not satisfied with that, once he had learned the trade, he looked for a business on his own that would allow him to be the master of his own destiny.
Royo Group's first logistics park was under the bed in a sixth-floor walk-up. The first “production plant” was the inner balcony of his parents' house. And the first clients were the women from the humble neighbourhood where he lived.
50 years of history allow for a great deal, and my family has experienced countless moments, some very good, but the majority challenging and very, very complicated. However, my parents' humble origins and their facing difficult life circumstances have hardened a way of acting that has not been daunted by any of the difficulties that have appeared along the business path.
The early chapters of the Royo family's story offer interesting aspects that are transferable to any business project:
- The motivation to live better. Every company arises from a specific need on the part of its founders: the promise of a better life. Improvement is the driving force that leads any entrepreneurial person to launch their business project. To improve the world, to improve a specific problem, to improve their personal situation.
Having a clear understanding of entrepreneurial motivation can ease the path; cultivating a growth mindset is the guarantee of seeing it through.
- Extreme effort hardens you. Anyone who has gone through precarious conditions in their life has a different perspective when facing business problems. There are problems every day, but their difficulty does not daunt you when you have lived through tough personal situations. Cultivating a stoic spirit helps you to face the impossible challenges that a business presents every day.
The best way to honour a legacy is to create a new future for it.
Santiago Royo - CEO of Invext Corporation
