Dear Anders,

I was so thrilled and happy when you asked me if I, your mother, as director and part owner of Georg Sörman, would be interested in being part of your Global Executive MBA!

We took long walks in the forest next to our home on Färingsö, the island we live on, twenty-five kilometres west of Stockholm, Sweden. We had long conversations, discussed and agreed. I remember how well prepared you were, as always, before our talks and was smitten by your convincing enthusiasm. You have always been a strong and shining leader; everyone in a room, friends or strangers, will look at you as you enter the premises. You love being in the limelight and thrive there, and you are the born leader and bright shining star! Other people like to be close to you. I was proud that you, at last at the age of 30-plus, wanted to take a real and professional interest in our business, Georg Sörman. (Georg Sörman being a menswear retail store with two shops: one in Kungsholmen, Stockholm, and one with knitwear in Old Town, Stockholm.)

During that first walk I told you that I, of course, was very happy supporting your decision to write your thesis about Georg Sörman, which my grandfather Georg Sörman started in 1916. But I also raised my doubts, and talked about some of the problems and difficulties I thought could arise. I already worked more than full-time in the business and would soon be sixty years old, so I was very clear with you that I did not want more work. I was also clear that I did not want a new boss, and I especially did not want one of my sons stepping in as my boss! I thought my workload was heavy enough and also didn't want more stress, having felt the economic stress at times.

Anders, you and I were both aware that the two of us were more interested in the family business than your younger brother, Gustaf, and your father, Lars-Olof, my husband and part-owner of our company. Lars-Olof has always been very supportive and someone whom I always could count on and rely on to be 100 per cent loyal and who has worked thousands of hours for free in the business. We were both aware of the fact that Gustaf and Lars-Olof were not at all positive about you stepping in and taking on this project and that both your brother and Lars-Olof were afraid that this could cause future problems in our own family. You and I discussed the importance of agreeing! We agreed, all four, that our family always is and will be most important, whatever business project could develop or arise in the future. Our family is more important than any project, book or university paper. Gustaf only wants us all to live in peace and to have a nice family spirit and Father would like us two to work less and spend less time in the business. This is not an easy task to make this happen, but let me try!

Dear son, you pushed for Georg Sörman becoming a member of Family Business Network. We agreed, even though I had my doubts because I am not too keen on being too open with my feelings and problems. But we signed up as members of Family Business Network and the three of us have been to two weekends at Ingarö, an island east of Stockholm. These workshops have opened our eyes and helped us in many ways as we heard from other owner families of business, smaller and larger than our own, and they were very open with their difficulties with having family members in their business, some working in the business, some ‘only' being shareholders or part-owners. You stressed the importance of making plans, keeping to these agreed plans and also finding other young, enthusiastic co-partners, and offered some very smart and well-educated and successful options.

We have had long, interesting talks and discussions also with our staff. These workshops have been interesting and very good for our Georg Sörman team spirit. We agreed and decided to make changes in our ‘touch points' for bags, home page and advertisements, as well as in our window displays, flags on the façade of the building and also the music in the store. Before starting off with all this you consulted Hema Patel, well-known art director and good friend from Canberra, Australia, who now lives in the United States. She put a lot of effort and professionalism into making our ‘Future Book' — the Georg Sörman 100 repositioning. This book has been of very good help and has provided lots of inspiration and a good guideline for us in our ongoing work as Georg Sörman moves into the future.

This year (2016) we turned 100 years old! This is, of course, something that we all are very proud of. We have a guestbook in the shop in Kungsholmen, Stockholm, where old and new customers write comments and we often hear from satisfied customers, and get positive feedback on our efforts to make our customers happy, content and wanting to come back to us. This we are proud of but we definitely need to work hard every day to become even better, more professional, more impressive, inspiring and interested in our customers' needs, and also open to new ideas and ways to work and to keep in touch with our devoted customers.

We need to work towards a mutual goal daily and every week with our staff who are in the shops. Our salespeople, who meet our customers and who are our ambassadors every day, are very important to us. We need to improve and to develop together and when we are working in peace together we can pull our company forward. It is easier for me to talk to our team in the shop in Stockholm, we can speak with each other daily and look one another in the eyes, and we can easily hear and feel if we are in agreement with each other, or not. If we are on the right track together, or not. We have been discussing, comparing and agreeing with the GS strategy paper in a lot of matters, but also disagreeing and we have had some difficulties in our work relations as a result.

In my opinion, some of our problems could have been avoided had you not chosen to include your graphic designer and then-girlfriend without discussing this decision with either me or your father. We were not included at all in that decision of yours. Many times you put yourself in the position where you had to choose between your ex and me, and this was very upsetting at times — you had to deal with two strong women and there were at times a lot of emotions involved! Some of these disagreements might not have occurred had you yourself been in Stockholm full-time. Being away from Stockholm was not a wise move. You also persuaded us to, in principle, leave our shop in Old Town, which was opened by my grandfather Georg Sörman in 1928, his second shop at that time in Old Town, in the hands of your company, Thinque, and your Thinque team. You wanted to have full control over changing things around; the logos and the clothing that you wanted to sell would all be a totally new concept, under the new shop name ‘Georg Sörman and Sons'. I shall not go into details but let me just say it did cost us a lot of time and money before you and your team decided turn your backs on the idea and the shop! From my point of view, when running a smaller family business, you need to be here, on the floor; you cannot live on the other side of the globe.

I still think we could have been successful in moving Georg Sörman into the new digital era together! Father and I know you are very intelligent and successful in what you are doing and we are very proud of you. Anders, if you want to return to Georg Sörman in Stockholm, the doors are still open. I respect you, and many times it has been a lot of fun and inspiring to work with you and I have learned a lot from it. Now we have to do this without you but we have faith in our future and in our very devoted and skilled staff — so future here we come!

I love you!

Mother