Catherine Harris: Director Harris Farm Markets

Catherine Harris never doubted that she’d follow in her parents’ footsteps and start a business. She and her husband, David, who also comes from a family-business background, created Harris Farm Markets in 1971 with a single fruit and vegetable store in Sydney’s Villawood. There are now 26 across NSW.

“David and I saw our parents as incredibly independent, thoughtful and mindful,” says Harris. “We weren’t restricted in any way by conformity. There was a gameness, an entrepreneurial spirit – and you were allowed to fail.”

Harris’s father, Theo Rossi, owned two companies: Hat Bands Pty Ltd, which made hat bands for Akubra, and another called Tapex, a strapping and cording business he set up in 1957 (and that’s now run by Harris’s brother, Philip Rossi).

“When you grow up in a family business like I did, you get very involved,” says Harris, who remembers sitting around the table after dinner sifting through bobbins and working in the factory in what is now Sydney’s Green Square during school holidays “sorting materials and the like – very uninteresting stuff”.

Harris’s mother, Mary Rossi, was something of a renaissance figure. She had 10 children, in 1956 became the first woman to host her own program on Australian television – Woman’s World on the ABC – and in 1970 went on to establish her own high-end travel agency on Sydney’s North Shore. Rather than it being simply ambition, Harris has said “opportunities were presented that [my mother] grabbed with both hands… I’m also driven to see an opportunity and think, ‘That would be an interesting thing to do.’”

Going into business “was always front of mind for us”, she says of herself and David, whom she met at university. “There was a sense that this was the ultimate thing to do; that other people were just working for someone else.”

While Theo and Mary’s companies are still family-owned and run, Harris discouraged her own children from becoming involved in Harris Farm Markets “because I thought it was really important for their own self-worth to be independent of us”.

They got the bug anyway. While all five sons established professional careers, three – Angus, Luke and Tristan – are now Harris Farm Markets’ co-CEOs (Catherine is chair), while Daniel is a director of the company. Lachlan, a media commentator and former chief press secretary to former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, runs content-platform company RevTech Media.

Catherine Harris has maintained a close association with the University

of New South Wales since completing her degree in the late 1960s at

what was then the faculty of commerce, which is now the Australian

School of Business. An Officer of the Order of Australia, Catherine has

held other prominent directorships and sat on a number of boards. She is

currently a commissioner of the Australian Rugby League and Honorary

Consul General for Bhutan.

More interesting reading at: https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/harris-farm-markets-is-taking-on-coles-and-woolworths-in-the-90-billion-grocery-war/news-story/3e144dc4413f1390461bd6c5a051bcbbT

Listen to Catherine at: https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/watch/1984071235666

https://brandsofkin.com/three-brothers-race-to-run-harris-farm/